Three Rogues Fight Death

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Average Rating: Number of Ratings: 3 Write a review

- Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), June 8, 2022

This game, entered in Ectocomp 2021, is a brief Twine game in which you recreate the Chaucer story The Pardoner's Tale as one of the main characters.

For most of the game you have two choices: follow the story, or go off the rails. Going off the rails generally results in your death. There is no undo, so you'll have to replay, which can be mildly slow due to some timed text but not too bad.

There are three main endings: death, the traditional Chaucer ending, and, the game insinuates, a victorious ending, which I eventually found.

I think the Chaucer original is neat. The gauntlet story structure here was a bit rough, since you saw the same text over and over again and the extra deaths didn't really add much value. It was essentially a 'do you want to continue the story or start over from the beginning?' button.

The layout was a bit hard to read, with some paragraphs being centered and the lower paragraphs being left-justified. Also, the author used a serifed font on a pure-black background, both of which made it harder to read.

There were many stats displayed but they were a bit confusing. At one point I think I had -3 money.

Overall, the strongest points here are the interesting story and the characters.

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Interactive adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale, in which the titular three rogues find treasure then trouble. The 14th Century language has been modernised a fair bit to be understandable to 21st Century folk, but the central moral parable remains. Choices are mainly between sticking with the original text or diverging from it, with divergence usually leading to a swift bad ending. Except, there is a way to subvert the original ending and "win" (as Chaucer turns in his grave). Excellent monochrome woodcut illustrations decorate a well-presented and easy-to-play game, although a more ambitious effort could have included further interesting choices and more branching storylines. The game also tracks five stats at the top of the screen, but they don't seem to be used at all?

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