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Number of Ratings: 11
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1-11 of 11 - Ms. Woods, July 25, 2023
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Aggravation Can Be Fun, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
To Be Clear: Review title refers to Character, not Game
Played: 4/8/23
Playtime: Distracted timekeeping, maybe 2.5-3hrs
IF feels like a nice match for heist/crime caper stories. Between the logic problem of defeating security, the think-on-your-feet crisis management during the inevitable reversals and complications, and even the manipulative work to defeat physical barriers it all just synchs nicely with IF strengths. Unlike, say, punch punch kick punch I win fighting. Throw in some quirky character work, and maybe a relationship or two and you’ve got a great stew boiling.
Here, you are renowned GentleLady Thief Thalia. (I know Lady is the proper feminine to Gentleman, but by aliasing it to 'woman' so often, it kind of sheds that essential ‘Upper Crust’ connotation.) I understand this to be part of a series, but this was my intro, and the game eased me into the setup smoothly and seamlessly. In no time I was hosting a social event, crossing mental swords with intellectual inferiors and plotting an intro heist. While this worked well to set the table for the main event, I found myself at a remove, and it took me a bit to understand why.
Either through the staging of the introductory sequence, or due to the choices I made, LadyT was consistently the smartest, bestest, most capable person in the room. And knew it. Boy did I find her tiresome. She was surrounded by amusing bumbling wannabes, socially awkward gadgeteers and conflicted adversaries. In particular, I enjoyed the Q character Gwen, who only near the end of a conversation did I realize was actually a Scoreboard telling me my score from the previous scenario! It was a delightfully subtle bit of writing. Every one of the supporting cast was fun to read and engaging to interact with. If only the protag half of the interactions wasn’t such a chore.
Now fiction is full of these kinds of characters. Characters like Doc Savage work because you spend more time with his colorful, flawed assistants and he acts more like a walking Deus Ex. Superman has endearing humility. Classic Bond works thanks to his sociopathic sense of humor. The immediacy of IF puts us IN the protag, where remove is not possible and an absence of mitigating personality is pronounced. I am given to understand that this negative impression may be an artifact of jumping into the series cold, which, fair enough.
As the game shifted to the main heist planning, I was further thrown off by narration telling me I had a map. This led me to believe I didn’t need to do paper mapping, as the protag/game would take care of me. Boy was that not true! I was a few rooms in before realizing, wait a minute, I’m lost and shoulda been mapping all along. It’s not that the museum is geographically difficult, it was just a bad expectation.
So I’m in a hole, enjoyment wise, and then the game does the most perfect thing. It introduces an adversary character who is EVEN SMARTER than LadyT! Mechanically, this character is basically a reversal generator to keep the plot fun. But CHARACTER wise she has the crucial function of putting our protag off her game, getting her worried and frustrated and second guessing herself. She is so much more interesting this way. It was compounded by me the player totally bollixing an interview. LadyT’s frazzled self recriminations (due to my ineptitude) were perversely amusing. The protag was much more fun when I was doing badly!
This turnaround came at a crucial time. From here, we are off to the races in the Big Heist. A quick word about the setup here. This game made some really smart game play choices, specifically in the preparation (recon! interviews! staging! NPC coordination!), giving real perceived agency in getting things set, and how easy or hard the endgame would be. While I suspect failure would be really hard (if not impossible) to achieve here, the illusion of creating success was strong. Not to mention the detailed work of engineering a heist was just plain fun. Ditto managing the inevitable escalating reversals, culminating in a nice bit of character work (if you’d done your homework earlier!) to secure your escape.
Overall, I spent about half the play time at a remove, a quarter of time “ooh wait, I like where this is going,” and the final stretch fully engaged. This game dug a hole for me, then through a few tightly choreographed twists, propelled me to a very satisfying end. Seems about right for the genre!
Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Crime Caper
Polish: Gleaming
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I think my next step might be to create an in-game map. Either as a pdf-eelie, or better yet use that Twine dead space left window to implement a dynamic map that grows as you explore. You might need to rotate the museum 90 degrees (the map is wider than tall, but turning on its side could take advantage of that narrow window). In addition to realizing the promise of the text, it would add a nice graphical flair to a bare bones presentation.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Mostly masterful, June 22, 2023A briskly paced and light-hearted heist story, Moldavia isn’t quite a masterpiece, but it’s a lot of fun. I appreciated the change-ups in gameplay from scene to scene as well as the playful, mostly failure-proof way of advancing the story while still making you feel the stakes of your decisions. I thought the conversations were especially engaging, with enough little twists to keep it fresh.
I suppose that my main reservation is with the characters and their motivations. There’s a jibe in the text about crimes committed by bored aristocrats, and at the end of the day, while there seems to be something like character growth over the course of the story, it’s hard not to feel that most decisions, including the theft itself, are made mostly arbitrarily by people who have little underlying goals in life. But that’s probably more of a criticism of the genre than the game itself.
Still, a lot of care went into this one, and I broadly enjoyed it throughout.
- elysee, May 18, 2023
4 of
4 people found the following review helpful:
Witty crime heist accessible to newcomers to the series, May 16, 2023This is a Twine game, that’s a mix of historical, crime and social niceties. It’s the latest in a series featuring gentlewoman thief Lady Thalia. I can’t recall if I’ve played any other others. This game is perfectly playable by people unfamiliar with the others.
I really enjoyed it. The writing was strong, and the mix of game play elements worked well. There are four acts to the story, so you get a sense of progress. It took me about an hour to play through in total, and I read pretty quickly for reference.
Some of the elements involved social interaction, and conversations. And this was very well implemented. Others were more of a traditional crime heist. Even almost a maze element at one point. Which I didn’t make the best job of, but had fun. Everything leads up to a dramatic ending, but along the way there are unexpected developments, new foes to encounter, and intrigue to uncover. Even during the heist you have many options of how to approach it, e.g. what route to take, how to interact with things, how to respond to problems that occur. It’s just delightful.
If you like Jeeves and Wooster stories, or Arsene Lupin, do check this out. And even if you’re not familiar with them but enjoy a good interactive story it’s a good one.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Entertaining and thrilling art thefts with expanded cast of characters, May 13, 2023This is the third Lady Thalia game; the series in general focuses around a three-pronged conversation system where you take different attitudes, as well as physical preparation for thefts.
This game focuses on the introduction of a new nemesis detective, as well as a resolution of the overarching plotline of your former nemesis, and heavily involves your husband as well.
I had a rocky start with this one. The intro heavily emphasizes your open marriage/lavender marriage, and it brought into my mind a lot of real-world experiences that were quite a bit less glamorous than those implied in the game. In addition, I found myself constantly at odds with the conversation system, not picking up on the social cues that indicate which line of approach would be best; possibly I just have brain fog after just coming back from a trip.
But the quality of the writing and characters is always, to me, solid, and as the game went on I became invested in the string of characters and situations and actions. The involvement of the husband and his lover made the game more interesting, putting you in a teaching role, which is a natural extension of the overall character arc. And unlike some others who reviewed the game, I found Mel's change of heart (Spoiler - click to show)fairly understandable; if your enemy is consistently more encouraging and relatable than your employer, who wouldn't have second thoughts about their career?
I also preferred the later mechanical segments that focused more on varying your approach rather than having 'one true' approach, as well as the 'slow finesse vs brute force' options in the physical preparation.
Overall, this one isn't my favorite Lady Thalia game, but I'd consider it one of the headliners of Spring Thing, and am glad to have it.
- Rovarsson (Belgium), May 11, 2023
- Tabitha / alyshkalia, April 22, 2023
- E.K., April 18, 2023
- Jaded Pangolin, April 17, 2023
- thesleuthacademy, April 6, 2023
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