A marvellous romance with a hint of murder. Lose your heart to a stolen city in this game of amorous intrigue! Seek love, for yourself or your friends. Help a murdered man find justice. And watch out for the bats.
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Anyone who knows me knows I love the Sunless series so I jumped at the chance to play something in that world again.
The central mystery is well done, not overly frustrating and fits into the kind of stories Failbetter loves to tell. Given that my primary reason for going into this was more Fallen London stuff I got exactly what I came for, and setting it just after the fall was a nice change in perspective.
The "build a narrative using clues to unlock questions" central mechanic is something I feel like they could return to in the future.
The worst part is the dating aspect, which is horribly blunt and honestly could have been cut entirely. I think the idea here was to avoid the common dating sim pitfall of "I was just trying to be nice and now this NPC I have no interest in wont leave me alone". But it leaves every romance feeling unearned and removed any obligation for the writing to actually build the connections required for this aspect to work.
Still, if as I do you don't particularly care about that and just want more Victorian weirdness you should definitely try this one out.
The central mystery is well done, not overly frustrating and fits into the kind of stories Failbetter loves to tell. Given that my primary reason for going into this was more Fallen London stuff I got exactly what I came for, and setting it just after the fall was a nice change in perspective.
The "build a narrative using clues to unlock questions" central mechanic is something I feel like they could return to in the future.
The worst part is the dating aspect, which is horribly blunt and honestly could have been cut entirely. I think the idea here was to avoid the common dating sim pitfall of "I was just trying to be nice and now this NPC I have no interest in wont leave me alone". But it leaves every romance feeling unearned and removed any obligation for the writing to actually build the connections required for this aspect to work.
Still, if as I do you don't particularly care about that and just want more Victorian weirdness you should definitely try this one out.
i feel like when i find it hard to put down i should rate it a 4.5 at least, right? when it comes to mystery stuff im not much of a theory crafter, i just read along and get surprised at the reveal like a dumbass later, but the murder mystery in this game is fun! i found it out on my first run decently quickly, i finished in the early-mid of yule i think but it was engaging! especially because i romanced archie pretty early (in my defense i thought the game only lasted until the end of the first season for.. some reason) so i definitely had a much more personal motive for helping him
ig my main gripe about this game is that 2 actions per day does feel really limiting, even if you have many days to do everything. and its probably just a me thing because i focused on solving the murder over anything else and paid my rent back as soon as i could, but after awhile it became difficult to get the money to buy anything really. but this is my immediate thoughts after my first run and i still have multiple runs in mind so!
shoutout to the sfx department bc a bitch can stim to the noise tht plays when u click thru dialogue
ig my main gripe about this game is that 2 actions per day does feel really limiting, even if you have many days to do everything. and its probably just a me thing because i focused on solving the murder over anything else and paid my rent back as soon as i could, but after awhile it became difficult to get the money to buy anything really. but this is my immediate thoughts after my first run and i still have multiple runs in mind so!
shoutout to the sfx department bc a bitch can stim to the noise tht plays when u click thru dialogue
disappointment of the year
always a pleasure to return to failbetter's fallen london, and after the Constance update, it's a pleasure to be able to assign it a decent score. some lovely writing lies herein, and the actual mystery at the root of the narrative is truly a joy to piece together. also, i'd plow archie until his knees splintered the floorboards.
I've played two full playthroughs now and I only really worked out how the core mechanic worked at the end of the first run. I also only worked out the solution to the games central problem on the final turn of the game, which potentially makes this very well balanced.
The novel conceit is being able to construct stories using conversation topics you've encountered, but by leaving part of story unfinished you can now use this as the basis of a question to ask NPCs. By the time you get the hang of it, it becomes very expressive.
Whilst a core part of the game is the dating sim mechanics, in trying to complete as many of the quests as possible I didn't really have time to engage with it so can't speak to that.
If you have any interest in narrative design then you will definitely find this game interesting at the very least.
The novel conceit is being able to construct stories using conversation topics you've encountered, but by leaving part of story unfinished you can now use this as the basis of a question to ask NPCs. By the time you get the hang of it, it becomes very expressive.
Whilst a core part of the game is the dating sim mechanics, in trying to complete as many of the quests as possible I didn't really have time to engage with it so can't speak to that.
If you have any interest in narrative design then you will definitely find this game interesting at the very least.
Bit of an odd one.
I was intrigued due to Failbetter's renowned writing quality. This seemed to be all packed in there ie a visual novel so no gameplay. The set up is like Pathologic 1/2 if it was just the overworld map, bouncing between the important locales, and having conversations (now that's quite the version of Path 2, huh?). Listening to game studies study buddies made me interested in a game whose director is a renowned narrative designer and something of a scholar (i think?) and how that translates into an actual game.
Anyways the writing is a little bit everywhere and doesn't gel. There's this sentence that gets repeated all the time about how: "the conversation turning to animals and it is even more weird [than what was previously said]." It is a transitory sentence of sorts to shift between two separate conversations. That one sentence encapsulates the game: too vague, out of place.
The romance is lackluster, there's some fun descriptions but why am I flirting with everyone? I kept saying I was going to marry Archie but the game reprompts me to deliberate over the relationship of our status. I imagine this is quite the design complication: there is freedom in being able to reassess and maybe it shows a healthier relationship to relationships, but the game is only a few days and I feel like being tied to your choices would make things a bit more impactful overall. Also, my having said I was going to marry Archie did not seem to affect the dialogue throughout the game much.
I could keep going, but it is really a mixed bag. There is some fun dialogue and I enjoyed the stories I experienced. One thing that I wish the dialogue did was allow the more text to appear on screen as a stylistic choice. As is, only a sentence or two fits on screen. But for dramatic effect, when the more flower-y prose is pulled out, a whole paragraph would have been really effective.
This has good music with a fun main theme!
I was intrigued due to Failbetter's renowned writing quality. This seemed to be all packed in there ie a visual novel so no gameplay. The set up is like Pathologic 1/2 if it was just the overworld map, bouncing between the important locales, and having conversations (now that's quite the version of Path 2, huh?). Listening to game studies study buddies made me interested in a game whose director is a renowned narrative designer and something of a scholar (i think?) and how that translates into an actual game.
Anyways the writing is a little bit everywhere and doesn't gel. There's this sentence that gets repeated all the time about how: "the conversation turning to animals and it is even more weird [than what was previously said]." It is a transitory sentence of sorts to shift between two separate conversations. That one sentence encapsulates the game: too vague, out of place.
The romance is lackluster, there's some fun descriptions but why am I flirting with everyone? I kept saying I was going to marry Archie but the game reprompts me to deliberate over the relationship of our status. I imagine this is quite the design complication: there is freedom in being able to reassess and maybe it shows a healthier relationship to relationships, but the game is only a few days and I feel like being tied to your choices would make things a bit more impactful overall. Also, my having said I was going to marry Archie did not seem to affect the dialogue throughout the game much.
I could keep going, but it is really a mixed bag. There is some fun dialogue and I enjoyed the stories I experienced. One thing that I wish the dialogue did was allow the more text to appear on screen as a stylistic choice. As is, only a sentence or two fits on screen. But for dramatic effect, when the more flower-y prose is pulled out, a whole paragraph would have been really effective.
This has good music with a fun main theme!