Maximilien

Maximilien

This is an interesting game. I've decided to write my views based on a games individual merits rather than investigating them for potential AI use.

Maximilien is a highly polished game, and is destined for a future Steam release according to the author and website. The author's name on the IFComp page links to a page about the game, and that includes a page about the author and the creation process.

That polish includes several pictures, many of which are morphed or animated with various techniques, giving distortion or fire effects. The opening screen includes a particularly detailed-looking demon embryo thing, made in the author's style (who has been doing digital art for years).

The story is that you are living in Boston in the 1800s and have horrific and surreal nightmares that end with you waking up covered in blood. You have to investigate what's happening to you. Investigations increase your progress on 4 tracks of knowledge and hints, with each track giving different ending possibilities. I got the bad/possession ending, but I thought it was good.

You investigate through a map where you can choose where to go and spend action points on each of 4 days. You also have an inventory you can read, and there are several text-box entry 'tests'.

The original was in French, and the translation is extremely ornate and rich. Combined with the necessarily non-linear nature of the investigation and the surreal jumps in location and space, it was often difficult to keep track of the story. Here is an example of the ornate text:

After a moment of eternity, I finally rise with a soft hiss. A sweep of my gaze lets me take in some twenty yards, where I make out a tangle of tombstones merged into the night. I curse myself for not having made use of one of the two fellows’ lanterns ; and despite a careful look, I cannot see them. A curtain of trees a little farther off, its shadowed rim standing out against the sky, seems to mark the cemetery’s boundary. A little path of pale gravel stretches before me, in one direction toward the tree line, in the other toward the thickening mist at the heart of this resting ground.

or another:

The spectacle unfolding before my eyes defies even the oldest myths, whose obsolescence could not withstand the apprehension of the world through the prism of the most enlightened minds. Even the most unbridled imagination could not have engendered such a syncretism of credibility, belief, dreams, and nightmares, in this vision my senses transcribe with a pernicious exactitude, as only madness can produce.

Writing styles and preferences differ from person to person and culture to culture. For me, I like precision of language, where simpler words are preferred and complex phrases are only used if the provide clarity. All of the sentences make sense, and the meaning, once deciphered, is interesting, but like I said, combined with the jumping around and the surreal environment (and the distortion and warping of the text as play progresses), it can be difficult to follow the story thread.

The story that I did perceive is interesting. It reminds me of the Cognomen of Edgar Allen Poe game from a few years ago with its city investigation or aesthetic. This game includes a lot of details about Judaism, Boston and I think Ukraine.

Overall, I had a polished experience. I didn't feel compelled to replay, but I admire the effort put into the game and found the villain compelling.