Alltarach

(This is a game with a narrative that unfolds in layers, and as a result it’s hard to talk about without engaging with some elements that seem to be meant as surprises; unmarked spoilers ahoy!)

Alltarach is an impressive Twine game that does a whole lot of things very well. The setting is perhaps the most unique element: its take on Dark Ages Ireland engages with the displacement of druidic paganism by Christianity, while taking each side of the struggle seriously and leaving more than enough room for fantasy. There’s also a large cast of appealing characters, each with their own role to play in a complex society but also boasting enough personality to feel like real people. There’s moody art, evocative writing incorporating lots of Irish, strong pacing, and a really well-done climax that introduces a satisfying twist to everything that’s come before and allows your choices to have a significant impact on the story’s resolution (or at least, it really feels like it does – the game autosaves, so no going back to check – but isn’t that all that matters?) As a result, I really really liked it!

I didn’t love it, though, so this is review is going to be one of those unsatisfying ones where I pick at a game I thought was very good and try to determine why I didn’t think it was great. Given that the word-count is going to be disproportionately devoted to nit-picking, let me emphasize that the above paragraph is not just me doing a bit; this is legit a really strong, enjoyable game, and I hope it gets the audience it deserves. And I suspect some of my reaction is down to matters of idiosyncratic preference – I was really digging the grounded historicism of the first section of the game, for example, and found myself slightly disappointed when the fantasy elements came to the fore; other players might find their reactions to that flipped.

Sticking with that shift, though, I don’t think my negative reaction is wholly down to a matter of taste. For one thing, it happens fairly abruptly and without much foreshadowing in the game’s first act, in which the game’s protagonist, an orphaned teenager living on a tiny fishing-dependent island, realizes that her brother has abandoned her and makes grounded preparations to voyage to the mainland and track him down. There are other youths with whom she shares a history (and maybe a flirtation or two), scant possessions to gather, a prized sheep to make arrangements for, and a colloquy with a priest that establishes some of the axes of conflict in this alien world. It’s an effective prologue, so I was taken aback when some mid-journey dialogue established that the brother was under an apparently-effective magical geas preventing him from setting foot on Ireland proper – and then even more taken aback when almost the first person I met upon arrival was the god of the dead himself. True, he’s come down in the world quite a lot what with the rise of Christianity, but still, this felt like a major escalation without much buildup.

Beyond this matter of craft, the density of supernatural people and occurrences – seriously, you wind up meeting at least one major figure from Irish folklore a day – seems sufficiently high that it calls into question the success Saint Patrick appears to have had; there’s no indication that the protagonist is at all special in terms of attracting more supernatural attention than normal (if anything, as a Christian herself, she might be getting less?) but surely the living presence of the old gods would inhibit the adoption of a new one? What’s even more challenging to the story’s integrity is that the player doesn’t get a sense of how this impacts the protagonist’s beliefs: her faith is established as perhaps a bit flexible in that opening act, as much born out of adherence to her dead parents’ wishes as sincere personal engagement with Christianity. But at least in my playthrough, none of the things she experiences causes her to question her allegiance.

Some of this may be due to the authors’ reluctance to characterize the main character and therefore make it harder for players to project themselves into her, I suppose. But I’m not a big fan of that approach to player characters in general, and it seems especially ill-suited for this story, which is no generic quest narrative. And it’s not just the question of religion: the protagonist often felt like a cipher to me. It wasn’t until a throwaway comment in the ending sequence that I realized that she was meant to be deathly afraid of the sea since her parents were killed while sailing during a storm; that hadn’t come through at all during the extended voyage sequence. I also hit a moment in my playthrough where during a conversation with a nun, she was struck by the twin revelations that a) lesbianism existed and b) she was probably one – but as far as I can tell this is never mentioned again.

That’s not the only thing that falls by the wayside as the game progresses. Much of the well-drawn supporting cast largely exits the narrative halfway through, and while there are newcomers who are no less interesting, I have to confess this reduced my engagement. There’s also an inventory system that feels like it has real weight early on – this is a society where most people have very few possessions – but that likewise didn’t seem to have any impact after reaching the convent.

The final thing that kept me at arm’s length was the occasional inscrutability of the game’s prose. I’m fine with confusing writing when it sets a mood or serves a purpose – I will never shut up about how much I love Queenlash – but I sometimes found myself baffled by unclear pronoun referents or glancing references that I think I was supposed to get. Here’s a bit where the protagonist is reflecting on her brother’s flight:

"The suggestion of the mainland comes to you again. Men in golden chariots, wheeling around bellowing dreadful cries of vengeance, the great brown bull loose amongst them. But also culture, indigenous and Roman, hiding in their fortresses and churchyards. He wouldn’t fit in there, but nor would he much care. Stubborn, like yourself."

The game doesn’t provide any clues I found to decode that second sentence, and I really can’t parse the third at all. Or later:

"When the sailors are red-faced and tired enough and the hooker swaying with the weight of her cargo, the captain, a big, weatherbeaten man who looks half-squid, barks an “all aboard” and stares down at the druidess."

I guess the hooker is the boat, but it seems like there’s a tense change happening somewhere in the middle? This isn’t a matter of the occasional typo, I don’t think; just an element of the writing style that I think adds enough friction to exacerbate some of the other things that occasionally took me out of the story.

That’s a lot of critique, so let me toggle back now and wrap up with some praise, because I really did want to be beguiled by this story, and sometimes was, especially in that first section which I think is the strongest. Here’s one of the first descriptions, of your tiny little hovel:

"You stumble into the kitchen area. Like the rest of the little cottage, the walls are bare stone, unpainted and unornamented, and in the centre is the hearth where last night’s sad embers, smoored with ash, struggle on. You look away reflexively, flushed with the shame of knowing that it’s not the same fire that Mam had tended every night since she moved to the island; you had let it die, not long after it happened, and for a long time you lay barely sleeping with him in a hollowed home, damp and dark, wind groaning through every crack. Now you keep it diligently, even though it still feels like someone else’s responsibility."

That’s a great, grounded way of showing the impact of grief with some efficient world-building on the side.

And I really did like many of the characters – I’m not surprised everyone seems to have a crush on Ailbhe – and some of the creative worldbuilding touches – it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that Brigid wasn’t just the goddess, but somehow was also the saint of the same name, which is really cleverly done. Again, a lot of the ingredients here are excellent; there’s something about the recipe that didn’t fully click for me, but I do appreciate the care that went into making it.

Alltarach is a pretty large Twine game centred around Irish folklore and set in the early Middle Ages. Through a character study of your young protagonist Bríd, we get a taste of what might have been 6th century Ireland, its culture and customs. Between grieving lost parents, worrying about the disappearance of her brother, and navigating new land, we are taken in a coming-of-age adventure, where crude realities and disillusion slowly replace naiveté and childishness, as you uncover secrets and confront your beliefs.

The presentation of the game is really neat, with beautiful illustrations, reminiscent of children's books, incredible enticing prose and very helpful tooltips to translate/put into context local terms. As an interactive novel, it is a very interesting piece (and SURPRISINGLY LONG!).

But between the long pages filled with paragraphs, I felt like something was missing. Though it is interactive (you have plenty to ask and explore), it didn't always feel like my action truly mattered at the end, choices being there for the sake of helping the player getting a clearer picture of who the character is, rather than having true consequences on the story.
Even the final choice was not my (as Bríd) doing at all! But of another, who's characterisation is even more muddled and confusing than the main character. That was a bit frustrating.

And yet, I liked it. It had an unusual setting, really good pacing, and interesting takes. It's just missing that little something that would make it incredible.
Had this been a book, I'd have devoured it in one sitting.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/9/24
Playtime: 2hrs

It is rare for me to see the ‘Interactive’ and ‘Fiction’ aspects of a work as truly separate things. Sure, I sometimes lean on those aspects when writing about IF works because its honestly pretty convenient, but the alchemy is how they come together to form a new, more interesting thing. I mean, isn’t that why we’re here? Fiction without interactivity is a story. Interactivity without fiction is a parlor game. There is always an implicit question about the combo, ‘what does interactivity bring to the table v like, just reading a book?’ (That is somehow a more interesting question than ‘what if bingo had a character arc???’)

I’m not an academic, and there’s probably much better thought out constructs than whatever I’m about to type next but let me try to call out some explicit things interactivity can bring to a narrative.

- collaborative character building through choice architecture and prioritization, more strongly investing the reader in a protagonist
- narrative pacing for dramatic effect
- dynamic graphical flourishes to enhance specific moments
- collaborative plot development, letting reader input influence events; at its most pronounced resulting in multiple, orthogonal stories (all of which provisioned by the author in some way)

There is a temptation to categorize based on the latter. Is it a linear story enhanced by Interactivity? A pass/fail narrative of puzzle solving? A full branching narrative of ever-richer complexity and text volume only the minority of which is presented in any one playthrough? None of these are inherently better than any other, just different aims.

I’ve spent a lot of time on this explication, while nominally discussing Alltarach (seems I gotta get there sooner or later). I’ve done that because this is the first work I concluded the interactivity might have detracted (though not completely!) from the experience. So, let’s surgeon scalpel this thing and talk story first.

This is a deeply accomplished story with a compelling central conceit: that Irish Myth and Christianity (specifically its lore) coexist on equal footing with each other. That Cu Chulainn and Saint Patrick are basically peers, and exist and influence mortal affairs in qualitatively similar pro-active ways. What an amazingly subversive and challenging premise! I honestly gasped when I realized what it was about. It takes the trappings of Mythic lore and applies them to a time of growing Christian influence in a Battle of the Gods. CHRISTIANITY IS EXACTLY AS TRUE AS MYTH. Whooo, swinging for the bleachers! I love the unrestrained chutzpah of it! It does make for some really shocking and strange juxtapositions, like when Christianity (as the newcomer) is positioned as the more liberal, accepting strain of belief. I didn’t read that as a fault though, more as a bold-faced CHALLENGE. It is a gutsy, supercharged take of pure audacity and I love it for that.

And it is EARNED. Thanks to a detailed bibliography, its mythic trappings are comprehensive and well thought out, employed progressively through a story of escalating scope. The text veritably oozes with Irish authenticity. Literally so, if you read the copious footnote bubbles as pushing through the story, so dense that the story cannot keep them contained. Between the richness of the tone, its authentic patina and pure audacity, it is easy to be swept along by this tale and I was.

So let’s talk about that tale: a sister searching for a lost brother and uncovering mythic truths and family secrets. The brother is portrayed as a stoic but compelling mystery, the protagonist as detached and a bit helpless, and both grow and change throughout the story. They are mostly up to the task of navigating this deeply compelling world, but for different reasons can’t help but pale a bit next to it. The WAY they pale though, almost always devolves to the way interactivity is employed.

Let’s start with the protagonist. She is our main interactive avatar for most of the story. We set her priorities in how we pursue the investigation. We set her character in how we choose to interact with other characters. We collaboratively build and invest in her… to a point. The story is often good at integrating our input, but significantly also often whiffs on it. In my play, there was a local boy of repellent ego who I rejected at every turn. Nevertheless, the story insisted on a path I had avoided. Similarly, another boy I flirted with amounted to nothing. Choices I had intended to be mild reproach turned into bitter, over-emotive outbursts. Discussion topics I prioritized according to an inner character priority read out of order, emotionally. It all had a distancing effect where my Brid was at war with the piece’s Brid.

Similarly the brother. While I liked the graphical cues when the narrative shifted to his perspective, his interactions struck me as distinctly different than his early characterization. I could rationalize early scenes, where he was alone and presumably we were seeing an inner life he shields from others. But when reunited, if anything, he gets MORE emo and expressive, as presented in dialogue choices I might select. Okay, that was a bit glib. Admittedly he was going through some stuff. Even so, the contrast to his early characterization (unremarked upon by our protagonist!) was jarring. The cumulative effect of both of those things was characters at war with the narrative because of interactivity.

Perhaps its biggest deflation was in plot influence. The climax is structured as a conversation between the siblings to decide the results of the quest. Interestingly, the player gets to cycle between them, taking both sides of the dialogue. I liked this in concept. On the sister’s side I felt this was reasonably well implemented, and fit a dialogue-based game paradigm of ‘can I convince him through topic selection?’ The other side though, felt kind of all over the place - inconsistent characterization, uncanny and incomplete response availability and ultimately a BIG DECISION. My problem was, until the end none of it felt strictly under my control despite my nominal driving, to the point the final real choice felt untethered. Because I could form no coherent character in my head, I actually had no idea what me-as-brother would do, or even why those choices were available at that specific point. So I cheated, and chose what the sister wanted (she earned it!). And didn’t feel great about it.

To walk back some negativity, let me say other aspects of interactivity - graphic flourishes and text pacing - were done very well, and to advantage. In particular the POV cues in color and font were really nicely rendered.

So where does that leave me? A piece whose setup and background are top tier that I can’t express enough admiration for. Whose employment of Irish Myth was entrancing. Whose take on Christianity was confrontive and challenging. Whose language and narrative are superb. And that only fell down when it let ME get involved. So, who’s the problem here?

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Mythic
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would marvel that I had anything this transgressive and marvelous in me. Then I would, with great regret, excise the brother’s side of interactivity and focus on sharpening the sister’s choices, responses and climactic gameplay. Because y’know, SAYING I’d do that is just super easy.

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

Alltarach is a well-polished Twine game that tells the tale of a young woman whose only close family member, a brother, has left their island home to travel to the mainland of Ireland.

This young woman has to travel to chase after him and find out why he left. Along the way, she meets a variety of pagan and Christian Irish folk and a number of mythological figures.

The story feels like a modern translation of the Odyssey or Iliad, where gods can appear to mortals but some see them as just people while others get a hint of the truth. It also (for obvious reasons) reminded me in a good way of a book of Irish legends I read in college; I really enjoyed the myths about Cuchulain (sp?) and was excited to see him reappear here.

The game features numerous words from the Irish language and has a handy pronunciation/translation mouseover for each. I've learned many languages in my life, but the first I ever tried to learn was Irish; I bought books for it, but unfortunately I remember nothing (except little tidbits that I've butchered like 'Is mise Sean o Brian' or 'Ta me i mo chonai i uimhir tri sraid bhor, arasan a do'). So it was fun to see that here.

The story had a lot of humanity. It felt gritty/grimy, like it would have a grey filter if filmed for TV. The art contributed to the overall feel. A world of grim beauty undercut by humor.

I didn't like the prolifity of the F-word, featured frequently on many pages. It may very well be historically accurate and fits the personalities of the characters, yet I didn't like it personally. Everyone has their own taste; to me its like raw red onions are to Scott Conant.

Overall, great production, fun game, nice art.