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Thoughtful interactive museum/psychological piece about artist Francis Bacon, November 22, 2023I have to preface this review by saying that I have always that that Francis Bacon, the renaissance guy, was the same as Francis Bacon, the scary pope painting guy. I thought it was just some kind of über-Protestant thing. This game really cleared that up!
I was excited while playing this game, although perhaps not for a reason the author would have foreseen. I’ve been making an area in my own game which is a puzzleless museum placed adjacent to conversation heavy areas, and I was wondering how many conversation topics would be appropriate, and how large of a museum would make sense, and whether players should be able to lawnmower all topics or have to pick and choose.
So when I saw this puzzleless museum conversation game, I was very intrigued to poke around at the mechanics and see my overall impression. So while the game seems far more focused on story than mechanics, this review will focus a bit more on the latter.
The setup is that you are in a museum with three main rooms, each with a triptych of paintings. The paintings are real paintings by Francis Bacon; I was able to look them all up and see what they looked like in real life.
Examining the paintings and walking around the museum gives you the opportunity to converse with various figures, each of which has their own opinion on Francis Bacon. The NPCs are also adaptable, and you can change their opinion of you and willingness to talk by various actions, in a way I haven’t seen much of since games like Galatea and Blue Lacuna (although on a smaller scale here).
Topics are listed, and as you talk they change, although the change isn’t notified. You can ask about some things not on the list (for instance, I asked an early character about Christ, since the topic of the painting was Golgotha).
There are also several achievements, allowing for some puzzle elements. Some of them are straightforward, while others might be difficult to think about. Several achievements involved exhausting conversation trees, which I honestly did not want to do; not because I didn’t want to see more text, but by picking only the topics I wanted, I felt I had agency, but exhausting the tree didn’t feel ‘agent-y’. ‘Agentic’?
This game has some very heavy themes: sexual abuse and rape, violent assaults, traumatic death, obsession, religion, broken relationships, and so on. But all of it is examined in a thoughtful way, from a distance. None of these things are glorified; instead, different observers comment on it, some finding it deeply repugnant, others finding beauty in pain.
There is a great deal of strong profanity, and some of the language around Christ made me feel uncomfortable (as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), but I understand the author’s choices here and the effect they were going for. So while those parts weren’t for me, much of the game was, and I plan on rating this very highly. Beyond just appreciating the game’s messages, I also learned and grew as an author by reading this work, which is the highest compliment I am capable of giving.