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Missed the mark with loads of potential, December 16, 2023 Barcarolle in Yellow is a meta parser, working as an interactive movie script for a pulpy giallo, blurring the lines between reality and movie scenes. You play as B-list probably-washed-out actress Eva Chantry as she gets the call to star in the eponymous movie. With a twist-on-twist-on-twist, the game includes multiple endings (found A, I know of at least 6), in-game hints, and a walkthrough for one ending (A).
This game got me a bit conflicted.
The premise is enticing, the poster is so eye-catching, and the starting scene? an incredible way of hooking players. So darn unique! With the formatting the game introduction and credits, the game seem to play heavily on movie codes. With its whole fake-cult movie vibe, it reminded me a bit of the Goncharov meme. I was really intrigued with what the game had to offer, what meta commentary it might be making about the genre, or how to approach the scene/real-life aspect.
Then I started the game… and the problems followed. During the first proper playable scene, a Spaghetti Western filmed in Spain, events ended up repeating itself when I took off my costume after the shoot ended, with the director screaming CUT again, belittling Eva for screwing with filming.
The following scene is timed, with any wrong move, any missing action, leading you to your early death. I died and restarted the game so many times because of that ONE scene needed a very specific sequence of actions to ward off your stalker. The timing is so tight it barely takes into account failing or asking for hints.
The rest of the game feels pretty railroady, with us/Eva getting few opportunities to have agency. This makes sense, considering she is an actress playing the role given to her, following the directions told. You have some options of choices here and there, which influences the story, but not much more. There is only one path you can take, or you’d lose the game, essentially.
But the game is not always clear about which actions are the wanted ones. It does provide hints, which are formatted like snippets of a movie script, telling the player a general idea of what they should do next (this was so smart!). Sometimes, the necessary (and unusual) action is not included in the hint… making things complicated.
This maybe the most obvious in that first times scene. I had to look the walkthrough up to avoid (finally) dying right at the start. It really takes you out of the immersion the game so craft-fully created in the prior moments. It happens again when shooting the scene on the bridge. The undercluing really messes with playing.
After trying and failing to get through the game… I just opened the walkthrough and followed it to the letter… or tried to. Your hotel in Venice changes name with every playthrough (that was neat), but only one is included there (so I died… again and again, until I realised what was wrong). I would have been nice if the walkthrough included all possible paths instead of just that one ending…
I’m sure someone will end up publishing a comprehensive walkthrough at some point…
The writing goes all-in in the giallo genre, with the depiction of Eva as this seductress woman in her hotel room - the character being overtly sexualised, but also wink-wink hihihi - as well as being the subject of quite a large amount of violence… and not being able to do much about it on or off screen. It’s not really pleasant to go through, honestly, and I am not sure what the point of the game was concerning this.
Was it discussing how movies with shitty budgets have bad production periods where accidents happen but everyone have to deal with it? Is this a commentary on standards in the entertainment industry for actresses, especially in terms of being replaceable when their attractiveness fade? Or about the psychology being having no agency through the frame of an “adventure” game? Is there even a message in all this? Do you need to find all the endings to get the overall picture? (I hope not…)
This game had ticked all the checkboxes for being incredible, but its potential just fell flat with the muddled and sometimes buggy implementation. It has a good solid back bone, and some neat things (the script formatting and custom messages), but it still needs quite a bit of tweaking to make it the cult movie/game it is hoping to be.
Final note: spam Z at the end of the game for bonus features.