So after A Midsummer Night´s choice which was fenomenal. It was well written, entertainin, funny. It was simply the best game of this year. I would like to see CoG´s take on tragedy such as Hamlet or maybe some other shaksperean comedies. The Taming of the Shrew could make a great game.
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If I were to attempt a Shakespeare themed game, I believe it would be a dual “Othello + Romeo and Juliet” combo story.
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Yeah that would have potential too. We need more Shaksearean games
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Am I permitted to change the title of this thread to ‘Do we need more Shakespearean games?’ instead of the current one? As it is it sounds more like a thread with one single ‘recommendation’, but it might make for a nice discussion thread.
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I’m hoping to do some more Shakespearean games down the road, including a revenge tragedy, and a city comedy, both of which are mash-ups of lots of different Renaissance plays, including lots of non-Shakespearean playwrights. (Even though, as it happens, the one I’m writing right now for Choice Of Games isn’t Shakespearean, I’m hoping that the one after that is!)
I’m sure someone would be able to do a really, really serious revenge tragedy. But I find the genre so funny that I don’t think I would be able to resist making it largely comic in tone. There’s a real life Renaissance revenge tragedy that has someone’s master plan to do a play (man, do I love plays-within-plays) and then have their target walk over the trap door on stage, and then have them fall into it, and onto a poisoned caltrop. That is the second-weirdest revenge in Renaissance tragedy. The first is poisoning the “lips” of the revenger’s dead girlfriend’s skull, whose body he has dressed up in fine clothes, and have his dead girlfriend be seduced and kissed by the target of the revenge.
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I vote yes for more shakespearean games, as long as they are well written and deviate in good ways from the source texts. If they follow the original story lines too closely without meaningful choices I’d rather just read the originals. A Midsummer Night’s choice was fantastic, but I’m afraid of how badly things can go when shakespeare is adapted, especially when adapted to completely different settings. I sat through a school production that had a weird space setting for what I think might have been romeo and juliet, mishmashed with a few other shakespearean plot bits and I just… was very confused.
But the kids did try hard, even if I think not even they fully understood the performance. The random silver robots from the good ship Verona had great costumes though.
The cliched idea does come to me for a COG game set in a final year of high school around the end of year performance and rehearsals of some shakespeare play. And the MC can audition to play a role, or help out as a crew member, or even direct the thing. And either help out shakespearean plot lines like getting two of the students together much ado about nothing style, or themselves be caught up in shakespeare storylines that occur in and around the play being performed, really going for the play in a play thing. Something like that might be good. And depending on how much deviation and detail the author is willing to write in you could have something like a tragic play being performed, but with highly comedic plot lines occurring around it, or tragic happenings at school and the characters having to force themselves to perform the comedic play. Or go for the true tragedy or comedy.
I’d say I’m equally excited and apprehensive over more shakespeare games, depending on what the author chooses to do with it.
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Oh absolutely! There’s actually this pretty cool game/book called “To Be Or Not To Be” which is a CYOA version of Hamlet, although it hams up the comedy and deconstructs the story rather than being a straight adaptation of Hamlet. I believe that’s the same with “Romeo and/or Juliet”. A Midsummer Night’s Choice is pretty comedic, but it takes itself seriously. In a good way, of course.
Shakespearian games could be a way for people that don’t have that much appreciation for the Bard to see his plays in a new perspective, and maybe they’ll learn to like him, too. And for his fans, the games will be a new way to enjoy Shakespeare’s plays.
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I’d read Shakespearean games.
But, then again, most of the games we already have use the Bard of Avon’s techniques on writing to make their plots. So, maybe we have a lot of his games arround us, and we didn’t notice it yet.
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I would love more Shakespearean games! Actually, I would love any classic adaption!
Now I’m imagining a Choice of Green Gables. Farm your education stats so you can become a school teacher! Choose between childhood friends-- want a slapslapkiss boyfriend or an artemisian romance?
*set muttonsleves true
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We need more good games. Whether they’re Shakespearean or not is immaterial.
There aren’t many original ideas - it’s what the creator does with them that makes all the difference. 
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