The Golden King

Golden King

Damon Wakes likes to push the boundaries of what is considered IF. This year I'm thinking of it less like a 'this is really important for me personally to establish what is IF and what isn't' and more like 'this is a poll by Damon and it's my turn to vote'. For me, I wouldn't want to see more like this. Fullscreen 3d engine games with sound go against most the reason I like IF (discreteness, gameplay that can be started and stopped). I did like the Ultraviolent Unicorn game and would like more of it, and have been avoiding UI3. Sometimes even the 'bad' games are 'good'. I rated The Miller's Garden very low and it's currently the lowest-rated game by Wakes that isn't an Uninteractive Fiction game, but I included it in my longlist of favorite games, because it just stuck in my brain for some reason, the mundane inevitability of loss.

Anyway, this game, as I said, I didn't like as much. It's not even the 3d engine and voiceover; the game 2/5 by BenyDanette is a french/english bilingual unity game where you make choices walking down hallways that have printed text in them and voice overs. I liked its introspection. I think the reason I liked this less was simply the lack of printed text.

Morality-wise it was interesting. It's a gdevelop game where you play as a chess king and everywhere you move, things turn to gold. I intentionally turned trees to gold and got a voice over and guards to gold. The whole time my wife and child spoke and laughed with each other. I knew there might be some ending, but I decided to simply stop playing. The laughter of my child was beautiful, and in my immersion I didn't want to silence it, and only not playing could guarantee that it wouldn't permanently end (though of course, ironically, turning off the game silences it).

I really enjoyed this entry. This is a swiftly moving, unusual game for IFComp.

It is a well made, stylised retelling of the King Midas story where everything marches inevitably on as your touch gilds everything you come in contact with. The way the soundscape changes as you progress through the actions is great.

I'm not sure if the platform it's made on allows it, but I think it might have been interesting to have the ability to (Spoiler - click to show)reconsider what to do when there is one final square left. Commit. Or similar to the mythology, beg for the "gift" to be reversed so there could be two different endings.

That was just a little thought though. This was something fun and different to have entered this year.