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Review
i don't play a lot of parser games but i was drawn to this game by the fun title and implications of a detailed fantasy setting, which is something i always love.
it turned out to be very friendly to someone like me. if you have to use a verb the game will pretty much tell you what it is. there are large sections that are basically cyoa except that you have to type "choose (whatever)" instead of clicking. so while i am a little scared of parser games, this felt not very parser game like and didn't intimidate me. there are four different sections with four different gameplay mechanics and they were all easy to pick up.
otherwise i admit i did not really vibe with this game. im all about worldbuilding and interesting characters really, and i guess this kind of thing was not the point. there were a lot of intriguing details of the world, but they were not explored in depth, and i had some trouble figuring out what kind of setting it was even supposed to be. it felt like high fantasy mostly, but sometimes the tech level seemed modern or even futuristic, like in the part where you have to crawl thru vents to get to a "hazmat room". this is a combo that can work but there just wasn't enough detail for me to figure out how it all fit together.
for characters, i liked the fateweaver (i think that was her name? the tower lady). you get a whole section where you do nothing but talk to her so you really get to know her unusual/inhuman(?) point of view and that was fascinating to me. but with the other three former heroes i didn't really feel like i knew who they were.
and then there's the ending. (Spoiler - click to show)where it turns out it's all for nothing and the world ends anyway. this is the philosophical part, i guess, and i don't know anything about philosophy. but when so many of my peers are like "why do anything, we'll all be dead soon", i don't really like to see this kind of message in fiction. i guess the games perspective is "you should try anyway but just be aware you're probably f*cked"? but i do think that people are not gonna try unless they really believe success is possible, so i don't think the nihilism (?) is helpful.
the "gotcha" of it feels especially weird bc at the beginning there's like a personality quiz that sorts you into one of four segments (though you do all four eventually), and one of the questions is about what you would do if you know the world is ending. and only one of the answers is "try to save it anyway", but regardless of what you say, that is what you spend the game doing. you don't actually have the option to accept your fate and focus on spending your remaining time with your loved ones or whatever. so even if you accept the nihilism you can't make the "good" nihilist choice, you have to act like you have hope anyway and then the game is like "lmao you thought..." maybe the real winning strat is to close the tab and go hang out with your friends before we all die to climate change or world war 3. but also maybe i am badly misunderstanding everything because i am just a humble idiot. i don't know if i am even understanding nihilism right. anyway on a more petty note i might mind this less if i hadn't grinded for a million years to beat the final boss. according to the walkthrough (which i looked at after i finished the game) i guess i didn't have to but my dumb a** could not get through that conversation 💀 so i thought the fight was mandatory and i loaded my save to grind until i could beat the boss which was very tedious. and then it was all pointless anyway.
the game seems like it has a lot of work and love put into it so probably it is me that is failing here. probably this would be a great game for someone who likes philosophy and wants to try a parser game that's easy to get into. but it is not really for a silly fantasy girlie like me, and im sorry for not getting it.
Comments on this review
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Thanks for the thoughtful and thorough review! It's okay to not vibe with this kind of fiction - it's a very particular dark and philosophical vibe, and that won't jive with everyone at all times. I do think you are pointing out an interesting missing branch for focusing on one's self and family in a more positive way, rather than The Fateweaver's whole schtick. It's something interesting to think about for next time.
Also, yes, I should have added more lore, especially optional stuff! I will take into account for my next project(s). I can't promise a more upbeat tone or substantial amounts of whimsy, though. :)
im glad it was helpful to you even though i am not the ideal player for your game! the things you suggest exploring for next time sound good, and i would also suggest that if you do something with optional exp grinding again, it would be good to make it clearer that it's optional.
Good point! I did want to make sure that the player was 100% clear that they might brick their run in the final branch if they didn't have enough combat skills and got too deep into a fight to "Undo" their way out of it. (also (Spoiler - click to show)some endings become impossible if you take too much damage after getting into a fight with The Hand of Fate - he really would prefer that you choose a certain someone's ending, instead!) I'm not sure if emphasizing combat training was the best way to do that, though. It's something to consider next time I'm planning to put the player in this kind of scenario.
yeah, it's a tricky balance - on the one hand you want to make sure players who do want to do the fight aren't throwing themselves at it over and over without realizing their combat skills aren't up to it, but on the other hand emphasizing that makes players like me who would prefer not to do the fight think that it's not optional. and then also you probably don't want to give *too* much away about how the last sequence works and what's possible in it. i don't really know what the answer is! there are so many things to think about with making a game and im over here with 0 games to my name just backseat driving i guess ðŸ˜
You don't have to make a game to notice something that could potentially be better :p. It's a tricky game design problem you've hit on, and one that game devs of all flavors struggle with (how much/what kind of tutorializing should you do, and how do expectations around that differ for different audiences). It's always good to know where there could be room for improvement!
