La Fabrique des Princes

The product of the Prince-factory, your education is almost complete. In these final hours before being sent off to the Kingdom that awaits you, you must prepare yourself for a Joust of Rhetoric against one of your fellow/adversary Princes.

To this end, you must explore the Factory, proving your knowledge of the Book of Princes to gain coins of merit. These can be exchanged for coins of gold to buy equipment.
On the surface, this seems like basic RPG-gameplay. Level up you armour and weaponry, or rather, in the context of this setting, your luxury attire and your rhetorical techniques, until you feel strong enough to face your opponent and hopefully prevail and attain your Kingdom.

However…

The setting of La Fabrique des Princes, this vast complex of corridors and halls, where the walls have faces and voices speak enigmatic words, is too intruiging to just traverse in a simple goal-oriented fashion. A menacing feeling of deception soon grabs the player’s attention, inviting to search deeper…

Although the map is small, a mere 15 rooms, it gives the impression of a much larger edifice, isolated from normal time and space. I would have loved to search this place in parser-style, but I must admit that being denied the option of closely examining the many puzzling features of the rooms and hallways adds to the feeling of uncertainty and puzzlement.
There is a region of the map which is normally off-limits to the Princes, but is opened up for you on this special occasion. It would have added to the atmosphere of secrecy and hidden meanings if it were indeed off-limits, and some kind of subterfuge was necessary to access it, instead of just being given a key.

The use of timed text put me off a bit. I didn’t feel it added anything of worth to the piece. Fortunately the timed passages are short, so annoyance is kept to a minimum.

Discovering more of the Factory’s history and purpose, and meeting the “marginal” characters at the edge of the map was well worth the time spent pursuing “side”-quests. A story about how stopping and thinking is more valuable than blindly chasing a predetermined and ill-understood objective.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.

Dans ce jeu, nous incarnons un prince en formation, lors du jour de son évaluation. Le jeu nous propose d'écouter de petites histoires de princes précédent, certains ayant échoués dans leur missions, d'autres ayant réussis.
Deux fins principales s'opposent en fonction des choix que l'on fait et du résultat d'un duel oral avec un autre prince en devenir. En fonction de nos actions le duel peut être très compliqué.

Quelle fin est la meilleur est à l'appréciation de chacun.

J'ai bien apprécié cette histoire.

This game has you play as a prince-in-training at a prince factory where everyone must read and study Machiavelli.

It's not finished yet, but it has a money system (where you earn money by correctly identifying quotes from The Prince). You can spend that to hear tales from past princes or to buy witty retorts.

The combat system needs some fleshing out; it's very difficult not to instantly die and thus be locked out of combat forever. There is a non-combat ending which I didn't find but received copious in-game hints for (Spoiler - click to show)something about the flower you can buy giving voice to something and also 'ailleurs' being the magic word?

Some really cool ideas here, just needs some fleshing out. But honestly very innovative.