Radio liberté - prologue

by Intory Creative

Episode Prologue of La Guerre des Ondes
2024
Humor
moiki

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Review

Pirate Radio shenanigans, March 9, 2024
Related reviews: French, Concours FI

Radio liberté is a short fairly linear Moiki game, part of a series, set in the future where (I think) France may have conquered the world… or at least space. To the dismay of the government, who tries with great difficulty to shut it down, a pirate radio broadcast less-than-rosy news and support for striking workers. In this setting, you play as Hego, an electronic repariman who hates his job and his “tyrannical” boss*, and dreams of being a radio celebrity. You’d leave everything behind if you had the opportunity.
*lol on his name

In this setting, the prose is fairly light-hearted, with the occasional sarcastic comment in that French humour kind of way. There are many references in the text and options, like Jupiter Inter being the futurist counterpart of France Inter, a radio channel. The main reference of the game (and the series at large) is about freedom of broadcasting, which was a political fight in France in the late 70s-early 80s, with the broadcasting monopole being abolished with President Mitterrand.

Anyway, your world turns upside-down when you either decode the strange message coming from your radio from the start or after meeting your favourite radio celebrity - the first choice affect which path you take, but the branches meet back at one same point. That choice, however, ends up being the only meaningful one of the story. While you have other “choices” down the line, they end up being either false choices (just there for variation/move the story along) or forcing you to re-do the choice again until you pick the correct option.

With the entry being a prologue to a supposedly much larger series, it makes sense that the story with little deviation to the main path, as you will need continuity with the following parts of the series. But it would have been nice to maybe have some alternative paths, maybe towards non-canon endings, or making some actions feel like they have more impact.

I’d be interested to see how Hego gets out of the situation he’s currently in.

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