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Number of Reviews: 5
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1-5 of 52 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
To the Oversea, again, February 16, 2024by ccpost (Greensboro, North Carolina) You play as the warden of a crumbling temple, keeping alive the lore of a serpent god while also looking after a brood of odd, half-human sea children. As you proceed through the game, you glean bits and pieces of this fading religion and the strange world you inhabit, but you as the player never get the full picture. The persistent mystery, the uneasy unknowing, that continues even after multiple run throughs is what makes this game special. Akin to the experience of religious devotion, this game feels both incredibly massive and claustrophobic in its intimacy.
The game looks and sounds fantastic: a Twine rendering of a forgotten illuminated manuscript. The slightly glowing gold hyperlinks look like ink that's caught a bit of candlelight. The dull chanting in the background pushes forward deliberately, certainly. This look and sound are complements to the text: the thoughts of a hermit, thoughts that get puzzled over and twisted through years of silent, repeated meditation. Cycling links are used to great effect to communicate this mode of thought that folds in on itself until clarity -- perhaps -- is achieved, or lost for good.
Baccaris smartly doles out hints and glimpses of the game world and mythos in subtle and understated details embedded in prose that ranges in tone from contemplative to foreboding. I'm left so intrigued by the Oversea and the world beyond the island. Perhaps most powerfully, the player learns about this history and religion through a series of rituals. This was such a cool mechanic: as the player, you chose the ritual you want to perform, and then you tweak details of the ritual based on what you think will be most likely to garner a response from the Pursuer. It's through puzzling over these details that you really understand the nuances of this religion and the different orientations one might have to this ineffable god.
There is a story arc that's suggested at, as to whether the aging devotee to a fading religion can find peace, but this wasn't the strongest element of the game for me. I could keep playing around with the rituals, trying out different configurations of sacrifice, prayer, and votive offering -- even if the serpent god isn't ready to reveal themself to me.
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2 people found the following review helpful:
light a candle for me, September 19, 2023play time: 15-20 mins
The reader plays the last remaining priest devoted to an unnamed being, whose worship takes the form of daily ritual.
Loneliness and duty run through the story: this priest houses not-quite-human children, and they too make up part of the priest's daily duties. While there may be loneliness in unanswered prayer, there is, ultimately, solace and a kind of community in this sort of care. And if a religion lives only with belief (deity is an entirely different matter), then the player/character holds existential power.
The overall aesthetic, both in writing and visual design, is appropriately gloomy and formal. There are subtle nods to a deeper backstory, but the focus still lies squarely on the earthly: the priest, the children, the physical setting.
Different levels of choice are made transparent to the reader with the text formatting to indicate its importance in the narrative's progress. The story has shallow branching which converges in a suitably ambiguous ending, as befits a deity which may or may not exist - whose existence may, in fact, depend on the player's choices.
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Thoughtful, emotional reflections on death, loneliness, and creativity, September 14, 2019"You have devoted your life to a god whose voice you have never heard"
In Devotionalia, you play as the most senior priest of a dying cult, far from civilization and any human interaction beyond the lost children you foster as acolytes. It depicts the thankless, daily, forgotten tasks of a decaying mental universe -- crucially, it does so in an incredibly empathetic and emotional way. Even as we make choices on behalf of the priest, we are invited to establish our sympathy with them and an understanding of their world-view beyond the specific lore and ritualistic practices of the game.
Even in the most Lovecraftian, rich descriptions of arcane deities and strange beings, the prose's focus is upon how it might feel to emotionally live within such a world. The old age of gods and religion is, in many ways, our own, despite our late-expressed belief that we are "young". The children we care for think us "ancient", and perhaps for good reason. Our character does not only worship a god, but commits a profound -- almost heretical, although the narrative does not reflect on this overtly -- act of empathy with one: we think of the "pain of godliness". And our own devotion, as the Twine makes clear with its synonyms, just as easily resolves as "desperation".
Several of the best choices in the game are themselves powerful in their implications even if not chosen (for example, the opportunity to "sacrifice yourself" instead of sacrificing a meal/producing artwork/composing a prayer early in the narrative), compelling you to go back and explore other paths. Thoroughly recommended.
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1 people found the following review helpful:
Haunting, atmospheric game that allows for multiple interpretations, January 23, 2019In this choice-based game you play as the last priest of a dying cult. You have never heard your god's voice, and you wonder if the god is still there. Your primary choice in the game is to decide which particular act of devotion you will perform, in the hope that your god will speak to you or give you some kind of a sign.
The music is excellent, particularly the piece that sounds like Gregorian chant. It completely changes the feel of the game. The background graphics are also lovely.
Also, the opening line is up there with Erstwhile's as one of the best opening lines in IFComp 2018: "You have devoted your life to a god whose voice you have never heard." Immediately gripping.
More substantively, DEVOTIONALIA manages to pull off a feat that is difficult for any artwork in any form: It's emotionally powerful and yet ambiguous enough to allow for multiple interpretations.
For example, I kept coming back to how DEVOTIONALIA dramatizes a question that many of us probably ask ourselves at least once in our lives, perhaps when we're alone with our thoughts and no distractions: "Has my entire life been based on something that does not matter?" The priest wants a sign that the deity is there, that the god he has spent his entire life serving still cares, that what he's done with his time on this earth has served a real purpose.
There's plenty of religious literature that wrestles with situations like the priest's: of people going forward, day after day and year after year, living out their acts of devotion (in all kinds of ways) - without direct confirmation of the value of what they're doing. I think of some of the Christian mystical works like John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul; or the title of Dorothy Day's autobiography The Long Loneliness; or Mother Teresa's diaries, in which it was revealed that she spent decades working with the poor of Calcutta because of a directive from God, all the while questioning God's very existence; or even of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, in which he wrestles with his faith and his wife's death from cancer.
But you don't have to be a religious believer to wonder whether this thing that you've devoted your life to is worth it. Have I made the correct career choices? Is this political movement I'm involved in really for the best? To reference another game in this Comp, have my reproductive choices been the right ones? Many of us, like the priest, just want a sign from God, or some confirmation from the universe.
In DEVOTIONALIA the priest gets his sign. Something is there. But the sign doesn't really answer his fundamental question: "Does what I've done with my life matter?"
Which is probably the right ending. This question may ultimately be one we must answer for ourselves.
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2 people found the following review helpful:
A short dark fantasy game about an ancient religion, December 25, 2018I beta tested this game.
Devotionalia is a shortish but replayable fantasy game that is all about atmosphere and contemplation. It is a choice-based game, but not immediately recognizable as Twine, due to the extreme customization: graphics, music, many variants of link types, and more.
The game comes with a helpful instruction page. Essentially, you are a priest of an ancient religion, the gods almost forgotten. You wish to learn from them, and thus you make your devotions.
There's not an action-driven story or a big cast of characters. It's a somber reflection on life. If you've ever seen the painting "The Monk by the Sea" by Caspar David Friedrich, this game is essentially the interactive fiction version of that painting.
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