Mask of the Plague Doctor
By Peter Parrish
☆☆ (8/10)
Mask of the Plague Doctor—given to me for free by the Choice of Games staff!—is just (“just”) a solid title. And I mean that in the most complimentary way. Written by Peter Parrish, it is incredible solid in virtually every facet: nothing flashy or groundbreaking, just confidently good across the board—writing, mechanics, tone, romance, and structure. Everything feels well-built, dependable, and satisfying. In Mask of the Plague Doctor (henceforth Mask), you play as a (yep, you guessed it) plague doctor investigating the “Waking Death” in the small town of Thornback Hollow. The world Parrish plays in is not unlike our own: the setting is a medieval time period with broad English inspiration. However, there are also deities, rituals, and cults that may or may not be real. Of course, there are also varying political factions wanting your voice of support, so you are besieged by this tulmotious background as you try to root out the epidemic.
Pros:
Mask** is balanced with its plot.** In many text-based games, the author gets too ambitious with all their admittedly cool ideas. There’s usually at least four romances, a political plot, the main plot, and perhaps a skills-based plot. As a result, a novice author would fail to balance all these promised plots or fumble the ending. Instead, this is a rare CoG game that managed to let you control what you wished to pursue. Each plot beat and faction are balanced pretty much equally, and you can choose your focus as you see fit.
The tone/atmosphere. The tone of Mask gripped me. It manages to strike a perfect balance between satirical, funny, self-aware, and sarcastic, while also being absolutely serious, tense, and melancholy. Many times, I felt almost hopeless as the plague seemed to get worse—despite my best efforts. I slowly became more alarmed as the disease progress in small stages: a couple people unwell one day, then more, then some victims dropping dead, then the whole contamination ward becoming fuel. Conversely, I felt rather pleased with myself (and my companions!) when we unlocked some golden tidbit. I mean, an entire city’s population depends upon you for salvation. You come to care for a lot of folk and see the impact of your failures and successes unfolding in real time.
The romance. So, the romance in Mask is honestly quite simple and mild. You can romance one of your male or female colleagues or a nonbinary mercenary (though they’re not as prominent in the story as the others). There’s one small fade-to-black scene, some light kissing and some hugs, but honestly? I thought this romance (I chose the female plague doctor, Alice) was quite well-done. For about half the story, your companions focus on the, ya know, impending doom, so no romance. But as time passes, you can choose to spend time with an RO. Late nights investigating dead bodies and rotting corpses, how ~romantic~. Seriously though, I found Alice’s romance a sweet, slow-burn. Instead of other romance-heavy texts where the flirting option is “I want to jump your bones,” you can see the friendship build slowly, brick by brick. Only when you can truly trust Alice is when the lingering glances and warm smiles appears.
The characters/ROs. I have to praise Parrish’s character writing, in particularly the ROs. I’ve talked about Alice as a romance, but I haven’t touched on her as a character—which is frankly, terrific. There’s a surprising amount of depth to her. She’s the warmer, charismatic counterpart to Ioco, your other colleague, but she’s no blushing maiden. She’s incredibly brave—braver than me, the player—and has a fiery thirst for knowledge, no matter the cost. I usually don’t care about male ROs, but I found Ioco to be a thoughtful, sarcastic, yet trustworthy friend. They honestly just feel like real people. No tropes to pin them down. I also appreciated the fact you could disagree with them but still have a strong, healthy relationship. That’s trust, baby!
Player choice/reactivity. I played as a Dour, Compassionate, Blasphemous, Principled plague doctor (I know, what a combination). But I was quite surprised at the amount of flavor text and reactions to my attitude. There were a wide variety of responses, and all of them felt consistent. Also, I liked how Parrish treated political and religious subplots. Are deities and spirits real? If you lean into mysticism, hell yeah it is. If you played like me and rejected any religion, then curing the plague is all reason and science. Both playstyles are valid!
Some surprising plot twists! I was surprised by the real identity of a certain someone. And I also wasn’t going to get involved with the political side of things and just stick to my role as a doctor, but, a certain someone in charge was quite rude to my character. At that point, I didn’t need much convincing for me to decide to plot against them . . .
Length. I was honestly surprised with the length. The total word count is 410,000, and it was supported by a lot of long paragraphs and detailed descriptions. I loved how much text was shown on the page, personally. It always bothers me when you make a choice, and there’s only two or three lines about the effects.
Achievements. 92 freakin’ achievements? That’s gotta be the most in a CoG title.
Cons:
For some reason, my character insists on removing the plague mask quite often. No, I do not care you wish to kiss Alice, put the damn mask back on! I counted at least five times I took it off on my own volition. Bummer.
I wish the plot had more quiet moments. This is a minor nitpick because the plot is actually quite well-paced, but the ROs take a backseat to the plot. I felt like we should have been able to have a sit down talk about all the super serious events the protagonist goes through. Instead, it seems like the political or religious plotlines are only briefly discussed with them.
Short epilogue. In the epilogue, you get a brief scene on what your companions do after the plague. You get to choose your future, as well. I wish the epilogue was longer, considering ya know, the state of the town. Some more hints or descriptions on what you do with your chosen RO would have been nice.
One faction is not as balanced as the other. For the most part, each faction that wants your attention is well-written. There are pros and cons to each choice, and what you want to happen might differ from what actually happens. But for me, I found the Crown/Sibyl allegiance to be weaker than any other faction. They are written in-universe to be the overt villain and though I wanted to side with them to be a honorable subject, I just couldn’t see any reason to. The Crown, in general, barely shows up, though there seems to be an interesting backstory (especially the comments on no one knowning their gender or who they are).
A game about a plague … published in 2020 … Would the author like to share their sources with the class? 