Les Trois-cités : les préludes d'une odyssée

Les Trois-cités : les préludes d'une odyssée nous place dans la peau d'un ou d'une naine à la recherche d'une solution pour le mal qui ronge son frère. De nombreuses missions annexes vont venir rythmer l'aventure, ou la prolonger complètement selon les goûts de chacun en la matière.

Malgré des lenteurs pour gérer les déplacements et la difficulté des combats, le jeu est très prenant. Pour un prélude le jeu possède déjà un contenu important, laissant entrevoir le coté gargantuesque du jeu complet.

Les Trois-cités : les préludes d’une odyssée is an incomplete RPG game made in Twine, wherein you play as a dwarf looking to save their brother from a magical mushroom-related illness. The game based on CYOA gamebooks with dice-gameplay elements, with options to choose your class, getting equipment and potions, and levelling up your stats. RNG will be your best friend and greatest enemy here.

There is a lot you can do here. Along your main fetch-quest to find the required ingredients to save your brother, you will quickly stumble upon other side-quests – exploration of the city and interaction with other NPCs being necessary to get the ingredients. As in any fantasy setting, quests will range from finding missing characters, fighting brigands and thieves, resolving arguments, helping the less-than-fortunate, and even levying the taxes.

Though it is not in its complete form, you will easily spend a handful of hours to get through what is currently there: three cities are mentioned, two being accessible, and one being complete with dozens of neighbourhoods.
While maps are provided, showing where you are on the page and a couple of the available locations, you cannot click on it to move to other place – only adjacent spots are selectable through a list of links (no teleporting or fast travel unfortunately, it’s a bit annoying when going from one end to the city to the other).

It is obvious there was a lot of work put into the game, and even if I think I found myself stuck in an impossible place, it was pretty neat. If the other cities end up becoming as thought out and detailed as the starting one, it would make for a pretty epic adventure.

This story is based on classic gamebooks and fantasy tropes. You play as a dwarf in a village of dwarves, and can choose which class to play, which affects your stats. I chose to be a miner with high perception.

This game is already quite large, requiring a couple hours of play, and it's largely unfinished, with only two of three cities available (and, beyond that, there would likely be even more in a full game). There are a lot of randomized checks and things.

The art is, I believe, AI art, as zooming in on some scenes revealed oddities like three legs. However, it is unobtrusive and aesthetically worked overall (not discussing here the ethics of AI). Edit: Nightcafe is listed in credits for artwork.

The one currently finished city has a ton of different districts. There is a map, but instead of being used for navigation, it just serves as a visual cue while you actually select from a list of districts adjacent to your current one.

As you walk around, mini-stories fire off, providing you with new encounters like whether to chase down a missing guardsman or not.

Two things I would have preferred to be different: the map takes a while to load, making movement slow. I would have preferred the map to be optimized to load more quickly. Second, every time I entered the front gate a thief stole my purse and fighting it would just kill me, even if I loaded and tried again. It was really frustrating not having any chance to keep my money on me. And I found it difficult to find ways to heal; I thought maybe resting at my quarters could work, but couldn't find any. I eventually healed as the story progressed.

Overall, I thought the mushroom-brain thing was an interesting storyline, and the political aspects gave the game some complexity.