Xanthippe's Last Night with Socrates

I laughed. I cried. A philosopher died. This was a true hoot. A real laugh fest. I mean, you kind of have to have a bit of a dark streak in you to appreciate a lot of the humor, which I most certainly possess. This IF is almost entirely dialogue: witty, informative, descriptive, contemplative, and most especially so-funny-my-sides-hurt dialogue. And yet there is still a serious side to this, obviously given the subject matter. This story entertains, educates, and keeps you guessing. It keeps you wanting more. It is not extremely long, probably around 1 hour to see most of it with a replay. Keep in mind this game deals with adult themes, but is not graphic in its descriptions. You know the ending, but it's the ride, ahem, the journey, that makes this one great.

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

This is a character piece, speculating on a conjugal visit between Socrates and Xanthippe (his 2nd wife) the night before the infamous hemlock cocktail. The player is given the goal “get your husband to have sex with you!” but that is kind of a wonderful trick. It ensures the player is aligned with the protagonist (clearly X is the protag. I hope we don’t need to argue about that.) in creating an initially awkward, and kind of misguided, series of advances on a man with understandable distractions. That one little gamesmanship trick allows the author to execute sleight of hand, have Socrates’ response generate interpersonal drama, and at that point, we are fully at the piece’s mercy.

It is first and foremost a character study collaboration between player and story. I am not sure how much branching is actually possible in the narrative, but that does not appear to be the goal of the piece anyway. In the forward the author lays his cards on the table - the piece is about giving X a more robust afterlife than history could be bothered with. We are clearly not building HER character, history has ensured that is not possible. But we are building a nuanced, vital character whose complexity represents and pays tribute to the real, complex, full woman she actually was.

It is kind of a touching and depressing observation - death takes the breadth of a person, and reduces it to the ever-dimming memories of others and if lucky, artifacts that live on. Or in Socrates’ case, completely superimposes a mythology instead. Flattering or unflattering, whatever remains cannot conjure or preserve the fullness of who we were. The thought of us becomes a distorted echo, maybe retaining a sliver of us, but maybe not. Maybe including things we never were. This work offers the kind of beautiful idea that if we can’t remember the full complexity of a person, the least we can do is acknowledge that there WAS complexity. What a gift of empathy for someone history has ignored or abused.

What, am I getting too maudlin for you? Am I, you cold, unfeeling husk? YOU’RE the outlier here, not me and this wonderful work. Check your heart, you emotionally shut down robot. You probably won’t even kiss your dad, will you? Or do you prefer to call him “Father”? Fine, I’ll get back to your “game” “review.”

The interactivity here is navigating a series of conversations exploring prickly personality conflicts, long-standing frictions and affections, shared emotion and history, sexual playfulness and tension, common intellectual passions and shared pet name in-jokes. In short, an amazing tour of a full, adult relationship that honors the specifics of historical Socrates as a jumping off point for emotional extrapolation. The interactivity comes from the player defining X’s character (within an author-set series of ranges, obviously, it is choice select). Right out of the gate, is she the kind of woman who calls her husband “Honey” or “Big Man”? Will she apologize, or double, triple, quadruple down? Is she demure or bawdy, or just a filthy, filthy animal? Is she sad, bemused or betrayed by infidelity? There are so many many options the author has offered through some setpiece conversations about mortality, Socrates’ choices, their relationships, making CAKES … and you are collaborating to put a specific HER into all those conversations. The author has gone out of his way to make a breathtaking span of options available. How much affects narrative thread? Maybe none? Doesn’t matter, it is the character building that matters here. The text is so very deft to not dishonor your choices that it feels natural and rewarding.

This game snuck up on me. I fell for the initial trick, got irritated S wouldn’t play, then got mesmerized by the option to keep quadrupling down on the cow conversation way beyond S’s patience… and before I knew it I was just Engaged. About halfway in, I realized the trick played on me, silently tipped my hat to the author, then X and I just dove back in. I really appreciated the cheekiness of inventing Plato’s famous Cave as a goofing conversation between the two, the implication being Plato totally stole that from Xanthippe later. Relax, Plato can take the driveby.

Stepping back, how impossible is what I just described? Collaborate with the player to create a fully three-dimensional person, through the medium of choice-select options during wide ranging conversations? Do you see how DIFFICULT that is? You have to create a conversation flow that spans light-hearted joking, deep drama, personal history, fear of death, horniness… and you have to create dialogue options at every step that give character building latitude but don’t derail the narrative or later contradict itself? Not only did it hold together, it didn’t even CRACK. Slow clap, author.

Ultimately, it ended the way it had to. But yeah, we totally banged him.

Played: 11/1/23
Playtime: 35min, finished. 35 min? Holy crap I spent twice that WRITING about it.
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging, Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: I don’t know. I’m always afraid experiences this sublime suffer on revisiting.

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2023's IFComp. I beta tested this game).

In the English class I took as a high-school sophomore, in lieu of formal essays the teacher would have us write little weekly papers in response to a quote he’d pull from whatever book we were reading. Usually the quote would clearly invite a specific kind of analysis, like it’d spotlight a key theme or a bit of character development or what have you, but every once in a while he’d mess with us, like when we were reading Updike’s The Centaur: out of that novel’s heady mix of mythological allegory, lyrical landscape-painting, and squalid small-town depression, he extracted for our waiting pens the bare clause “…a sluggish digestive rumbling.”

This was, so far as I remember, a totally insignificant quartet of words, brought on by one character drinking coffee on an empty stomach or something like that – a mere incidental detail signifying nothing. The upside was that I felt free to write whatever I felt like, and for whatever reason, I decided what I felt like writing was a three-page narration of Socrates’s last hours. I had him run through a monologue about his devotion to philosophy and the ideal, drink the hemlock in perfect equanimity, and say goodbye to his disciples with no great show of emotion. Yet even as his spirit faced its end with calm, I had his body rebel, guts heaving and roiling against the hemlock, lungs desperate to keep gasping down air. The ending line (I was very proud of the ending line) was “what is Truth? Truth is a sluggish digestive rumbling.”

All of which is to say that even to a teenager whose knowledge of Socrates came mostly from The Cartoon History of the Universe, the idea of using him to dramatize the physical nature of man is irresistible: to levy a critique of pure reason (wait, that’s Kant) by bringing the body into the equation, to juxtapose the phenomenology of spirit (oops, that’s Hegel) with the reality of flesh. This is something Xanthippe’s Last Night with Socrates does, and does well – we meet an embodied, earthy Socrates, with a big nose and a bigger belly, and with a taste for wine and food and sex – but it’s also, let’s face it, a sophomoric trick that isn’t actually that interesting: ideas come from people, and people exist in the world, film at 11.

No, what’s interesting in this game isn’t so much what’s done with Socrates qua Socrates, as what’s done with his wife Xanthippe, and therefore with him in relation to her. Xanthippe has come down through history only as a silent archetype, demonized by centuries of male writers as a shrew so vituperative that Socrates turned to harassing passers-by in the agora just to escape her clutches. It would be tempting to flip the tables on this legacy of misogyny by positing a Xanthippe who’s a perfect mate for her husband, someone who’s supportive of his endeavors, an intellectual match for him, and able to create a harmonious home for him as a refuge from the small-minded politics that ultimately killed him. Fortunately, Victor resists this temptation: his Xanthippe is certainly Socrates’s equal, but she’s recognizably someone who gossips would turn into a legendary termagant. She holds a grudge, she knows what buttons to push, she calls him on his BS. It would have been easy to write this game to be about reacting to the great philosopher; instead, he has to react to her.

There’s a lot of skill needed to make this work, though; it’s easier to describe the dynamic between two long-married people than it is to show it, especially when they’re interacting in circumstances as extreme as these (the premise, memorably laid out by the blurb, is that as Xanthippe you’ve bribed your way into his prison cell on the eve of his execution, bent on one last roll in the hay). The game rises to the challenge by slaughtering sacred cows left and right. Almost the first thing out of Xanthippe’s mouth is ”come here, humpty grumpy Socratumpy,” which is a hilarious line but also a statement of intent: these characters aren’t going to be mere figures mouthing stentorian dialogue, but human beings who demand to be understood as such. This does mean that there’s more than a bit of anachronism in the dialogue (there’s a reference to a cuckold’s horns, for example, though I’m pretty sure that figure didn’t exist in antiquity) but the game is more than worth the candle: freed of the need to hew to some imagined Merchant-Ivory portrait, the game has full rein to be funny and sincere.

Indeed, while the circumstances of the characters are quite dire, Xanthippe’s Last Night with Socrates made me laugh as much as any game in the Comp. There are of course philosophy jokes sufficiently accessible that I got them (despite the passage of 25 years, I’m still mostly relying on that Cartoon History for my knowledge of Socrates), little Classical in-jokes (“That’s not what Alcibiades told me”/”You shouldn’t believe everything Alcibiades says”), and parodies of Homer, but the humor really proves its worth in the fights between the two spouses – for of course, whatever you choose, the evening quickly goes off the rails and a lifetime of resentment, regret, and suspicions get dredged up for one final look.

Arguing with your spouse is usually not considered fun IF gameplay, but here, it’s both integral to the story and entertaining in its own right. The marital dynamics here are very keenly observed – I swear that I’ve had some of these exact fights with my wife, especially the one about what counts as an apology, and Socrates’s inability to let an opportunity for a little joke slide or refrain from raising tiny, completely insignificant objections had more than a bit of a personal resonance – but among the heart-truths they sling at each other are enough gags and funny moments to make the conflict go down easily. The game’s also careful to manage the power disparities: neither one is wholly right or wholly wrong, the emotions aren’t allowed to go too far out of bounds, and since the game is necessarily framed by the question of when to sacrifice truth for social expedience (with Socrates’s example implicitly suggesting the answer is “very rarely”), it would feel perverse to try to avoid conflict when there are things left unsaid. As a result, despite being the kind of player who’s almost invariably polite when given the option, here I was gleefully picking the choices that maximized the amount of time Socrates was raked over the coals for slipping and calling Xanthippe a cow.

So yeah, this is quite a fun and funny game – I think this is the only time in IF Comp history when a player character has (Spoiler - click to show)shagged Plato. But as with many of Victor’s games, the comedy is in service of a non-frivolous examination of what we owe each other, what partnership can look like, and how we can imagine saying goodbye to the most important people in our lives. The closing scene is lovely and wraps many of these threads together, positing a domestic origin for the famous Allegory of the Cave that’s sweet and sexy and segues beautifully into the final bout of lovemaking (I know a mid-Comp update added the option to wrap up with cuddling, but that choice feels decidedly non-canonical to me).

For all that it’s set almost 2,500 years ago, Xanthippe’s Last Night with Socrates feels vital and contemporary; just as the questions Socrates grappled with are still ones that haunt us today, there’s nothing in this story that feels like it’s since been solved. Shorn of their dramatic circumstances, these dialogues are ones many of us have, or will have, with our partners – and just as in the game, those conversations proceed a lot of yelling and ill-advised joking that we hope history will fail to record.

Going into this, and apart from it being about Socrates and his wife I’m happily clueless. I did a joint honours classical studies and history bachelors degree. But far more emphasis on the Roman side than the Greeks, apart from lots on Homer and Troy. So yup, pretty clueless. It’s an Ink piece. Note I don’t usually go for romance pieces, but intrigued to see what this author does with it.

It’s definitely not something for people troubled by sex references. Content warnings absolutely apply. It is quite explicit in places. But I enjoyed the exploration of a couple’s relationship in a fateful meeting, mixed with bigger philosophical questions. I suspect that someone more familiar with the philosophy of Socrates and the wider Ancient Greek context might get more out of it. I was just going where the story took me. But I did enjoy it. And it certainly didn’t assume or require any wider background knowledge.

And now I want to read more about Socrates and definitely Xanthippe. And read about the philosophy. Which is no bad thing. Thanks to the author. The writing is extremely strong. Oh and I really liked the author’s dedication notes at the start, which explain and justify the approach he has taken to the historical characters in this work of interactive fiction.

Xanthippe's Last Night with Socrates is the imagined final night between Xanthippe, Socrates's second wife, and the philosopher - the night before his execution. Though your goal is to sleep with the man, your conversation may take a different turn... or ten.
Do check the content warning in-game page before starting the game.

As we know little about Socrates (and what we do is only through posthumous accounts), and even less so about Xanthippe (who is often represented in a negative light), one has quite a bit of leeway when interpreting those figures into a piece of fiction*. What comes out of this entry is a very nuanced and multi-faceted characters with fears and hopes, convictions and grudges, and a deep sense of love for the other.
*did they really spend that last night together?

The writing of the game is delightful, with a modern tone that one might not expect with the setting. Take aside, the piece seems to be walking the tightrope of implausibility, especially during discussions of consent and marital commitment, or the role-play between the two lovers turning into a philosophy lesson with the roles reversed. For most of the game, the modern tone is not quite noticeable, but overly crude tone at times breaks the illusion.

What worked for me the most was the real and vulnerable moments between husband and wife: the want to spend those last moments together, the hurtful words and maybe petty way to get an apology, the truthful confession of one's feelings and hidden acts... The way the game turned a known and revered historical figure as just a man - with strong principles, so strong he'd choose death, but just a man still - and an unknown variable as more than a passing disregarded line into a fleshed out person.

The start made me hungry, which turned into pain and wish for Xanthippe to take some sort of revenge, to a soothing and warming discussion about love and respect... I could have taken or left the more spicy elements*.
*actually I would have welcomed an extra option at the end where you maybe just... cuddle?

A game about your husband’s last night before his execution has no right being this fun! But Victor has accomplished that with a big dose of humor and a richly drawn protagonist who can’t help but be entertaining. Alongside the silliness, though, there’s a lot of emotional depth as the couple’s relationship history and its various layers of love and hurt is gradually revealed. Their conversation—litigating past wrongs, discussing what Xanthippe’s future might hold, and hashing out what they mean to each other—swings from anger to affection in a way that felt very authentic. I liked the bittersweet note of the end, where they’re both able to come to a sort of peace with the impending loss. I was glad to have spent time exploring their relationship, and getting to know Victor’s version of Xanthippe—who is very far from one-dimensional.