A Simple Happening

A samurai parser game is bound to raise some questions for me: will it be authentic to the historical figures, or will it play on the popular image of honorable brutes serving lords they dislike? The answer is clearly the latter, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Orientalist premise makes it a foregone conclusion.

The protagonist is a samurai who has offended his lord and is sentenced to seppuku, the ritual act of honorable suicide. His lord is watching and Koji is waiting to behead him as soon as the ritual blade touches his flesh. This is all very stereotypical: after eating the mackerel and drinking sake, the player can compose random haiku as his last words. I found all of this a bit silly.

But the game gets interesting when the presentation breaks down. (Spoiler - click to show)The player character realizes he wants to live and the game finally starts as an action-packed title. There are no puzzles, but there are intense descriptions that disorient the player as they try to find a way out of the section. There are fights in the game that remind me, for better or for worse, of the combat in Zork 1, but they are there to enhance the hectic nature of the game.

As for the ending, the game jokes that it's a play on another work, but I'm reminded of the movie The Green Knight: (Spoiler - click to show)both works are set in medieval times, deal with dream sequences of a dishonorable life, and inextricably link duty with figuring out a good death. Compared to the movie, this game falls short in fleshing out that connection, and that was something I was looking forward to.

The game also doesn't question the roles of samurais and lords. The characters seem to behave more like concepts and archetypes than actual people within a system. For a game that revolves around the samurai code, it doesn't seem interested in exploring the theme, and the ending feels rather abrupt due to this approach.

Still, I found this game exciting and enjoyable to play past the seppuku scene. I've always found parser games interesting when they delve into the language of action movies. The intensity of the prose there, the claustrophobia the player feels as he guides the samurai, and the sequence of events are all impeccable, and it's something I wish the game did more of.

A Simple Happening is a short, tight game with a good mix of set pieces and decent writing. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the standard samurai movie setting, but everything else is pretty neat. I thought the core mechanics were pretty solid, and I wished there was a deeper interrogation of how honor and samurais work because I think the subject is actually more fascinating than the game lets on.

I was raised Catholic, and unsurprisingly given the wide range of material included in the Bible, I remember often being confused by what on God’s green earth some bits of scripture were trying to say. Revelation was of course both especially exciting – it’s the Avengers: Endgame of the New Testament, all sorts of cross-overs with other characters heading towards a big showdown – as well as especially bewildering, and there was one passage in particular that always stymied 10-year-old-me, an angry missive from an angel to a congregation that had fallen short in some way: “You are neither hot nor cold… because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth.” I was smart enough to recognize that this was a metaphor, but figuring out what hot and cold meant into this context was beyond me, and wasn’t spitting a kind of rude, earthy metaphor?

I still can’t claim to fully understand this verse, but if I could send A Simple Happening back to my ten year old self, it’d give me a substantial leg up. This parser game set in feudal Japan runs through every cliché you can imagine – you’re a samurai about to commit seppuku, but you have to write a death poem first, there are carp in the nearby river, you get a katana and a tanto and a shuriken, you get the drill, it’s all fine and correct enough so far as I can tell but just very vanilla. It also features an annoyingly slapstick vibe that throws away any gravitas the setup earns: you’ve been ordered to commit suicide because you threw a helmet at your lord and insulted him, for no real reason that’s ever disclosed; the ambient events that fire every turn include a member of the crowd of spectators mumbling that he’s late for another seppuku; you smash through a wooden door with your bare hands.

But! It’s also quite well implemented and paced, running through a linear series of set-pieces with aplomb, and utilizing a random-haiku-generator for that death poem bit that actually throws up a substantial percentage of hits. Even as I made my way through one deadly situation after another, I don’t think I ran into a single guess-the-verb issue, and the puzzles, while all straightforward, boast a pleasant variety. The mostly-pedestrian prose even has a few moments of real strength, like the response to taking inventory at the beginning of the game:

"On the day you’re to die, you’re holding nothing, just like the day you were born."

Admittedly this is undermined by the addition of “How poetic” at the end. No! Stop! You were doing fine! I’d be tempted to say that one line sums up the whole experience of playing A Simple Happening, except there’s one at the very end that’s even more perfect, the protagonist’s final moment of reflection:

"…you think, 'Isn’t this story just [literary reference redacted] set in feudal Japan?'"

That this is correct, and that redoing the cited work in this setting is a fine-but-not-spectacular idea, is completely besides the point – take just about any acknowledged classic and you could knock it down a peg with this exact formulation. Who cares!

So yeah, this is a lukewarm game – which isn’t just a matter of strengths and weaknesses cancelling out, but I think also the author feeling diffident (or at least projecting diffidence) about their own game. So per the angel, I’m cranky and spitting it out, but I’m also frustrated because it didn’t have to be this way: buddy, you’ve got good Inform skills and you can write when you get out of your own way! This game would be really solid if you didn’t undermine yourself at every turn! Be hot, be cold, be whatever you want, but just commit!

And er while you’re at it, watch out for seven trumps and seven seals and if you see a weird leopard thing with extra heads and feet like a bear, book it.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/1/24
Playtime: 30 min, two playthroughs

I don’t get the sense that Frank Miller particularly cares what you think about his legacy, which is his prerogative as an artist. 80s/90s US comics fascination with Western-idealized Japanese culture can sure use some re-evaluation though, and his name will loom large over it all. I raise this spectre because despite being a reasonably well-read, well-traveled adult, nevertheless that is the main touchstone I have to bring to bear to this piece. (Well, along with dim memories of the miniseries SHOGUN, no the earlier one, that my parents looooved.)

This is relevant to my review because leaving aside any specific cultural details, the overwhelming VIBE of Miller’s works’ was amped-up, self-serious melodrama, preoccupied with a vaguely defined but super urgent all-caps HONOR. It is kind of hard to tell where Chris Claremont stops and he begins. What was expressly missing was any sense of humor. Given the works he now says should be read as comedies, this is probably a good thing.

A Simple Happening drives unknowingly into that cultural baggage with a parser game of samurai committing seppuku (ritual suicide). There is every probability Miller’s corpus is an unfair backdrop to this work, that the resonances are unintended and purely my own invention. I accept this. Certainly, the work attempts to cue its mischievous heart early, in describing the offense that brought the player to the solemn ritual.

Even without Miller though, between the relatively spare descriptions of place and setup, and the charged ritual hanging over everything, its tone cannot help but be somber and suffocating. The early game observance of ritual, again described in tight, almost journalistic sparity, reinforce the solemnity of the proceedings. In particular, the cheeky ‘death poem generator’ is a subversive bit of humor, except that the straight-laced randomized phrases themselves don’t play along with the joke. A bit of compounding wry humor there could have done worlds to try and blend the tones. When the game shifts to an escape, and one filled with clear slapstick moments, the effect is jarring. Not unpleasant, mind, but decidedly dissonant.

The game presents as a dire melodrama, but anytime the player goofs, the game goofs right back, then quickly re-establishes its somber mood. In many cases it REQUIRES the player to goof to make progress. It makes for a very conflicted tone to the work - clearly intended comedy threaded through Miller-esque all-caps HONOR. And some not-for-laughs murder. All reinforced by the abrupt end to the journey.

As a comedy it is often funny. It just doesn’t try to reconcile its two tones into anything larger: not ironic contrast or pathos or even subversion. I played it twice to see if it was me. (Which is a wild claim. I mean, it was clearly ALWAYS ME.) The second time, I deliberately goofed early and often and was surprised that many of the gags themselves were terse and truncated, like the jokes themselves thought they were intruding. Even when I leaned hard into the comedy, I felt like the game was holding itself back. In the end I didn’t have a bad time - just one that couldn’t reconcile its two tones in a satisfying way.

Fair’s fair though, SO much funnier than Dark Knight Strikes Again.

Mystery, Inc: A somewhat muted Scooby
Vibe: Conflicted
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : For sure, if it were my project, I think I would thread the playfulness more clearly into the early going, both with the poem generator and certainly the (Spoiler - click to show)attack to escape. Some slapstick in the latter would go a long way to a more coherent mood. Maybe also some words from (Spoiler - click to show)the wife to segue tones into pathos.

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

This is a brief parser game about a samurai preparing to commit seppuku. You are given food, alcohol, and writing implements to write your death poem.

However, events intervene, and the game goes on to several action sequences.

It was generally fairly easy to figure out what to do next. I found the events interesting, and enjoyed following along. I did figure out what was going on partway through, which was nice, but the ending was heavy-handed enough and out of tone with the rest that I took off a point. It's a good story as is; why not just leave the self-deprecation and message in an author's note?

The writing was a little nondescriptive but makes up for it with fun action scenes that are uncommon in parser games.

This is a comedy that doesn't take itself too seriously.

It's not trying to say anything about feudal Japan, though it is set in feudal Japan. I feel it is also of dubious historical accuracy.

I liked the English haiku generator. You get to keep generating poems until you get one you like, and they range from rather pretty environmental metaphors to silly-funny lines like calling the royal guy who sentenced you to death a blockhead.

I liked the archers who have really bad aim.

I liked the bear whom you can optionally feed to get past, instead of killing.

I didn't like the fat/thin jokes about two samurai foes. >amusing suggests throwing a rice ball at them which will get you some nettling about how they behave upon seeing food.

In the end, the game takes itself so un-seriously that it recommends to you a USAmerican Antebellum novel about sad confederate soldiers.

It to me held a lot higher regard - and perhaps even a bit of cleverness - before I saw that. The twist makes perfect sense for the game already. The literary reference added nothing but disgust.

Should've just shamelessly stolen the twist and not credited it, tbh.