Lazarrien: A Love Story

Having enjoyed Radiance Inviolate a great deal, I played and rated Lazarrien last month, but I thought I might write some words about it now. It has only one review at the moment!

I’ve said–somewhere–that that I enjoy the “adjectival opulence” of DemonApologist’s prose. It feels lush and indulgent without ever overdoing things. It has the savor of smoke, salt, and a bit of fat. The initial setup of Lazarrien reminds me of a more darkly-inclined William Morris story, if only Morris were a better writer. I should qualify myself. What feels like Morris are its grounded assertions of otherworldly types. Tarot archetypes for instance, or clothing-as-signifiers. The whole work feels drunk with significance.

“Drunk” is a fine word in this case, as protagonist Lazzien is as confused as we are by the horrors of a land under an unnamed and unexplained curse. As in allegory, our protagonist stumbles through a world of symbols.

Even without choices, the mystery of the world will pull many of us through. We learn more, but not enough. Information is artfully drip-fed. Others know us, even though we do not know them. Lazarrian is a lousy son, it seems, and a musical–witch? is it a witch?–finds us amusing. A High Priestess, straight out of tarot, is frozen solid. Are we the Fool, then?

(Spoiler - click to show)Mystery compounds upon mystery when we learn that Lazarrien is the lover of demon Agramith. We thought he was stalking us! Our only choice looms: spare Agramith, or sacrifice him before castle?

The choice doesn’t matter much programmatically, but it does matter. The zinger here is as good as any Twilight Zone episode (I am a Twilight Zone superfan): Lazarrien is playing a game to free Agramith, a prince of hell. The game? Reaching the castle with a ring, a sword, and Agramith. Player Lazarrien can choose various factors for his “run.” This is a sort of roguelike game. In the other room: a mountain of swords stories high, one for each failed attempt.

This a good story. It’s just really good. There’s a very clever self-awareness with the roguelike backgrounding. </spolier>I feel Lazarrien draws from a number of sources and uses them effectively to weave a surprising and satisfying tale.

Lazarrien is a fantasy story that follows the eponymous knight journeying through cursed land, as he attempts to recover his memory, particularly why he roaming these lands, and what he has to do with the curse. During his travels, he meets a child, a priestess, a musician and a king – the order differing per playthrough – each, he finds, having a link to him and each other. And a demon, trailing behind him, never approaching until the ultimate hour.

For most of the story, I struggled to see what made it a love story. None of the characters on Lazarrien’s path display romantic feelings towards him, some being far from friendly, and one even hunting him. So how does it even relate to love? Is our knight going to love himself and change his fate? Will we find one of the aforementioned characters at the end, because it turns out they fell in love with the knight? Or will he turn back, return to one of them, and damn the curse and the quest? Is Lazarrien going to find a happy ending?

I think I should have known from the start it was going to be more tragic – my first playthrough started with the priestess, who warned me of sins that unravelled the world. And what better sin than forbidden love, the one that cannot be, the one you fight against and for regardless, the one that never ends well.
Lazarrien’s reticence to accept his feelings in that fateful meeting changed everything, about who he was, what he was trying to do, the meaning of the others’ words, and ultimately, what I thought I would choose when faced with the curse. I’m a sucker for love, even if I can see its end a mile away. His change within gave me hope – how he describes his body, how his true words escape his mouth without realising, tout semblant comme une évidence – you want to hope for him, that things will work out, that he could get his cake and eat it too.

So, when faced with that single choice, I did not hesitate once. I didn’t consider the other option to be an option either. I think Lazarrien would not suppress his feeling – the morning after’s regret told me so. I hung to that hope, even with the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that this was a love story, not a happy ending story. There was no surprise when it happened, for tragedy always makes its entrance when you want it the least: so close to your goal you can taste it.

But there was still a glimmer of hope, even when we were past the eleventh hour, even as I was grieving what I wished would be, when all the pieces finally fit and the picture was complete… There was a way, she said. Things might be different if we’d go back to the start. If we’d tried again. Lazarrien had done so many times before, but maybe this time will be the right one. I could go back to the start and lift the curse. I just need to remember the—

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!