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Review
Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review
Choice-making in IF is the secret sauce that differentiates it from just-plain-F. Whether choice-select, parser, or some yet-to-be-invented interactive paradigm, the capability is ‘player/reader, you participate here.’ This is going to have an effect on the player/reader. Whether it is weighing between presented choices, deciding what to try at a cold prompt character, or just navigating the UI to proceed in the story, the player is digesting information and determining action forward. I am belaboring what every IF fan knows because every now and then, an IF work seems to not understand that. No, that’s too harsh. An IF work seems to underESTIMATE that effect.
By requiring player involvement, players become complicit in the story, required by the work to steer it in some fashion. Differentiating IF from straight-F is most effective when the work understands that impulse and integrates it into the narrative. This is not the same as ceding control to the player. The most successful of the thriving ‘choices are illusory’ themed works explicitly reward or punish player involvement in service of an artistic statement. The key is that the successful works directly engage player expectations and confound them in surprising and ultimately satisfying ways. Asking a player to engage a story, then repelling or rejecting their input at every turn is bad. Asking a player to choose from a wealth of unattractive options that are clearly bad is worse. Both push the player away from the story, but the latter requires their active complicity just to move forward. Unless there are other artistic avenues to keep them engaged, the work will simply be rejected.
I am afraid KoX wanders deliberately or errantly into this space. As the titular King, the player is a preening, egotistical, divine-right product of oblivious privilege. Early on, the story asks the player to select among comically bad choices. The humor in these early scenarios is helpful - no one wants to be awful on PURPOSE, but as a joke? Sure, I’ll play along! This does not sustain very long, before dire consequences start presenting themselves and the jokes leave the room. Then it becomes simply escalating insularity and incompetence required by the PLAYER, until the completely foreseeable and unsatisfying conclusion. So, a work asking a player to inhabit a repulsive character, make obviously awful choices, then blames the player for the story’s tragic conclusion. In a no-longer-humorous tone. This underestimates the power of player initiative, betrays it in a way, then delivers an unsurprising, unsatisfying conclusion, seemingly punishing the player for getting involved in the first place.
Maybe I’m too emotional over this, let’s back up. There is a reading that this work is a character study of insular, egotistical political leadership, dangerous in its disconnectedness and their outsized impact on humanity around them. Sure. Thing is, there are no shortage of those in the world. The REAL world. In the US, you can find them in TikTok, the daily news, and in the White House without even trying. More ink has been spilled on these folks than, I dunno, the ink spillage problem. We understand them pretty well everywhere they appear at this point. To engage this character in IF, in this way, the unique opportunity is to give us insights - maybe we are compelled to better understand a character, having been ‘in their shoes.’ Being the choice-maker in this archetype maybe gives us a greater understanding of… no. That’s not happening here. We are just compelled to make bad choices, and only bad choices, with no insights or commentary beyond ‘bad, right?’ I mean, yeah. Right. So why am I doing it? This work cannot answer that question.
I didn’t really find any deep insights here. I recognized the archetype at play, and resented being forced to play it. And was rewarded with unsurprising and predictable results. The work did not seem to figure out a way to leverage interactivity (and the inherent player engagement) to make an artistic statement that leveraged that engagement into something larger. Quite the opposite, it told me things I already knew and despised, then made me do them. This is a very functional definition of Bouncy.
It is almost of secondary notice that the language in the piece was reaching just beyond its grasp. Phrases like “throng with trading fleets and grow about them the holy lichen of your vast, marble cities.” don’t really land with me. “The finest legion of the capital garrison postulates itself before you” almost certainly means ‘prostrates’ there. And this just seems like a straight up typo: “ach one a great drumbeat; the drum is made from human skin, and the skin is cracked and chipped from years of impacts” Honestly though, the language is the least of the work’s issues for this reviewer.
Played: 9/11/24
Playtime: 20m, two playthroughs
Artistic/Technical ratings: Bouncy/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
