Ratings and Reviews by autumnc

Choice of the Vampire was one of the first Choice of Games, which in October 2020 received a major DLC/expansion, bringing the 3rd (or 4th?) major segment of the story.

I feel like there has been a recent proliferation of vampire-related interactive fiction and visual novels recently. It is difficult for me to talk about this game without comparing it to the Vampire: the Masquerade franchise. Much of the vampire lore is similar, with the international vampire Society, the masquerade, and political conflicts between different vampire factions, as well as the basic vampire "biology". In some ways CotV almost feels like a fanfiction of VtM. However there are no vampire clans here.

CotV is as much a game about American history as it is about vampires. Sometimes it feels like having the game be about vampires is just an excuse to have a character who lives through lots of interesting moments in American history, like a 19th century vampire version of Forrest Gump. There are a lot of references to both major events, like the War of 1812, Reconstruction and its downfall, and the labor movement, as well as somewhat more obscure events, like the early days of baseball (or “base ball”). The quantity of historical references increased in the Memphis and especially the St. Louis chapters as opposed to the New Orleans chapter. Playing the game reminded me of high school US history class, in a mostly good way.

There are a few opportunities to work against the tide of history, but the tide of history is always stronger. You can play as a vampire who is a former slave or a free person of color or a Choctaw, with all that entails. You can help or hinder the destruction of the Confederacy at Vicksburg (the city falls no matter what you do). You can support the freedmen in Memphis, but they inevitably fall prey to the KKK and the yellow fever. You can try to support the labor strikes in St. Louis, but they are crushed. Or you can do the opposite of that: own a plantation with slaves, literally join the KKK, help the Pinkertons crush the labor revolts. Either way, the broader historical forces never change.

In some ways, I feel like the game tries to do too much. There is a very large number of characters; I could not keep up with all the different senator candidates, governors, praetors, quaestors, and so on, and often forgot what those titles even meant. There were just so many names, and while the characters were reasonably distinct, they sort of blended together. They were all just a bunch of jerks. Some supported Stone and others supported Adonis. I didn’t even see how they were different; they both seemed like jerks too. The glossary of vampires was nice, but kind of difficult to navigate. This is not to mention all of the mortal characters, who are often actual historical figures.

In addition, there are a lot of short-term plotlines, but the long-term plot is not very present. New Orleans was about trying to rise in society. Vicksburg had the siege. Memphis had the senator election, looking for Wilson Maddox, the yellow fever, and the municipal bonds. St. Louis had West and the Columbian Exposition. Sometimes, there are so many different things going on, it's hard to keep up. There are also many brief plot points that are brought up once and quickly abandoned. There are a number of romance options, all of which end poorly. The long-term plotlines are basically the Stone vs Adonis revolution, your chosen long-term vampiric goal, and general technological/societal change. The “metaplot” doesn’t feel as developed as VtM; there’s no Gehenna or Inquisition or Anarch Revolt or Sabbat or stuff like that. Much of the deep lore about vampires remains mysterious throughout the course of the game so far.

The story tries to tie in the historical struggles with the vampiric struggles, but it doesn’t really succeed at giving a sense of urgency to the latter. Compared to VtM: Night Road, there is not so much of the "personal horror" or pervasive dread that each night will be your last. Hunger frenzies and turning into a wight do not seem to be present. There’s little sense of danger even when you really are in danger due to West in St. Louis.

(Spoiler - click to show)Speaking of which, I ended up getting killed by West. I wasn’t sure if it was That Kind of Game, since I didn’t seem to be in danger of death in any of the previous chapters. It felt kind of sudden.

Immediately after starting the game, I was reminded of Secret Little Haven, another game about internet-mediated relationships, self-discovery, and fandom. I was a little disappointed that this game did not have the richly implemented fake internet GUI. Lore Distance Relationships is more of a visual novel, with interactivity only when selecting dialogue options in chat scenes, and only screenshots of the Ruffians website. Nevertheless, the game's story carried it through. It was consistently engaging, and I came to care for the characters. I really appreciated the uplifting ending.

The story follows the protagonist’s life, from age 8, in 2001, to age 17, in 2010, with each year being a new chapter. It takes place mostly as text conversations on Ruffians, a neopets-like website, between the protagonist StaircaseHaven14, and BusyAsABee, another user. They start out by roleplaying as their Ruffians, and eventually develop a deep friendship and might even fall in love as they grow up. The conversations felt authentic to me for the most part; maybe some of the early chats were too precocious for 9 or 10-year-olds, but overall it felt right. They felt like real people and real friends. The role-play segments were great. I liked that both characters had their typing quirks; Bee typed using all lower-case with messy punctuation and emojis, while Stair used mostly correct capitalization and punctuation and generally only used emoji in response to Bee.

In terms of structure, it seems mostly linear, but there are a lot of choices where you can choose for Stair to avoid or ignore Bee. I don’t know if these choices end up affecting the outcome, or if there are “bad ends” where Stair and Bee never get together. There are also some timed pauses, which I usually find annoying, but here, I feel like they worked in conveying the uncertainty and nervousness experienced by the characters. There is sound and music; the sound consists mostly of keyboard and mouse sounds, while music plays during the roleplay segments. The sound effects and some of the graphics changed as technology advanced from 2001 to 2010. This was a cool effect but I got a burst of anxiety when I heard the skype sound.

Not necessarily a major spoiler, but: (Spoiler - click to show)Another big similarity with Secret Little Haven is that the protagonist is a trans girl, with an abusive parent, who gradually discovers her identity over the course of the story. It was fairly obvious from the start that the plot was going in this direction, but I still enjoyed the buildup. We don’t see as much of the protagonist’s life and background in this game, but there’s a lot we can infer from her conversations. By contrast, we don't know as much about Bee. She just seems so incredibly nice with an incredibly loving and nice father; it almost seems unreal when contrasted with Stair.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the story. I was on Neopets during the game's timeline but never got into the community. Now I wish I had...

The premise of "enemies-to-lovers" is a common one in fanfiction, and that's what this story reminded me of. Except the main characters here don't explicitly become lovers, but rather best friends, or something like that.

TMMEWaD is the story of a superhero, Lightbringer, and a supervillain, Promethium, who have been long-time enemies in a city. But then... Lightbringer invites Promethium to a coffee shop to plan out their future battles. The latter accepts, wanting to escape jail and a likely death sentence.

The story alternates between the perspectives of Lightbringer and Promethium, and gives the player choices for both characters. All of the meaningful choices are presented as trust exercises: does the hero trust the villain, and vice versa? Picking trusting choices gets the “good” ending, while picking distrustful choices gets the “bad” ending (I only got the good ending and haven’t seen the bad ending). Sometimes there are other choices, but I think those are mostly cosmetic choices.

Overall, I thought the writing was good, especially the ways the characters would interact, but I would have liked a bit more characterization. It was not really clear to me why Promethium was a villain, except some vague description of fighting against the injustices of the world (which injustices? why would she care? how did she come to see the world like that?). Or why Lightbringer became a hero. But maybe none of that really matters? Also the story felt a bit slow to me at times.

Sometimes, the text was rather difficult to read because the background color and text color were too similar. There was one typo at the very end I think, where Lightbringer introduces Promethium to her daughter as Diana.

(Interestingly this one of at least two stories in this ifcomp with a female enemies-to-lovers storyline; the other is about a vampire).