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Turbulent Seas of Text, December 24, 2023Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review
I am starting to worry the “Here There Be Poopdecks” nautical review sub-series is going to take over the main series! Unsurprisingly, with a name like The Ship we are up to part 6. An argument could be made to call it part 7 as well, but that’s a false accounting. HTBP is counting stories not instances.
This is a choice-select driven work. The choices are either embedded in descriptive text (when ‘free roaming’ for want of a better term) or in a postscript list when conversing. Most of the roaming choices are descriptive: things to look at, places to go, NPCs to talk to. When you click on a character you get conversation topics to cycle through. Only rarely do choices seem to have divergent narrative impact, beyond moving the plot forward. Even then, it seems mainly to affect relationship scores that at 2hrs have yet to affect the proceedings. The net effect is that yes, there are things to click, but functionally might as well be turning pages. Makes sense, as the work is decidedly narratively driven.
The narrative concerns two journeys, linked across time, by two captains asea for purpose and… self-awareness? It’s not a terrible setup, but by its introspective nature requires some heavy lifting in character and tone to usher the player along. For me, I don’t think the prose was up to the task, and sometimes the available player choices also deflated the objective.
The scenario opens with an urgent pounding on a protagonist’s door - pounding that is ignored to briefly explore surroundings. Certainly the scene-setting is necessary, but having the protagonist ignore what seems an urgent issue outside shades both the character and the narrative unflatteringly. It is a weird choice, because it would have been child’s play to enable casual exploration, then interrupt with urgent pounding later - it’s an unforced error. This lack of control over the narrative manifests often.
Open ended IF, where exploration and interactions occur at the player’s initiative, are an authorial challenge. Your text has to make sense regardless what order they find, say, the vampire and the holy water. With a constrained choice architecture, the author has more control and is able to make transitions feel more natural. Ship inexplicable cedes this advantage. Selections often introduce jarring mixes of non sequitur wordplay or sudden emotional swings as if the author did not anticipate the sequence. In one notable area, the protagonist goes from blind fury to playful friendship with the thinnest of transitions.
Character voices similarly suffer inelegant writing. While there is an attempt to give each character a unique voice, the voices chosen don’t quite ring true and are inconsistently rendered. For one, despite having characters from hundreds of years in the past and future, most have a decidedly contemporary use of profanity. Where the voices are different, they also feel… wrong? Inappropriate familiarity from crew members, a computer that occasionally dips into slang, contradictory emotional swings (one character reacts to a protagonist with both paternal fondness and abject terror). All of it undermines the settings and keeps the reader from Engaging. It is not helped that some conversation options never go away (while others do!), but when selected repeat context and information both characters have experienced before.
I’m not sure why but this example, where one protagonist’s belligerent avoidance of self-reflection is described, particularly rubbed me the wrong way:
Endless ways to avoid taking a peek within, finding out one’s
true call, this elusive idea that defines you, that drives you.
The Captain: “Maybe what drives me is precisely this: that I have
no idea what drives me.”
The text is explicitly saying the character resists introspection, except the VERY NEXT LINE is an out loud self-analysis. And talking to who, the narrator? The narration itself could easily have provided this insight, but the choice for the character to do it awkwardly contradicts exactly what it is asserting!
Narrative IF lives and dies on its prose. For me the clumsy moments accumulated over two hours and ultimately disconnected me from the story. There are other aspects around the periphery - some neat minigames tangential to the narrative, a simple but pleasant use of player-state icons, but the main thrust of the work did not click for me.
Played: 10/14/23
Playtime: 2hrs, not finished, 3/7 chapters complete, 7/20 Achievements
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical, Notably jarring choice transitions and architecture
Would Play After Comp?: No, can’t get past my prose distractions
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless