Halfling Dale

This game is a long choice-based game where you build a character who is a hobbit and live through a year or so of local hobbit life.

It seems built on the same general model as Choicescript games, where your choices influence your stats and relationships with delayed effects in later chapters.

However, the effects of your choices are pretty opaque. Unlike Choicescript games, there is no stats page that I could find, and many of the options you can pick from are very similar. On top of that, several chapters are built up as a 'win/loss' scenario where you either make the right choices and get a good result or just fail. When I played every commercial Choicescript game a few years ago, those were all common things that made games more frustrating.

On the other hand, the characters and setting here are fun. A lot is taken directly from Lord of the Rings, but the individual characters are all new. There is also a lot of branching, especially with romances. I did two playthroughs, one pursuing Patty the 'witch' and one pursuing Lily the mayor's daughter. The last 3 of the 7 chapters in these playthroughs were very different from each other.

Everything is pretty low-stakes. Someone steals a sword and runs away with it, but not you. The most stress you have to deal with is social judgment and a pie contest.

So, I'd recommend this to fans of 'coffee shop AU' or Stardew Valley. I liked it enough to play it twice, and the price I paid (I think $3.99?) was definitely appropriate for the size (a lot of such games are $10 to $20 now).

Okay, I LOVE choice story games like this, I've never particularly enjoyed games like Episode, or of that format, but this is nothing like those which I highly enjoy.
It's cheap, fun, and never gets old. I've played multiple times and when going through the possible endings list, was surprised to see an Ultán ending (which I've spent the better part of nearly three hours trying and failing to achieve), instead though, I've gotten many other endings that were fun and occasionally exciting,though, I can't remember how I ended with Patty that one playthrough... anyway, great game, and I definitely need more like this.

Played: 7/6/24
Playtime: 15min, chapter1

I did not expect this here! A preview chapter of a pay-to-play text adventure! I am delighted beyond words that this thing exists. The application was very attractive on my Motorola - a very professional, evocative presentation, graphically appealing, choices sliding in crisply from the sidelines to facilitate my agency.

There is a bit more text here than I was ready for - some pages required scrolling to get to choices, though I must say that friction quickly faded. The writing is warm and functional, but still concise enough to not waste your time so it rarely felt like description for description sake. It FELT very ChoiceScripty to me. There was a good bit of establishing character traits and physical appearance, some soft relationship building all on the way to a background mystery involving your brother and his shifty Dwarf friend.

As a preview, it had a few things going against it. For one, the non-character choices you were making had uncertain effect on the narrative. It wasn’t clear beyond some flavor text ANY choices actually did anything. Which is always an unfair statement, clearly building character is ‘doing something.’ But relative gameplay there were few hints your choices had consequences or effects. Meaning by the end of the chapter I didn’t really have a feel for what this fellow I was building would be DOING in subsequent chapters. What my gameplay was going to be.

For a second, as an intro chapter, it had a LOT of infodump work to do in establishing setting, NPCs, stakes, and of course your ChoiceScript Character Sheet. The setting is super Tolkien adjacent. Not a dig. Featuring Halflings, there is no universe where that is not true. It also includes a distant man-elf war against a dark power. A mysterious ‘protector’ that has really strong Ranger vibes. It’s close is what I’m saying. It also seemingly extends my least favorite Tolkien artifact, elvish racism against Dwarves, to Halflings. Why is THAT the JRR Touchstone?? All of it is pleasantly enough conveyed (barring that poor Dwarf - which, to be clear, I am exaggerating for effect), but for a High Fantasy Tourist like me, not so compellingly.

For my part, being a casual-at-best ChoiceScript engager, unmoved by fantasy as a genre, and unclear what kind of IF ride I would be signing on for, I probably pass on the rest of it. If I had any suggestions, and I recognize like most post-publication feedback is mostly academic, I would proffer that the free trail chapter might be better served showcasing gameplay to some extent: a training wheels combat, introductory throwaway find-use puzzles, a quick relationship based levelup, whatever the game itself centers on. Something to telegraph the gameplay to follow. To its credit, I will say the combination of presentation, crisp writing, and toned down CS-iness had its charms, even to me. I could see ChoiceScript fans having a more promising engagement, and fantasy fans finding a lot to be happy with here. If you consider yourself one or both of those, I do recommend it.