Pharos Fidelis

This was the second-most substantial game I've played this IFComp, and took me around 3.5 hours to play, with dinner in the middle, so about 2.5-3 hours of playtime.

This is a rich and complex game. Instead of focusing on a multitude of small choices, it has a small set of meaningful choices that shape the later narrative. There's a lot of branches here, leading to 500K words, though much of that is due to minor variations of text; with efficient variable use, it would probably be 200-300K, still very large, but that would also probably make it buggy, so I think the author made a smart move here.

The choices themselves manage to be some of the most difficult ones in my recent gameplaying history. Each one is a compromise, giving something you want and something you don't.

But I guess I should describe the story. For those who aren't aware DemonApologist is a talented author whose works almost exclusively focus on what I might describe as monsteryaoi, where a human engages in a romantic relationship with a being typically depicted as evil or malevolent by others. I've found their past works to be engaging and good with dialogue and emotion, so much so that I have tried to study them as I practice writing romance for commercial fiction.

This game is no exception to the monster-loving pattern; in fact, it's the most well-formed example of it I've played. It also, as I describe earlier, provides an enhanced sense of agency.

Our protagonist is a humble initiate who has been prevented from ascending in the ranks of magicdom due to a cruel and callous advisor who won't let him graduate due to his sympathy towards demons. The advisor even summons demons and has them fight each other to the death to demonstrate how unimportant their lives are. He then gives the initiate an impossible task: to light the Pharos Fidelis, an extremely cursed lighthouse at the center of a magical storm.

He is also explicitly asked not to summon demons, and, if he does, to expect them to kill him.

Our initiate, therefore, takes the most logical action in the moment, which is to summon the hottest demon he knows (the one who was defeated in the earlier duel) and to flirt with him awkwardly.

Fortunately, it works out! Or not. That's where the choices come into play. At critical moments, 'you', the viewpoint character (different form the protagonist), get to influence the demon towards one of two options. Each option comes with one benefit and one drawback. These critical moments stack, producing numerous branching timelines and a ton of different endings.

The game looks great. The UI has little gears that pop open side comments and commentary, and I especially loved the background color change when the big event occurred. That event itself was described quite beautifully.

Perhaps surprisingly, the romance in this game peaks in the middle, not the end, allowing us plenty of time to see what a fully formed relationship might look like. I am reticent to play explicit games, but the game is very tasteful in describing our interactions with the demon and I did not feel distressed.

The game left me with a question in my mind about demon love and the concept of demon apologism in general. What is the essential core and appeal of the demon? Is it to be evil, itself? Or is it to be called evil by others? Would a sainted angel who is angelic in nature but hated by a cruel world still feel like a demon, or is it more important that the demon be ruthless and aggressive in nature and only tamed by the touch of man? If a demon turns out to be a good guy, does that erase his demon nature? If to be a demon is to be evil incarnate, can a demon truly make someone happy, a decidedly non-evil act? If it is not evil incarnate, then what makes a demon? It is a paradox, and not just a fruitless one. A lot of romance and even stories in general pivot on the notion of a 'bad boy/girl' that ends up having a heart of gold and doesn't really do bad boy things at all. This isn't directed to the author, it's just something their game made me think about a lot, because I think it's core to a large swathe of storytelling.

This is one of my favorite games of the comp, which I say having both tested and recently replayed it. The presentation is gorgeous, with the designs and colors of the backgrounds adding to the mood of each scene, evoking a storm-beset sky, light from a distant lighthouse, a closeup of a lighthouse lens, a solar eclipse. The writing is rich and clever, with coinages like “lightmare” and brief poems where clicked-on words transform, “loathsome” for instance becoming “lonesome”.

The setup is a fantastical student/master conflict, a sorcerer-in-training forced to study under a proud, power-hungry teacher who insists that his way is the only way, dismissing the student’s ideas out of hand. Raekard, the master, views the demons they’re capable of summoning as tools rather than people, deserving only of subjection and control. Finnit, the student, refuses to participate in a system that he recognizes as cruel, seeing these supernatural entities as fellow sapient beings. The tension of these competing viewpoints is brought to a head when Raekard demands that Finnit complete a seemingly-impossible trial at a cursed lighthouse (the titular Pharos Fidelis); faced with this challenge, Finnit turns to a demon for help, putting both of their beliefs to the test.

While Vosphar, the demon Finnit calls upon, does have the potential to be dangerous, he comes across as the more vulnerable party of the two, having been previously used by Raekard as a demonstration of the complete control sorcerers are capable of exercising. Finnit’s treatment of him is a complete contrast, and results in him choosing to trust in Finnit’s good intentions: “The master summoner’s circle had felt like a steel clawed hand grasping his heart and shredding him through the fabric of reality itself. This summoner’s circle felt like fingers too soft to even grip his tattered sleeves.” As the two settle in to working together, Vosaphar provides a new perspective on everything around them. He’s able to communicate with the strange, seemingly-menacing creature that lingers around the lighthouse, revealing that she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he sees the beauty of the place where they’ve found themselves rather than viewing it as an obstacle to be overcome:

Grim though Finnit alleged the environment to be, the devil found it much more inviting than the calciferous wastes. It was full of energy. Full of life. The wind was ferocious, sending his dark hair aflutter. Torrents rushed around him, forming and reforming in ceaseless rhythm. Filaments of lightning painted the sky in dazzling colors. It was astonishing to witness.

If this was—as Finnit insisted—the result of a curse, Vosaphar wondered why anyone would want to end it.

These themes are mirrored in the history of the Pharos Fidelis, whose backstory unfolds over the course of the work; it’s a layered narrative, with historical records interspersed with the present-day story. In a site of every-stormy seas, the original inhabitants found a peaceful way to live, having “fine-tuned their relationship with the island to keep things running”. “Relationship” is the key word here; these residents worked with, rather than against, their environment. But then empire arrived and did what empire does, dominating, subjugating, and killing. When the lighthouse, a marvel of engineering, was finished, it only continued the pattern: “It drank and drank the soul of the sky, but its thirst never sated. It found other souls to imbibe, betraying enough light to pierce the mantle of misery it maintained. Commerce resumed.”

Finnit and Vosaphar bond as they investigate the present state of the lighthouse and study its history; the historical documents are presented with both Raekard’s annotations and Finnit and Vosphar’s commentary, with the latter demonstrating the rapport between them and showing the development of their relationship. There are other lovely, understated moments, like this one where Finnit turns Vosaphar’s frequent address of “[adjective] one” back on him:

“I should look at your shoulders,” the devil said.

“Later?” Finnit turned over on his bedroll. “It’s not that bad. I appreciate the thought,” he mumbled. “You’re sweet. Sweet one.”

Vosaphar stared into the crimson flames for a long while after that.

Raekard insists that demons are evil; that overpowering them and using them as killing machines is perfectly appropriate because, he claims, they are inherently monstrous. But as we witness Raekard’s viewpoints versus Vosaphar’s reality, and the full history of this place, we have to ask who the real monsters are here. The records relating to the Pharos Fidelis reveal a history of human atrocities: a werewolf is listed as a “proscribed entity” that’s been “lawfully destroyed by hunters”; demons were summoned solely to be burned on the pre-lighthouse pyre (to which Raekard’s only comment is, “A senseless waste of ritual components”). And in the earliest recorded history, we see the seeds of all this, when an outsider who sought to understand the islands’ inhabitants rather than conquer them is put on trial:

JUSTICIAR:
At what point did you realize this entity was a vampire?

ACCUSED:
Not until after, when…

JUSTICIAR:
When what?

ACCUSED:
When you killed her. Robbed us of her wisdom, kindness, perspective, heart, all she contributed to her community. And for what? Some ash? Dust? Is there not already enough collecting between the folds of your ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆?

JUSTICIAR:
Cleric, strike that last term for obscenity.

ACCUSED:
What, you’re more scandalized by me describing your dust-crusted ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆ than your violence?

Finnit and Vosaphar’s relationship shows the transformative power of approaching the Other with kindness rather than aggression. Early on, we learn of Vosaphar’s wounds, for which Raekard is to blame: “They had become so central to his existence, for so long, that they had infested his identity.” But later, this changes as a result of his bond with Finnit. “His slash wounds scabbed over more readily, healing further with each attempt. […] From his back spread wings wrought of fire, eldritch blue roiled with red and magenta—the colors of Finnit’s own magic, now intertwined with Vosaphar’s.” In the end, the two discover the secret that let the indigenous residents live peacefully in this fraught environment, which results in a shattering of the cursed lens, destroying the symbol of subjugation and colonial power.

I mentioned earlier that this is a layered narrative, and there’s a final layer that I haven’t addressed yet. The story is told in third-person, with moments where the player can choose between two impulses for Vosaphar to heed. It’s a different way for the player to shape the story than the typical IF approach where you’re playing as one of the characters, but it doesn’t feel jarring or out of place. (Spoiler - click to show)But then hints creep in that something more is going on, until a moment that was literally jaw-dropping for me, where it’s revealed that we the player actually have been a character in the story all along—one who is entwined with the Pharos Fidelis, with Vosaphar, and with Finnit, and has been watching and shaping the events for our own purposes. But in contrast to the Raekardian approach, we’re only able to exercise influence, not control, and there’s even a point where Vosaphar may reject your choice and make his own decision.

At the story’s end, the choices you’ve made are summarized in a way that makes it clear which ones took you away from the ideal path, and you have a chance to change any you’d like so that you can reach the best/most satisfying ending. But there’s value in seeing the worse outcomes; the choices play off each other in different ways to make quite a few ending variations. It’s a very rich work, as evidenced by the length of this review. The whole thing rings with resonance for our present moment. As those in power cast marginalized groups as dangerous Others who don’t deserve basic rights, we always have a choice of whether to fall in line with this ideology or to resist it.

this is another ifcomp game that's a little outside my usual range. i tend to like games with high player agency, where i really feel like im creating my own version of the story (i would be such a choice of games girlie if those games didn't all cost money 🥲). but i love love love queer fantasy and games with romance elements, so i gave this a shot.

this game does have meaningful choices, but they're subtle and infrequent. the third person pov contributes to the feeling that you're not really controlling or being any character in this story; you are watching the story play out and occasionally you can give one of the characters a nudge in some direction.

but the writing is very strong, with compelling characters, and the romance was lovely, so i enjoyed the game a lot. i think many queer people can relate to the idea of sympathizing with what we're told by society is "monstrous", being drawn to a group of people treated as a dangerous other, wanting stuff that we're told will destroy the fabric of society if we allow ourselves to indulge in it, etc., and those experiences are reflected in the mc's interactions with demons as a class and with the love interest in particular (with the mc's academic advisor in the role of representing societal queerphobia).

i also appreciate the tasteful sensuality. explicit content is valid and i support it existing and being allowed on any and every platform, but i am personally not that into it, and this game was at a good level for me in that regard.