Rescue at Quickenheath

I hope nobody reading my reviews is under the misapprehension that I ever strive for, much less achieve, objectivity, but I figure it’s probably worth acknowledging when I’m coming to a game with an especially large bias: I am a complete sucker for 18th Century stuff, and this game’s Blurb With Frequently Capitalized Words, use of “&c.” for etc., and broadsheet-style fonts are speaking one of my love languages. Now, this can sometimes be a double-edged sword, because it means I started playing with high expectations and a nagging dread that they might be dashed. Happily, that is not at all the case, so much so that I’m quite sure Rescue at Quickenheath will delight even those benighted souls who don’t have strong feelings about perukes, coffee-shops, and Tristram Shandy.

Admittedly, part of what makes the game work is that it doesn’t wear its setting too heavily; this is a fantasy-tinged take on Georgian London where the fae have an embassy, for one thing, and the author’s note disclaims any pretense of historical realism. Still, there are enough authentic touches to lend some nice flavor, from the sensationalized news coverage that relates the backstory (you’re a highwayman whose partner in crime has been nabbed and is slated for execution in a few hours – thus the need for the eponymous rescue) to the acknowledgment that the execution really should be happening at Tyburn Cross rather than the titular Quickenheath. The language also strikes a solid middle-ground; the prose eschews complex18th-Century sentence structure in the interests of readability and pacing, but the entertainingly flippant narration still seems a fit for the story, like this description of a prison:

"In all your years of highway robbery, you’ve never been captured or arrested, so this delightful little escapade marks your first view of the inside of a prison. You can’t say you think much of it. It’s a little bit damp, and not even with the poetic, angst-ridden kind of damp, merely the boring kind."

(OK, that dig at poets is maybe aimed more at the Romantic era, but it still works).

The characters are likewise relatable without feeling like they’re jarring with the setting, albeit it helps that the only ones who are fleshed out are the main duo of outside-of-society criminals and a number of faeries. These latter don’t have the alien, cruel bent that characterizes the oldest fairy stories, but they are an appealing bunch nonetheless – my favorite was a bewhiskered fairy who responded to my overly-audacious plots with a litany of “don’t say that!”s and “dreadful, dreadful.”

The gameplay also takes a middle course. While Rescue at Quickenheath isn’t a full parser-like choice game, for the first two-thirds of the story can you can freely navigate between different locations, and there are puzzles to be solved – a couple inventory puzzles, a riddle or two, a hidden password… The game does a good job of implying that there are high stakes for getting these right, though after having failed a couple, I think this is something of a bluff, and even if you fail fate will contrive to keep you on course – which is appropriate to the game’s easygoing vibe.

Do I have some quibbles? Of course I do! There were a few times where I wished the game did take its own conceits a little more seriously –in particular, there’s one moment towards the end that seems to undermine a key plot element having to do with your unfortunate partner (Spoiler - click to show)( (after having made such a big deal of True Names, surely it’s not great that you blab out their new True Name in the middle of a hostile crowd?). And since much of the real drama of the game turns on the two main characters working up the gumption to reveal their feelings for each other, I felt the lack of any real barriers that would have prevented them from doing so earlier.

There are minor, minor complaints, though, ones that I noted in passing out of a sense of intellectual rigor, but which did nothing to reduce my enjoyment of the game. Rescue at Quickenheath is a pure romp, accessible while remaining true to its inspirations. And hey, it might even work as a gateway drug for people who are 18th-Century curious…

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/2/24
Playtime: 45min

We’ve been using ‘Interactive Fiction’ as synonym for ‘text-based game’ for so long, it’s like repeating a word rapidly until it loses all meaning. Hey, there’s a term for that! Semantic Satiation - a term that probably requires less reps than most for its meaning to dissolve. Anywho, we’ve been doing it to IF for so long we lose track of full meaning of ‘Interactive’ ‘Fiction.’ Thanks Quickenheath for the reminder!

It has been a while since I’ve seen a work this gamey land this far on the ‘fiction’ side of the spectrum, longer for one this accomplished at its mission. Yes, there are IF trope aspects of searching locations, collecting inventory, solving password and poetry clue-based puzzles, but they all spring from narrative so organically that they don’t feel like puzzles. More like the natural flow of events we’re just swimming along with. I don’t mean to imply it is on rails, its mostly not. I mean the world building, character motivations, important artifacts and events are all painted so crisply and clearly that the story itself makes it clear where we need to be with barely any artificial nudging or narrative-killing false paths.

It is a rogue’s love story of adventure, rescue and hidden legacy. Crucially, the non-daring-do aspects are given more weight, making for a reasonably fresh take on the genre. And by “fresh take” I mean “showing my whole @$$ with ignorance of romantic literature”. The story itself sells its earnest emotionality with matter-of-fact prose that conveys the sweet emotions without becoming cloying. The world building is precise: just enough to intrigue and bring wonder, and crucially fuel the plot, not too much to overwhelm or generate unanswerable questions. If I had a plot quibble, it is the love interest’s revealed identity. Isn’t it wild enough that they are (Spoiler - click to show)a fairy? Did they need to be a (Spoiler - click to show)fairy PRINCE(SS)? But y’know what? Those kinds of things are pretty de rigeur for this kind of narrative. The ultimate climax was still a natural, satisfying product of the entire plot, made more vivid through interactivity.

A lot of that credit goes to the narrative, but the presentation and technical choices are doing a lot of work here too. The different font work, use of color and layout, are all just to the perfect side of the ‘evocative-intrusive’ line. Most especially effective are the aside-links, that provide flashback details when clicked, and even more the links that cycle words and phrases on the page. Those latter so crisply evoke a character struggling with a concept or idea by testing phrasings and leverage IF’s strengths to do so more effectively than static media. Really, the whole package does that - combines interactive flourishes and techniques to perfectly enhance a narrative that deftly enables their employment.

Viva Valentine and Aubrey! Viva la narrative! Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva Viva viva viva viva

See? Semantic Satiation. It’s a thing.

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Fairy (ah? ah?) Tale
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, honestly not sure I would feel compelled to do anything here. It’s perfectly coherent in form and function. Get onto that next project, author!

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

This game hooked me with the premise and vibes on the Spring Thing page, and it definitely delivered! I was drawn in right away by the lovely presentation, with a fun old-fashioned font for the title screen and pleasant spring-like colors. (The UI is well done throughout, with in-game documents set off with different fonts/colors.) The beginning clearly establishes the PC’s goal, and then it’s up to you to get to work accomplishing it!

This is a Twine game with a world model, so there are various locations you can visit and items you can try using in different situations. I enjoyed the puzzlely elements, which were simple enough that they didn’t slow down the story’s momentum. The game also balanced imbuing the choices with a sense of stakes (at one point I certainly thought I’d messed up and was in for a “game over”!) and leaving room for experimentation. The worldbuilding was fun (especially the details of the fae embassy), and the writing suits the PC in a way that often made me smile—e.g., “Your heart lifts at the sound, like a string of pearls from around a rich person’s neck.” It’s altogether a very polished work.

A personal quibble is the selectable gender (of both the PC and the LI). I'd assumed based on the characters' names and the LGBT tag that they were both women, and "lady thieves" seemed like a very fun premise, a la Lady Thalia, so I was disappointed to find that their genders were blank slates. In cases like this, where gender is the only facet of the character the player gets to choose and where it has no effect on the game beyond what pronouns and labels get used in the text, I’d always prefer to have characters that the author wrote with pre-established genders (or lack thereof) in mind, because those characters tend to feel more real to me.

On to some more mechanical things, in the latter half of the game, once you’ve (Spoiler - click to show)entered Fairy, there's much less autonomy in where to go or what approach to take, so it felt much more on rails. I also found it odd that the game didn’t acknowledge some of the information the PC (Kit) finds—(Spoiler - click to show)when you read Aubrey’s journal she all but says that she’s in love with Kit, but Kit doesn't react or acknowledge that in any way. Same with the letter to Aubrey that starts “Dear Sister”—despite this clear indication, Kit doesn't seem to know that the letter-writer is Aubrey’s sibling. Finally, I would have liked to learn more about Kit’s backstory and motivations, as they remained largely a mystery throughout, and as mentioned above I always love a richly detailed character!

A swashbuckling tale of adventures and embassies led by two intrepid highway robbers deeply in love with each other, Rescue at Quickenheath is a thrilling Twine game with rich worldbuilding and memorable interactions.

You are Valentine and your mission is to save your beloved Aubrey from execution. But first, the game asks you for your gender and then for your love interest's. I find the idea of "be gay, do crimes" appealing, so I made them a nonbinary x lesbian couple. With that out of the way, my player character arrives in Quickenheath ready to save their loved one.

The game feels like it has a big world, even though in retrospect the game is quite linear. It accomplishes this by having a few places to go that open up to newer places after completing a few puzzles. Progression feels great and you get more and more juicy worldbuilding details. By the time I finally got to the infodumps, I was already engaged with the world, so I was happy to learn more about the inner politics of fairies and humans.

There are a few contrived scenes that exist to keep the game moving, and I kinda like it. The fairy embassy scene (Spoiler - click to show)where the ambassador decides to give you access to the fairy world is an obvious example and the game seems to recognize that, but I didn't mind it as much as I would've thought. This scene, while inelegant, makes sure the player keeps engaged with the drama of the story, and I believe that a few scenes that don't make much realistic sense is better than many dull scenes to make it work in a story like this. I'm glad that the author understands pacing so well and I think it adds to the atmosphere of an adventure-romance game.

The puzzles are a bit silly, but they are inoffensive and short enough that they are fine. The game will give you solutions if you mess them up too much anyway. And the Twine styling, while simple, is effective and easy to read. The fonts are easy to read on my phone at night and I just found it a breezy game to play.

Rescue at Quickenheath is the kind of game I'd be happy to recommend to newcomers of interactive fiction. It has enough drama, comedy, complexity, and most importantly gay shit that it can be a crowdpleaser. I personally want to see more gay interactions in this game, and that is always a sign of a good game.

I wanted to show my boyf a recent IF game since he’s played parsers ages ago but wanted to get back into the swing of it. When polling for reccs in my IF communities, this got recommended a few times, and it seemed up our alley, so we tried it out. We alternated reading passages and voiced different characters, which was fun (he was Aubrey, I was Kit).

It’s a very charming game, with a lot of genre notes that I love (faerie stuff, historicalish setting, breaking the law, queerness) that are well written and fun. I felt like all combinations of choices were weaved in organically, and while we got most of the puzzles right, I liked that it was forgiving when we got the Queen’s riddle horribly wrong and turned into a fish…put a pin in that.

I also continually marvel at how games pull off romance plots, not because I think it’s impossible, but because I am abjectly terrible at writing romance. I really enjoyed the sweet dynamic between Kit and Aubrey. I also appreciated that I could see that Aubrey is a fae from like forty million miles away but even though Kit was completely oblivious, the “mystery” was cleared up incredibly quickly so I didn’t have to groan about Kit being so slow on the uptake for long. Overall, I left the game really enjoying the experience.

Now, take that aforementioned pin and read what I actually wanted to talk about.

**Illusion-ruining and/or Experience-enhancing game design spoilers**
(Spoiler - click to show)
When we talked about this game at the little IF book club I’m in, it was a conversation of compliments. Then someone pointed out something I hadn’t realized playing it the first time: at least some of the puzzles in the game don’t actually affect the outcome of the plot.

I got turned into a fish in one run, and the whiskered fae saved me. In this run, the whiskered fae saved me from the frog faeries. You can get the password for the warden egregiously wrong until he just tells you the answer. If you get Aubrey’s True Name wrong, they turn into a Fae anyway.

I can’t say if all the puzzles are so forgiving, such as getting lost in the caverns with the chaperone or the maze or being chased by the Wild Hunt – I couldn’t bear to get those wrong even when I replayed – but a lot of the ones that seemed most critical to get right still looped you back to the same track, usually within a few passages.

We had a lengthy discussion about this. At first I was very resistant to the idea that these were puzzles if they didn’t actually affect the plot of the game, and had a negative reaction to their advertisement as puzzles. I am someone who’s VERY invested in the thematic and narrative purpose of puzzles, having made an entire presentation on it, and I was confused about why it didn’t seem to “matter”. In my presentation, I posit that puzzles need to have different outcomes based on different attempted solutions. There has to be at least one answer that gives a different outcome than another answer, usually wrong vs right. If the puzzle gives you the same outcome no matter what, it’s not a puzzle, but possibly an instance of a ludonarrative structure that represents inevitability or lack of agency or some other theme.

But then after other people’s points were made about Rescue, I have come to this expanded understanding:

The game does give you a different outcome if you’re wrong vs if you’re right, and after replay, I realized it is a deceptively linear game – there is actually far more branching than is obvious from one playthrough. While it doesn’t affect the plot as a whole, insomuch as most of the same key conversations and scenes occur, and you still save Aubrey/Aubrey saves you by turning into a Fae at the end, your experience is different, as a player.

An experience where Kit has to survive being chased after by the Wild Hunt and turned into a fish and get the True Name wrong is different from the one where they nearly fall asleep with a boring chaperone and eat Faerie food for too long and get the True Name right. That experience matters just as much for games as different endings do, it just isn’t so obvious. Sure the branch quickly bottlenecks back to the main plot, but the branch is there for a qualitative reason.

It also reminds me of a talk that Ian Michael Waddell gave at Narrascope 2019, about how games kind of suck at the concept of failure. In real life, when you fail, it’s often a learning experience, and you have to deal with the failure but move forward. Meawhile in most games, when you fail, it’s a blocking and often punishing experience – lose progress, lose a life, lose time, get a worse ending than if you were smart, or simply sit there banging your head against the obstacle until you solve or beat it. This game feels like it moves past that sort of dynamic (the way that IMW was advocating for) elegantly.

Lastly, if I do end up pushing the puzzles through my lens of thematic puzzles or through ludonarrative mechanics or whatever such framework that analyzes the themes inherent in the design…I think i could argue the theme is “the power of love overcomes all obstacles”. That’s a pretty cool way to weave the theme of love into a romance game!

Overall, I left the game really enjoying the experience in the end, even after all the twists and turns it took to get there. Very fitting for this game in particular, I think ;)