Special note to my parents: Though this blog post is about video games, you might be interested. Specifically, Choice of Games has a couple of games ("Tally Ho", "Jolly Good") that are kinda like reading P.G. Wodehouse novels.
Playing a Choice of Games game is something like reading
a choose-your-own-adventure book. Each screen of the game shows
you some text to read. At the bottom of the screen there's a
Next button to go to the next page screen; and
maybe above the Next button there's a set of choices.
Depending on what you pick, different things might happen on the
next screen and further on in the book game.
E.g., here's a screen from the game "The Bread Must Rise,"
in which you direct the actions and attitude of a contestant
in a necromantic baking competition. Towards the bottom of the
page, the game prompts you to choose a character motivation.
This motivation can affect future wording, perhaps even plot direction:
There's a lot of text in these games; some have a few illustrations, but most get along with just text. When I play these games, I tend to compare them to other choose-y games I found via the book 50 Years of Text Games; those other games have plenty of art: they suggest some of the book's action by superimposing portraits of the characters on an art background showing the setting. In those games, you read a little text, but infer a lot of the story from the art. You might think oh, I bet these text-only games seem drab compared to those with art. But as you play more of these choose-y games, the text games have more variety. I have a theory about this:
In a game with lots of art if an author tells the publisher "This scene is set in something like a bakery, but with necromantic magic, like with skeletons and stuff" the publisher doesn't already have appropriate art on hand. The publisher might say…
- "Your 'necromantic bakery' is going to look just like the professional kitchen art we commissioned for our restaurant game, but we can put a green filter on it to make it spookier."
- "It will take our artists a while to finish the art for the necromantic bakery, necromantic subway station, necromantic hair salon,… Hmm, when I add up the budget for these, and compare with the size of the market for necromantic baking games, I demand that you get the hell out of my office."
- "It will take our artists a while, but that's OK, we were going to serialize your novella-length game out over the course of three years anyhow."
The art-heavy games tend to have a lot of same-ol' same-old. You think to yourself, There's that generic restaurant kitchen again. Or you might think Ho-hum, yet another epic struggle of brave rebels against overwhelming odds; but I understand why the publishers wouldn't risk the art budget to try some niche-ier ideas.
There's a lot less constraint on these text-heavy games. You want superheroes? It's a lot easier to type the word "cape" than it is to draw folds in fabric. In Choice of Games and Heart's Choice (Choice of Games' romance imprint), I've played in Pulp-era science fiction, swashbuckling pirate action, 1001 Nights-ish fantasy, Edwardian-era farce, spooky vampire crypts, two undersea mermaid cities (not much alike), two modern-fantasy magical bureacracies (not much alike), the moon, Mars,…
I guess that's why, out of the various choose-y game systems out there, Choice of Games has my favorites. It's got a lot of variety! I'm not into ⅔ of it, too weird, not my kind of weird. But it has some games that are right up my alley.
I'll point out some of the specific games that I liked. There are over 100 games within Choice of Games, figuring out what you want to try might seem daunting at first. I hesitate to go overboard with my recommendations, though. A skilled critic can discern between underlying craftsmanship and the critic's own taste; I am not such a skilled critic. When I say "I wasn't into that Battlemage game; it had too many battles for my taste," you know just where to stick that review. That said, some recommendations:
- Cliffhanger: Challenger of Tomorrow
- Pulp-style science fiction.
- Elite Status: Platinum Concierge
- Rich-people problems require rich-people solutions, and you do your best to provide them. Attempting to save your soul is optional. Tragedy (unusual; most of these games are adventures, romances, and/or comedies)
- Tally Ho,
Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale - Edwardian upper-class comedies in the spirit of P.G. Wodehouse
- The Daring Mermaid Expedition
- Undersea mermaids, pirates,… I'm not sure how much I liked this because it was good and how much I liked this because it was my kind of weird. But I'm sure I liked it plenty.
- Creatures Such as We
- Moody piece about getting/not getting what you want, set on the moon
- The Dragon and the Djinn
- Swashbuckling magical adventure in a fantasy world not quite like the 1001 Nights
- Choice of Kung Fu
- Swashbuckling magical adventure in a fantasy world not quite like imperial China in those movies from my youth
- Social Services of the Doomed
- You are a government bureaucrat in a modern fantasy world investigating mysterious phenomena
Heart's Choice (Choice of Games' romance imprint):
- Belle-de-Nuit
- Swashbuckling nonmagical adventure on the streets of old-timey Paris, where you are a duellist for a brothel
- Forbidden Magic
- You are a government bureaucrat in a modern fantasy world investigating mysterious phenomena
Along with Choice of Games and the romance-ier Heart's Choice, they have another category of games: Hosted Games. As near as I can tell, just about anyone can post a game here. Like, I think when the publishers are deciding whether to publish a story, if they like the story, it goes on Choice of Games or Heart's Choice; if they don't much like the story but it's not illegal/hateful/grounds for a lawsuit, then it goes on Hosted Games. I tried reading two games there, got a few pages into each, and gave up. Those two games were pretty bad. There might be some fun games in there, but I'm not sure how to find those diamonds in the rough; that "rough" is rough.
