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Review
There are of course innumerable ways you can divide people in two – by which I mean, do the whole “there are two kinds of people in the world” thing, not literally bisecting them – but the opening passage of ChoiceScript demo Ink and Intrigue provides, I suspect, a handy litmus test for an IF-relevant difference of viewpoints:
"Chapter One: The Call of the Kitherin
"The approach to Ra’zai is best made in the last hour of darkness. So say the books you’ve read, the innkeepers you’ve chatted with on your month-long journey across Rzskador, and the ferrymaster who took your coin at midnight and welcomed you aboard."
Some people will perk up at this reasonably-well-written excerpt, curious to learn more about what’s surely a mystical world of legend and excitement. Others, seeing the profusion of unexplained proper nouns and especially sensitive to that “Ra’zai”, will feel their stomachs sink at the realization that they’ve unwittingly wandered into the domain of Apostrophe Fantasy.
Reader, I confess that I am of the second party; it’s a totally valid preference, but so too is liking this stuff, and I fear that I had a hard time separating my ennui at the game’s genre from my response to the game itself. In trying to evaluate it objectively, I think it’s a reasonable enough teaser – there’s a potentially compelling premise, the writing is generally solid, the plot, characters, and mechanics all seem like they’d support the kind of game the author is going for. The stuff that I disliked, beyond the generic fantasy setting, is also somewhat down to personal taste: the pacing is perhaps slow, the character generation section sometimes dwells on what seem like trivialities to me, and the love interests a bit schematic, but my sense is much of that’s standard for the Choice of Games style, which places a premium on role-playing and tries to create space for players to project their own perceptions and preferences onto romanceable characters. So it’s tempting to just do the mealy-mouthed “if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’d like” dance and call it good.
That’s not the kind of lazy reviewing y’all are paying for, though, so we’re not going to do that! No, instead I’m going to dig into a couple aspects of the games that I think count as strengths, and then some weaknesses, without hiding behind a subjectivity dodge.
On the positive side of the ledger, the opening bit where you define your character’s background and abilities deftly weaves together mechanical choices with bits of worldbuilding: you’re a spy for your royal uncle, but “spy” is one of those job descriptions that can be interpreted rather creatively, while lending itself to interesting missions, and picking things like how I chose to infiltrate a decadent cabaret that presumably hosted clandestine meetings and furtive assignations was way more engaging than just deciding whether I wanted +2 to dexterity or charisma. You also get some cool bonus elements to define, like your relationship with your pet hawk, that sit nicely between the choices that are obviously purely cosmetic (seriously, why are these kinds of games so insistent on making me choose an eye color?) and the clearly mechanical ones (to Ink and Intrigue’s credit, these are more frequently personality-based than attribute-based).
On the flip side, I think the game gets in its own way when it comes to establishing stakes, which meant my engagement generally fell off after the stronger-than-expected chargen system. See, this isn’t just a fantasy James Bond scenario – your mission is largely a diplomatic one, as you visit a secretive order of warrior-mages in an attempt to recruit them to your monarch’s side in an upcoming war. Except as soon as you enter their enclave, the magic alarm-bells they put in the gate announce that you’re a Chosen One and you get dragooned into being initiated into their order. The game is clearly much more interested in these guys than in your original mission, which is established in a couple of bottom-lined backstory paragraphs that once again feature apostrophes; further, the chargen section heavily prompts you to think that the king is kind of a bad dude and you might want to think about other options. And beyond that, it drops heavy hints that these Jedi-ish folks are too cool to get enmeshed in petty mortal struggles anyway, since they’re all about preserving the balance between different realities. So that initial motivation is quickly sapped of urgency; I think the idea is that the desire to go through the monks’ (apparently very long) list of initiations and tests to unlock your new powers will replace it, but without any clear sense of why you want these powers and what you’ll do with them, I found my interest flagged.
The other place where I think the author puts a definite foot wrong is with those romance options. Again, I think it’s fine for them to be stereotypical in order to increase the odds that a player will find at least one appealing. But these bunch often seemed more bland than archetypal to me. Partially this is because most of them don’t really do much; they’re all either fellow initiates or mentors who play some vague role in the tests, so outside of infodumps and light socialization there’s not much for them to do, at least in this opening section of the game. The writing also can be excessively didactic in laying out their personalities:
"You lower your voice. “Is your sole motivation the mission you’ve been denied, or is there something more?”
"A wry smile tugs at his mouth. 'I think my motivation is an alchemist’s mixture of rage, vengeance, and optimism. I’ve been planning my revenge for most of my adult life, but I push myself for bigger reasons than that.'"
(I should note that there are optional graphic sex scenes that are part of the game, if this kind of talk turns you on; I opted into one, largely to have something to do. It seemed fine, though the diffuse nature of my engagement with the characters likewise made the hook-up likewise feel perfunctory).
This is a demo, and given the average length of Choice of Games works I’m guessing there’s a lot more to go, which makes it somewhat unfair to judge the narrative and characters just on this limited slice, I suppose, just as it’s unfair to keep moaning on about how jaded I am about generic fantasy stories. But I do think tightening up these elements would increase the pitch’s appeal, even if it’s not going to hook everyone, and give those of us outside the target audience a little more to enjoy along the way.
Or just add more apostrophes to stuff, everyone likes that!
