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.

Played: 7/6/24
Playtime: 13min, 8 playthroughs

GONNA DISCUSS WITH BIG SPOILERS, LIKE NOTHING BUT
it’s pretty short, go ahead and play first

Is there anything more dispiriting than social impotence? Is dispiriting the right word? It feels like it is, but it also feels like it isn’t… big enough? That your life exists only in the minds of those around you and no amount of cleverness, resistance, will or empathy, nothing actually of you makes the slightest difference in that. History is choked with marginalized peoples and genders that exist as outright property of others. Vast swaths of modern life still carry these impulses, usually applied to people whose lives and agendas are inconvenient to our own narratives. It is the worst kind of dehumanizing. I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t try to rank those kinds of things. It’s pretty bad though.

This is a work that uses a heroic narrative from Greek mythology to drive that point home. The packaging is super attractive, opening with classic art, then a story-appropriate background painting of roiling seas under translucent text box. As a player, you are making a series of choices as Andromeda during her attempted sacrifice and subsequent rescue. An amusing variety of responses from ‘sweep me away broad shoulders’ to ‘back off entitled ass’ are available to you. The inability of any of those choices to alter your path are the crux of the work. You can be sassy, reasonable, unreasonable, compliant or enthusiastic, and none of it gives you initiative in your own life. Depending on a particular runthrough, this can vary the experience from spineless surrender to despairing defeat.

It is worth noting that “nothing you do will change anything” is one of the emergent staples of IF-as-narrative. Its theme-to-implementation-difficulty equation has an off the charts ratio, especially in shorter works. It is one of the easiest things to implement, no? No branching narrative, maybe a state variable or two, just the one path with some alternate text. The success or failure of a work like this depends pretty definitively on how convincing and/or entertaining that message is, relative the theme of the piece.

It is pretty perfect against a theme of social impotence.

Is it fun? I mean, does that SOUND fun to you? This is not a piece aimed at entertainment per se (though some branches to have a wry wit to them). It has a point of view, a message, and is super effective at delivering it. As a short work of interactive art, AC accomplishes a vivid, crushing evocation. This f@%#ing sucks. Remember that, sez the work.