Andromeda Chained

The myth of Andromeda has inspired many artists, owing to the enduring appeal of naked chicks in bondage. The backstory:

Andromeda, princess of Aethiopia, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia is minding her own business when Mom boasts that she's more beautiful than the Nereids, Nereus' sea nymph daughters. This doesn't pose any credible threat to the Nereids' brand, but the Nereids and Nereus are colleagues of Poseidon's, so out of some sort of classically divine professional courtesy, he goes all wrathful on Aethiopia, flooding it or siccing the sea monster Cetus on it, or maybe both. The Oracle of Ammon (Egyptian god crossover event!) says the only thing to do to save the country is to sacrifice Andromeda to Cetus. So Cepheus shackles her naked to a rock to await her fate. (By no account did the Oracle specify the naked part, that was apparently just Cepheus' own creative vision for what a sea monster would find tasty.)

Getting involved with the gods is sort of like global thermonuclear war, but worse: the only way to win is for your whole family not to play.

Anyway, the soundtrack starts playing Holding Out for a Hero and Perseus shows up.

Perseus had just offed Medusa, having been personally accoutred by the gods, so he's got the sickest loadout in all of classical mythdom:

- Hermes' winged sandals
- Hades' helm of darkness (granting invisibility)
- Athena's harpe sword

And now he has all that and Medusa's head in a bag! (Truly, we have no clue whether Perseus was really worth a damn as a hero. Iorgos the shepherd's clumsy son could've kicked ass with that kit.)

Him being a Hero, and priorities being priorities, after slaying Medusa the very next thing he does with all this divine provenance is to fly all the way to northwest Africa to show Medusa's head to a king who snubbed him once, thus turning him into the Atlas mountains. But if it weren't for his Heroic pettiness (and wanting to stick to the coast 'cause he was a little nervous about getting completely lost flying across the Strait of Sicily) he might not have come across Andromeda in her time of need.

Andromeda Chained, the IF story, begins with Cepheus serving up his daughter on the rocks.

Subverting a patriarchal damsel in distress story isn't hard. Centering her makes it inevitable. The hard part is still having something interesting to say beyond the obvious consequences of the recontextualization. Andromeda Chained is meant to be played several times, and it can be without it overstaying its welcome. It's a choice game about not having agency, yet finds a way to play to the medium's strengths. It's well-written and judicious and deft in its brevity and the paths it offers and the slight variations they create, effectively dramatizing the leeway Andromeda does have: how much to resent all this.

The penultimate paragraph of the story always ends "the tale of Perseus wends on" in concession to it always being his tale. The real chains were never the ones on the rock.

Andromeda Chained is a cleverly written interactive reimagining of a classic Greek mythology about Perseus rescuing princess Andromeda of Aethiopia from a terrible sea monster Cetus. Andromeda’s mother, Cassiopeia, slighted the Nereids by boasting that Andromeda was more beautiful, and this angered Poseidon, god of the seas. So Poseidon sent a flood and the monster Cetus to destroy Aethiopia. King Cepheus, father of Andromeda, having consulted the oracle Ammon, believed that offering Andromeda as a sacrifice to the sea monster was the only way to save his kingdom.

So Andromeda Chained begins with King Cepheus chaining his daughter to a rocky cliff at the shore. The tale is told from the perspective of Andromeda, who is given little choice about her fate. The only true choice she has is how she will express her feelings about her plight. Will she be angry? Courageous? Fearful?

When macho pretty boy Perseus enters the scene, will she be smitten? Skeptical? Angry?
The fate of Andromeda is a record of ancient Greek mythology, but how she decides to feel about it, that’s her choice, your choice as the player.

This is a very short work of interactive fiction. I was left wanting to know more about Andromeda and her life with Perseus. After all, the myths tell us that the gods were so impressed with her that they immortalized her for all time as a constellation in the stars. Surely she must have been an amazing woman and not merely a prize for Perseus. She bore seven children for the hero and stayed by his side while he ruled as King of Tiryns. Her eldest, Perses, was said to be the progenitor of Persia.

Andromeda Chained is well written and thought provoking and left me with a desire to seek out more information about the character. Unfortunately the mythology about Andromeda is rather vague, but I suspect it is enough of a scaffolding to construct a delightful retelling of this amazing woman’s story, hint, hint, Aster.

The randomizer always enjoys its little jokes, its latest being to sequence a somber choice-based retelling of a Greek myth right after a parser romp riffing on one. For all that the games are quite different, the particular stories at issue aren’t too dissimilar: while Lysidice and the Minotaur centered on a young woman dedicated as a sacrifice to a monster, only to be rescued by a demigod, Andromeda Chained centers on the eponymous princess who’s dedicated as a sacrifice to a monster, only to be rescued by a demigod. Both even subvert the stories in analogous ways, with the former swapping the roles of monster and rescuer, whereas the latter makes the rescuer a dunderheaded representative of the patriarchy. They have their differences, though – Lysidice is a romp that ends on an optimistic note, whereas Andromeda Chained is a somber reflection on fate that may end differently in multiple replays, but never ends happily.

It’s also a focused game: it starts on the rocks by the sea where your father is about to chain you – for those unfamiliar with the backstory, your mother boasted of your beauty in a way that offended Poseidon, so he sent a sea monster to ravage your home and the Oracle has said that it’ll only go away if you’re offered up as a snack – and proceeds through a few beats of isolation and fear before Perseus shows up to destroy the serpent, and off-handedly mention that he’s decided to marry you once he completes the rescue. This is still plenty of time to engage with the situation, though, and the available choices do a good job of articulating various stances towards what’s happening without changing the fundamental direction of the myth, which would undermine the theme of inevitability that permeates the work. Here are the options you’re given after you’ve been chained, but before you have any hope of rescue:

"-Look for a means of escape.
-Await your fate.
-Wonder why you have to be naked.
-Think about how glad you are to be helping your kingdom.
-Think about your father."

This division – some options indicating resistance, others indicating acquiescence, and one emphasizing the more ridiculous or credulity-straining aspects of the myth – runs through most of the game’s choice points, and helps unify the emphasis on fate with the emphasis on patriarchy: after all, it’s a god whose curse has doomed you, your father who personally chains you up, and Perseus who decides that he can do whatever he wants with you since you would have died without him. As a result, your attitude towards inevitability maps to your attitude towards these domineering men.

The language throughout is effective; there’s a note of archness or wryness running through even the non-snarky options, and it’s couched in archaic-sounding syntax that doesn’t draw attention to itself. It doesn’t strike me as a distinctively Ancient Greek voice, but it’s solid enough for what it needs to do, and most of the key moments land, like this reflection on how blameworthy you find your father:

"Is your father a good king? Does he truly love you, to do something like this? These questions glide in and out of your mind like gulls on the water, but you’re not sure their answers are relevant. You decide that at the very least he is competent. After all, a single life for the safety of his entire kingdom? It makes a certain kind of sense, and you’re sure he did a lot of beard-stroking to figure that out himself. Yes, it’s your life, and no, you don’t particularly want to die. Still, it’s only a single life."

The only real criticism I’d levy at Andromeda Chained is that it never surprised me: from its framing, it looks like a feminist take on the Andromeda myth, and if you’re familiar with the rudiments of feminist deconstruction and the major beats of the legend, there’s a lot that you’ll see coming. Part of me wishes the game had leaned harder into idiosyncrasy in some way – by making the characters more naturalistic and less archetypal, say, or risking a stranger prose style, or confusing the themes a little so they feel less stark. But that’s just a judgment based on aesthetic preferences; making any of those changes would shift the flavor of the game without impacting its already-high quality, and there’s certainly always room for more engaging, clear-eyed pieces like this.