Lotus Spring as a game is comprised of two halves; one half is an edutainment game exploring Qing dynasty China through reconstructing the Old Summer Palace/The Garden of Perfect Brightness, which was destroyed by British forces during the Second Opium War in the 1860's. The other half is a melancholic and meditative proto-narrative exploration game focused on the historical fiction romance of the Xianfeng Emperor returning to the Old Summer Palace after the death of his beloved consort, Lotus Spring, who was put on house arrest there by order of the Dowager Empress out of jealousy.
Lotus Spring is a narrative exploration game mechanics-wise. The puzzles are quite simple inventory or interaction puzzles that you perform in almost every area of the gardens. What really makes them meaningful is that they are all actions the Emperor did with Lotus Spring and through those actions he reminisces of their time together. These events are further detailed in the journal the Emperor has in his inventory as well. You can also go into an info screen that goes into detail about the items you find around in areas of the gardens and their ties with Chinese history and culture. The game is mostly smooth sailing, though some areas of the game can be a bit tricky to traverse due to that old pre-rendered first-person adventure game problem where you’re not sure if something is an exit to a new area or not. Also you can lock yourself out of exploring the gardens if you get too close to endgame so I missed completing one of the area’s puzzles and unlocking a memory. The game looks quite nice for the time and it makes exploring the gardens an immersive experience coupled with the Emperor’s remembrances of the past.
Playing Lotus Spring now and knowing of its development makes me feel that it was a game ahead of its time. The game was co-developed by an all-women team, Women-Wise, a team with the goal of supporting women game developers and making more appealing games to women. They took up supporting the project alongside the original developers, Xing Xing, after many other publishers at the time rejected the project because it was an adventure game focused on romance. Unfortunately it sold poorly and mainstream response from reviews for it at the time were really short-sighted to say the least. With the rise of the narrative exploration genre in the past decade I think it would have done better in the current environment where adventures games aren’t expected to all have harebrained inventory or logic puzzles to be considered good.
Lotus Spring is overall a gem of a 90’s adventure game and definitely deserves more love.
Lotus Spring is a narrative exploration game mechanics-wise. The puzzles are quite simple inventory or interaction puzzles that you perform in almost every area of the gardens. What really makes them meaningful is that they are all actions the Emperor did with Lotus Spring and through those actions he reminisces of their time together. These events are further detailed in the journal the Emperor has in his inventory as well. You can also go into an info screen that goes into detail about the items you find around in areas of the gardens and their ties with Chinese history and culture. The game is mostly smooth sailing, though some areas of the game can be a bit tricky to traverse due to that old pre-rendered first-person adventure game problem where you’re not sure if something is an exit to a new area or not. Also you can lock yourself out of exploring the gardens if you get too close to endgame so I missed completing one of the area’s puzzles and unlocking a memory. The game looks quite nice for the time and it makes exploring the gardens an immersive experience coupled with the Emperor’s remembrances of the past.
Playing Lotus Spring now and knowing of its development makes me feel that it was a game ahead of its time. The game was co-developed by an all-women team, Women-Wise, a team with the goal of supporting women game developers and making more appealing games to women. They took up supporting the project alongside the original developers, Xing Xing, after many other publishers at the time rejected the project because it was an adventure game focused on romance. Unfortunately it sold poorly and mainstream response from reviews for it at the time were really short-sighted to say the least. With the rise of the narrative exploration genre in the past decade I think it would have done better in the current environment where adventures games aren’t expected to all have harebrained inventory or logic puzzles to be considered good.
Lotus Spring is overall a gem of a 90’s adventure game and definitely deserves more love.
slibslime
1 year ago