Reviews by EJ
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A new life for an old myth, June 29, 2013(This review was originally posted as part of the 2012 Semi-Official Xyzzy Reviews series, and focuses on the game's nomination in the Best Story category.)
Writing a retelling of an ancient myth, especially one as widely known as that of Orpheus and Eurydice, may seem on the surface like an easy route for a storyteller to take. After all, it gives you a certain framework to follow for the plot and the characters. Furthermore, you can rely on the audience to have a knowledge of the shape of the story you’re trying to tell to a much greater extent than is usually the case. You don’t, for example, have to directly tell the player “this is Hades, King of the Underworld, and this is his queen Persephone, and this is the way their relationship works due to this aspect of their backstory.” You can just put in a character who evokes Hades and a character who evokes Persephone, without ever naming them, and the player’s existing knowledge of the story will do the rest. This applies to thematic elements as well–the title Eurydice alone should give the reader some idea of the ground that will be covered here.
This knowledge on the part of the player is, however, a double-edged sword: they already know how the story goes, so the writer must work that much harder to keep their attention, to convince them that there is something here that they haven’t seen before. Fortunately, Eurydice puts in that necessary effort. Yes, the plot hits most of the expected notes–the loss of a loved one and the journey to the underworld to get her back, dealing with a ferryman and a three-headed dog and an authority figure whom the protagonist must convince to give up the spirit of the dead loved one–but underneath the mythological trappings is a real, raw, meticulously-observed portrait of grief that keeps the game feeling grounded even when the narrative is at its most fantastical. The underworld in this case takes the form of the mental hospital in which the deceased loved one, Celine, seems to have spent the end of her life, and as the protagonist journeys through it in search of her, memories of her arise. The underworld-hospital is full of small details which build up a very human portrait of both the protagonist and Celine–but which also create a general sense of helplessness. The protagonist plays Celine’s favorite card game with her, buys her a radio and a houseplant for her room, promises to rewatch a forgotten television show with her; Celine gamely goes along with all this, but it’s clear to the protagonist and the player alike that her heart’s not in it, that none of this is really helping at all. These scenes do an excellent job of getting the player on board with the protagonist’s drive to save Celine. The sympathy for the protagonist and Celine and the desire to do something to make things better for Celine draw the player on even though we all know what’s coming.
Or do we? The game has four endings, each of which provides a different conclusion to the emotional arc of the story, and here is where the game begins to subvert the player’s expectations. If you follow the myth to the letter, playing the lyre at every opportunity and turning around as soon as the game suggests that Celine might not in fact be following you, you’re likely to get the accurately-named Failure ending, the least satisfying of the four. In this ending, the protagonist simply gives up and goes home, having failed to confront their feelings or come to terms with anything–the whole journey has been utterly pointless. The stated reason for these actions leading to this ending is that playing the lyre signifies seeking an easy, “magical” solution to real problems that can’t be fixed that way, but in a way it may also reflect the player’s refusal to engage with this specific iteration of the story, going through the mythological motions without really thinking about what it all means for these particular characters.
What if you play the lyre and then don’t turn around? Well, then you’ve really lost touch with reality: this earns you the slightly puzzling Fable ending, in which the protagonist seems to lose the ability to distinguish between their own life and the Orpheus myth altogether and descend into delusion out of unwillingness to deal with the fact of Celine’s death. This ending is at least somewhat more interesting than Failure, but it’s not terribly hopeful. The player is still relying on their knowledge of the myth here, although they are at least trying to change its outcome.
More satisfying are the Flowers and Friendship endings, which show the protagonist remembering the good times with Celine but accepting that she really is gone and beginning to think about moving on, possibly through renewing connections with their still-living friends. These endings require the player to find alternate solutions to dealing with the underworld’s various obstacles, using everyday objects from the protagonist’s house rather than a magical lyre that appears out of nowhere and may not be real. The idea, according to the writer, was to reward the player for finding more practical, real-world solutions to problems, though unfortunately this does not work out quite as well as might be hoped: the alternate solutions are still very adventure-gamey. It’s a different kind of unrealistic, but it’s unrealistic nonetheless. That said, this still rewards the player for engaging with the specifics of this story rather than following a pattern they think they already know. Even if the execution isn’t perfect, the decision to have breaking from the established story lead to more interesting and satisfying results than following it is an interesting one which makes the story aspect of the game more compelling.
All in all, despite a few missteps, Eurydice is a very solid take on the Orpheus & Eurydice myth, with a deft personal touch and some interesting ideas behind its multiple endings. It is well worth playing, and certainly deserves the recognition it has gotten as one of the stand-out games of the past year.
YA supernatural romance, IF style, April 2, 2012When I was in high school, there was a certain type of young adult fantasy novel that I read quite a few of. These books always contained (a) Ordinary Teenaged Girls who also happened to have Awesome Supernatural Powers, possibly with an attendant Special Destiny, and (b) Brooding, Aloof Male Love Interests who were often on the opposite side of whatever the main conflict was, but who were, deep down, Really Nice Guys.
"Shadows on the Mirror" feels very much like an entry in that genre. The heroine's Awesome Powers are only hinted at, but are undeniably Awesome, and also Unique ("Are you... like me?" she asks the hero, Galen, at one point, to which he replies, "No one is like you."). There are also tantalizing hints of ways in which the world of the game is not quite like our own, references to things unfamiliar to the player that the characters seem to view as so ordinary as to warrant no explanation. This could easily become frustrating, but it's done sparingly enough that it remains simply intriguing. That said, at times the game feels like almost too small a fragment of a larger story, a teasing glimpse of something that deserves a novel-length exploration.
Make no mistake, though: the real focus of the game is the Brooding Love Interest and the heroine's interactions with him. This was never quite my cup of tea (I was in it more for the power-and-destiny bit), but it's done fairly well here; the heroine is well-characterized, and the love interest, while a bit more of an enigma, is at least interesting. There's the possibility for some playful, fun interactions, and while Galen is not exactly warm and outgoing, (Spoiler - click to show)once the necklace comes off he's not such an unbearable jerk that it's impossible to understand why the heroine likes him.
The gameplay mostly consists of talking to Galen about various topics; the mechanics of this were a little hit-or-miss. Most of the topics I thought to ask about were implemented, and often asking or telling about a term that came up in response to the previous topic resulted in a conversational flow that seemed logical and natural -- no easy feat in IF. On the other hand, with the way that certain conversational responses are "unlocked" by pursuing other lines of questioning, it was sometimes unclear when Galen really had nothing, or nothing more, to say about a subject, and when I simply needed to talk about something else for a while to unlock more information about that subject. The "topics" command was also less useful than one might hope -- it seemed to return four or five topics in random rotation, regardless of whether that topic had been exhausted or not, and sometimes would return "You can think of nothing to say to Galen" even when there were topics remaining to be discussed.
After playing once, I immediately restarted the game to see if I could get a different ending, but was quickly frustrated by the fact that I was unable to discuss topics I had discussed in the previous playthrough and I wasn't sure why or what I had to do to unlock them, and I couldn't tell if the game was progressing especially differently to the first time. I did get a different ending the second time through, but I couldn't quite figure out why I had. At that point I gave up on replaying to find other endings--kind of a shame, as I don't think I even saw the "best" one, but replaying the game had become more irritating and confusing than fun.
For all my complaints, the conversational system was pretty strong overall, and I did enjoy the game as a bit of nostalgic fun. However, I'm not sure it would hold the same appeal for anyone who has never been the particular sort of teenaged girl who reads that particular sort of fantasy novel.
An indecisive game, October 25, 2011"Choices" is a game that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Is it a lighthearted, sexy piece following the misadventures of a teenager who really wants to get into her teacher's pants (but will take anyone else she can get along the way)? Or is it a more serious drama about said teenager's crumbling home life and said teacher's terrible secret? I really don't know. There is nothing wrong in principle with having some serious plot along with your porn (nor yet with having sex scenes in your serious drama), but in this case the different tones of the various scenes did not mesh well, resulting in an odd and disconcerting sort of mood whiplash.
One problem that this causes is with the (Spoiler - click to show)sexual abuse/blackmail storyline. Was that supposed to be portrayed as titillating (as indeed the heroine seems to find it at times), or was it supposed to be horrifying? It came off different ways in different scenes, with the result that it was hard to take fully seriously, but also made the (Spoiler - click to show)sex scenes with the teacher (and possibly her sister) at the end fairly uncomfortable. It is quite possible that the game was simply written for people who enjoy (Spoiler - click to show)fictional depictions of rape, which is not at all my kink -- so it may just be that I'm having problems with it because it isn't aimed at me. All I can say is that the handling of that storyline definitely did not work for me.
As for the heroine's troubles at home, they seem intended to offer the reader insight into who she is and why she acts as she does. It doesn't quite work, however, as it's all very trite and the characterizations of her family members never rise above the level of two-dimensional caricatures: Alcoholic Dad, Catty Mom, Delinquent Brother (with bonus Creepy Uncle in one scene). The heroine's insecurities about her sexuality, meanwhile, also suffer from the game's sexy/serious dichotomy: why is someone who doesn't want anyone to know she's gay trying to seduce any girl or woman who looks at her? It's a wonder her secret didn't get out a long time ago (although to be fair to the game, no one who finds out seems especially surprised by it).
It's not a terrible game; the choose-your-own-adventure format is fun and not something you see often, and aside from a few typos/misspellings the quality of the prose is generally good. There are a number of lines that are quite funny, often in a darkly sarcastic sort of way. It's just that all things considered, I think the game would have been better off if it had abandoned all pretenses of having a plot that deals with Important Issues and embraced its gratuitously sexy nature, or if it had put a little more effort into portraying those Important Issues with sensitivity and nuance.
Interesting, but a bit overblown, August 24, 2011What Room 206 has going for it, mostly, is its story. The small handful of puzzles are well-done enough, but they're not going to challenge most puzzle aficionados (and I have the feeling I've seen one of them, (Spoiler - click to show)the "follow the lights in the void" maze, somewhere before). The main reason to keep going through the game (and its endless "wait" commands and occasional guess-the-verb issues) is to find out what exactly is happening to its protagonist.
In a work like this, then, the writing is of utmost importance, and Room 206 doesn't do quite as well as it might in this regard. In some places, the poetic, somewhat disjointed prose works well to establish a surreal and nightmarish atmosphere; often, though, it falls into "ridiculous purple prose" territory, trainwrecks of mixed metaphors and similes leaving the reader wondering what exactly they're trying to convey. One example I found particularly egregious:
"Accompanying this gypsy theatre of scents, other sensations hang weights and baubles from the darkness. [...] In the middle of all this, thronged by the shapeless muscle like a flock of angels, wrapped in icy moonbeams, a man sits."
What is this description trying to get at? What does "thronged by the shapeless muscle like a flock of angels" even mean? Can someone really be said, even metaphorically, to be thronged by their own muscles? Unless the "muscle" part is a further metaphor describing something else altogether...
In addition to the general figurative language overload and thesaurus abuse, there were a couple of cases of words being used incorrectly, like "contemptibly" used where I'm pretty sure "contemptuously" was meant.
This prose style can interfere with the playing of the game itself; room descriptions are often walls of text, giving a lot of extraneous information and making it easy to overlook things that actually are important. I spent a lot of time trying to examine things that weren't implemented.
Flaws aside, however, the story itself is definitely intriguing, and while some aspects of the twist might be easy to guess, it's much more complicated than it may appear. The mysterious phone calls raise more questions even as they give clues to the game's larger mystery (at one point they're also used to give smoothly integrated in-game hints to a puzzle's solution, which works well). The endings leave the player with much to think about, but still feel like fitting conclusions to the narrative.
Overall, I did enjoy the game and found many of its ideas intriguing. I just feel like it could perhaps have used an editor or beta-reader to curb some of the writer's wilder flights into overblown descriptions.
Well-written, but problematic, February 13, 2011There's a lot to like about The Blind House. The writing is elegant and atmospheric. The characterization is strong. The player has only three brief conversations with Marissa, but everything in her house tells us something about her -- her paintings, the books on her bookshelf, the videos she watches. The player character, Helena, is more of an enigma, but she's supposed to be. The horror aspect is also done well. It relies more on implication than on shock or gory descriptions; throughout the game's series of unsettlingly surreal episodes there's a build-up of dread leading to a climax that's less a shock than a confirmation of the player's worst suspicions.
The gameplay works well for what it's supposed to do, which is to supplement the story without distracting from it (puzzle fans will want to look elsewhere). It's generally clear what you're supposed to do and where you're supposed to go, but the game doesn't overdo the hand-holding. There were a few things I still felt a sense of accomplishment for working out, but I'm pretty terrible at this stuff, so that may just be me.
I have only one problem with the game overall -- and unfortunately it's hard to discuss without mentioning the endings, so please forgive me for the spoilers.
There are vague, but definitely present, homoerotic undertones to the relationship between Helena and Marissa, which makes the whole thing come off as "predatory psychotic lesbian (Spoiler - click to show)stalks, hurts, and possibly kills the object of her affections." The fact that the place where these undertones are most obvious is the ending where (Spoiler - click to show)Helena kills Marissa (while lying on top of her on a bed, no less) really does not help here. I feel a little bad complaining about this (after all, lesbians can be crazy just like anyone else can), but the "predatory psychotic lesbian" thing has a long and sordid history as the most common portrayal of lesbians in fiction. This game feels like a bit of a throwback to the days of Mrs. Danvers and the like, and the fact that it's all kept on a subtextual level only adds to that.
I don't mean to suggest that the author played into this stereotype on purpose; I know how easy it is to stumble into these things without meaning to. But it left a bad taste in my mouth in a game I otherwise quite enjoyed.
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