Lazarrien: A Love Story

This is a short game with a lot of depth, and one of my favorites in the 2024 Short Games Showcase. It starts with a classic “protagonist wakes up with amnesia” conceit, but not as an excuse for having a second-person AFGNCAAP protagonist; this MC is a specific character, a knight named Lazarrien, and his story is told in third-person past tense. We don’t play as him, but we share his disorientation as both he and we work to piece together his backstory and what’s happened to wreck the land around him.

The latter is depicted with vivid imagery—a field of burning roses, hills made of wax; evocatively described devastation. And through a series of encounters with NPCs, our hero gains a sense of purpose: to break the curse that’s caused all this. We follow Lazarrien as he makes his way toward the mountain peak where the solution apparently lies, with a demon in slow but steady pursuit. As he draws closer to his goal, the straightforward narrative he’s been given is slowly called into question. The story starts with uncertainty, then provides clarity, only to make us and Lazarrien question it.

This game was written for the Single-Choice jam, the conceit of which is that there can only be one point in the story where the player is given a choice between multiple options. Lazarrien builds to that choice and gives it momentous-feeling weight, letting the player decide whether Lazarrien will continue to doggedly pursue his mission at all costs, or whether a new desire has supplanted that. (Spoiler - click to show)However, the game then quickly subverts the importance of that choice, revealing that both options ultimately lead to the same result—which doesn't at all undercut the choice’s emotional impact.

The ending finally reveals the full truth of what’s going on, but even beyond that there’s one more layer to the game that I didn’t discover until I replayed it to write this review. Which path you’ll take through the story is randomized every time you start a new playthrough; it’s possible for you to encounter each of four NPCs in any order. And this is cool not only because it means you’ll see a slightly different story on a replay, but also because it’s diegetic: the story’s ending reveals that Lazarrien is undergoing a trial, for which he’s allowed endless attempts (although his memory is wiped at the beginning of each), and the only thing that might change each time is the order of the encounters.

In a different game, this could be a setup for players to try again and eventually succeed—but here, it’s made very clear that Lazarrien will never pass the trial. Players can repeat the game over and over, seeing the different iterations of the encounters, but no matter what choice you make at that single choice point, there’s only ever one ending—he fails. And this feels fitting; I’ve avoided stating the one big spoiler, but I will note that the subtitle is “A Love Story”. Lazarrien is repeating this endless, doomed cycle for love—what could be more romantic than that? (Here I will break my big-spoiler avoidance to add: (Spoiler - click to show)Especially when, in addition to being an outright queer story with the m/m romance, there are queer resonances to the “forbidden love” aspect, such as Lazarrien’s father decrying him as a sinner for loving a demon.)

The fatalistic ending does clash a bit with the fact that the game rewards replays; I’m typically a big replayer, but after my first playthrough of Lazarrien, having made my preferred choice and then seeing that it didn’t ultimately matter, I didn’t feel a need to play again. But after I replayed the other day and discovered the trick, I found it a cool design choice as a way to maintain the linearity but still give the player a fresh experience. I just think there needs to be a little more of an incentive to replay (maybe instead of the ending going back to the title screen, the game starts again automatically?).

All in all, I found it an excellent work of IF. As a bonus to everything I discussed above, it’s also presented stylishly, with a nice layout of the text and good use of color (I would just up the contrast of the brownish text a bit). I very much look forward to future work by DemonApologist!