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Review
...Is it blasphemy to say I like The Red Pearls of Borneo more than Type Help? Well, if it is, then darn me to heck, because I like The Red Pearls of Borneo more than Type Help.
As an American and also an idiot, I didn't know, well, anything about British colonial Borneo before starting this game; in my subconscious mind, World War II didn't actually start until the invasion of Pearl Harbor, and everything before that was just, as the Brits would say, a bit o' banter. While I obviously can't speak to this game's historical accuracy, I found the story deeply intriguing, on both the character drama and broader narrative levels.
Gameplay wise, Red Pearls takes the core "who was here at what time?" premise of the author's previous title What Happened to the Crew? (and its spiritual predecessor Type Help, for that matter) and cranks up the user-friendliness until the dial breaks off. Gone are the days of needing a spreadsheet, some scrap paper, and a professional stenographer to take your notes; just open up a menu, click on a bubble, and you can see everyone who hasn't been assigned a place at any given hour. It's glorious, and it makes returning to Type Help or What Happened feel like amateur hour. Notes can be added to everything and anything, and the main character's psychic object affinity means you rarely have to go through the rigamarole of trying every possible combination of characters for a given hour blindly. Having said all that...is this a better system? I'm not sure. Some of the magic is lost for me without the parser interface; Red Pearls lacks the feeling of being an overworked but doggedly determined archivist that made What Happened so immersive despite its heaps of malarkey.
Unfortunately, just like What Happened to the Crew?, Red Pearls comes to a screeching halt at about the halfway mark. At that point, the multilayered puzzles and varied-perspective storytelling completely stops, and the game turns into several hours of clicking "next scene." Technically, the last act is optional...but c'mon. I'm not gonna get that far into a story only to say "well that was a lovely cliffhanger, time to move on with my life!" There's one last swan song of extra-hard puzzles right near the end, but then it turns back into nothing but boring dialog. Again, I did finish the whole game (more than once) so it can't be that bad, I just...wish it was different.
Forget about my (mostly) joking historical ignorance from the second paragraph, I think I need to speak seriously for a moment. Red Pearls, at times, presents an uncomfortably rosy view of British colonialism. It's a rather difficult thing to pinpoint, but between the unceremonious deaths of the only non-white characters, the constant use of anti-Japanese slurs (granted, you can choose to censor them at the start of the game), and the hero-worshiping of British military intelligence...I don't know, it all made me a bit wary. I don't think the game or its creator are deliberately racist, but it'd feel irresponsible for me to not at least bring these issues up.
I hope the length of this review speaks to just how much there is to say about Red Pearls, both good and bad. It's a rare treat to get something so unique with this degree of polish, and at the bargain price of free, I think it's well worth at least getting to the end of the main plot. Bushmonkey is currently working on a sequel to Red Pearls called Green Mist Over Portland, and I can't wait to play it.
