Good review @AletheiaKnights. I think I’ll check out A Squire’s Tale as I enjoy shorter, branchy, more whimsical stories a lot of the time. I’ll keep in mind it may have a few wrinkles here and there
3 Likes
Faerie’s Bargain: The Price of Business
originally posted on Reddit
[This review was originally posted shortly after the game was released, and the text reflects that fact. I have posted it unmodified.]
In Faerie’s Bargain: The Price of Business, Trip Galey has embarked on a magnificent undertaking, a glorious feast of language and imagery, a twisting of history and folklore in a way that testifies to boundless creativity, lucid erudition, and deep love. And for the most part, he succeeds.
For the most part.
There’s a good plot and some intriguing characters, but this game’s strengths lie in the worldbuilding and the sheer ecstasy of Galey’s enchanting prose. If you think of fairy tales as charming little stories about people who live happily ever after, you’re in for a rude awakening here: Galey’s Victorian London - both the mundane city Above and the magical one Below - is driven by some harsh realities, foremost among them greed. Above, factory owners exploit prepubescent laborers; Below, the ruthless goblins and fey of European folklore - the kind of folk who go around tricking desperate mortals out of their firstborns - barter and haggle over such commodities as second chances, true love’s kisses, and strokes of genius. It’s a world by turns comedic, disturbing, and delightful; and it’s always, always surprising.
And Galey has the literary gifts to do it justice. Heaven and earth, that man can write. To say his prose is lush and sensuous, poetic, doesn’t begin to do it justice. He occasionally writes a sentence so beautiful it’ll take your breath away, if you’re the kind of person whose breath gets taken away by a beautiful sentence, and yet somehow, when I look back, it’s not the words that come to me but a flutter of sensations: the whisper of silk, the ticking of a clock, the moist odor of roses and pollution, the glimmer of mirrors and the glitter of gold. And it’s not simply the setting that’s brought to life by the vivid imagery; the PC is, too, as descriptions and metaphors often vary somewhat depending on the background you’ve chosen for your character: where the hunter stalks, the tailor threads their way through.
There’s wordplay, too. Just consider these two sentences: “All around you, other merchants are doing likewise, and you join a growing stream of your fellow fey-folk, flowing without knowing precisely where you are headed. Each holds in their hand a coin, and the subtle tug of it guides you as like calls to like, a gathering hoard.” It could almost lull you to sleep, all that alliteration and growing, flowing, knowing, and then suddenly there’s “headed” where it could have been “going,” and it washes over you like the breaking of a spell. Then, there’s that “hoard” - an error, surely? since of course a mass of people on the move is a “horde.” But wait, they’re being guided to their destination by enchanted coins, and it’s really the coins that are being drawn away together, which would make them, in fact, a hoard of sorts, and ye gods this is brilliant, brilliant!
Ironically, when it comes to the PC’s actions, Galey often seems inclined to tell rather than show. I would choose to have my PC respond to a slight with a devastating witticism, say, and the next page would tell me how my verbal sparring partner responded to his quip, without actually telling me what the quip was. Or I would choose to have him advance his case in an argument by producing evidence, after which I would be informed, without ever being told what the evidence was, whether the listeners found it persuasive. Perhaps it would have bothered me less in a game that didn’t so often sparkle with intelligence and wit, or if it had happened only once or twice, but here I always felt just a tiny bit cheated, especially when it happened several times.
Also, I would be remiss at this time not to point out that this game has a lot of continuity issues. For starters, the game is often a bit sloppy about keeping up with what the PC knows or doesn’t know at any given time. It’s subtle enough that I wasn’t even always sure when it was happening, whether the fault was in my attention or comprehension or whether a thing sounded unfamiliar because I really hadn’t ever seen it mentioned before, but the cumulative effect often had me feeling as if I were trying to follow a movie I’d missed the first twenty minutes of. This kind of error is the hardest to document and report, especially when there’s so much of it. Other continuity errors were far more obtrusive (making a choice that brought me right back to the beginning of the conversation I’d just finished), even game-breaking (as in someone being dead who wasn’t supposed to be, then turning up alive in the next chapter), but I expect those to be corrected quickly. They may well be working on them this very minute. (Okay, probably not literally this very minute, but only because I’m a weirdsmobile who writes reviews in the middle of the night.)
On the strength of my conviction that the most grievous errors will be mended quickly, I’m going to recommend that you buy this game. Personally, I wouldn’t regret buying it even if that update never came - that’s how much I love this game for what it does right. The world of Faerie’s Bargain is a place I just want to be able to visit again and again.
P.S. Whatever goblin is out there supplying Trip Galey with bottles of creative inspiration should feel free to send me a PM. I’m sure there’s a little corner of my soul I could spare in trade.
12 Likes
Fatehaven
Devon Connell is best known as the author of the popular, albeit controversial, Samurai of Hyuga series - but before there was Hyuga, there was Fatehaven.
As a young man or woman coming of age in the medieval-Europeanesque land of Delmacia, you’ve led a pretty ordinary life: helping out at home, attending religious services every Sunday, flirting with other young people and dreaming about what the future has in store. Helping out a wounded stranger - and a rather attractive one, at that - was an exciting change of pace. You had no idea that stranger was a powerful mage. You never would have guessed that they would awaken your own elemental affinity and start secretly training you in the ways of magic. And not in your wildest nightmares would you have imagined that you would soon be drawn into a violent conflict with the Church’s zealous crusaders determined to stamp out magic in the name of the Fates.
I didn’t know much about Fatehaven when I started to play; like many older games, it has a short blurb without much detail. I like elemental magic, though, so I figured I would enjoy it - and for the most part, I did. It’s not particularly polished, but it’s entertaining, and there are some understated scenes involving the consequences of violence that are almost devastating. Connell’s narrative voice is distinguished by a quirky, edgy sense of humor; there are meta asides and anachronistic quips and a lot of sexual innuendo. A little of that kind of thing goes a long way, and I can’t help wishing he’d dialed it back a notch, but for the most part it worked for me. No, it’s generally not the most mature or sophisticated humor, but it feels about right for a seventeen-year-old protagonist.
Unfortunately, however, my playthrough was unsatisfactory. It’s not just that my character died halfway through; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed games before despite getting a “bad” ending. But I had just played through a somewhat confusing action scene and was looking forward to an explanation for some of what had happened, only to die before one was offered, without knowing even in a general sense how the ending I got was the consequence of my choices or what I could have done differently. It also annoyed me that the game opened in medias res with my character and her presumed love interest being chased by a dragon, before flashing back to simpler times - but my character was able to die before the story caught up to that opening point. That’s some pretty sloppy game design.
I’m sure I’ll give Fatehaven another try someday and see if I can get a better ending. It’s not a bad game by any means. But if you’re looking for elemental magic or a high fantasy quest, you can very easily do better.
13 Likes
Whoa whoa whoa.
If you died before the big twist, I’d urge you to go back and give it another try sooner rather than later. 
It ends up doing something much more distinctive than anything you’ve included in your review. A second readthrough would probably showcase how railroady the game actually is, but it would be worth it to get to the proper ending.
8 Likes
That actually doesn’t surprise me, somehow.
I always worry when I post my reviews here, most of which are based on a single playthrough, that I’m necessarily selling some of the games short. (This is much, much less of a concern when I write for ChoiceBeat, since those reviews are based on multiple playthroughs.) I don’t know when I’ll get back to Fatehaven, but thank you for putting me (and my, uh, legions of readers) on notice that there’s more going on than my experience may have indicated.
6 Likes
The Fernweh Saga: Book One
EXT. HIGHWAY - EVENING - AERIAL VIEW. Ominous music plays as a lone car follows the curves of the road through a vast dark forest.
Okay, The Fernweh Saga isn’t a film, so it actually opens inside the car, with a love ballad playing over the radio between fits of static. But when the car breaks down just outside of the tiny municipality of Fernweh, the stage couldn’t be more perfectly set for a tale of small-town spookiness. The setup is so perfect it might be almost cozy … if it weren’t so eerie.
You were born in Fernweh and spent your childhood there, but you haven’t been back since your early teens, when your parents died and your grandfather sent you away. Now that your grandfather is dead, it falls to you to settle his affairs. You and your friend B (Beckett or Becca; as with all of the potential love interests, their gender is determined by the player), who comes along for moral support, intended to stay only a day or two, but the mechanic says it will be nearly a week before your car is ready. At first, it’s not so bad. The bed and breakfast where you’re staying is now under the management of your onetime neighbor and playmate S (Silas or Sofia) and their mother. When your agenda requires you to drop by the police station, you discover your childhood best friend J (James or Jane) works there as a detective. Even your old rival R (Reese or Ruby), the scion of Fernweh’s most prominent family, is still there, and they’ve grown up rather charming, especially if you like style and swagger. But there’s more to Fernweh than happy reunions: J wants to meet with you away from the station to discuss the circumstances of your grandfather’s death, not all of which made it into the official report. A distraught father shows up at a memorial event for your grandfather to report his teenage son missing. Soon you and your friends, both old and new, are joining midnight search parties, meeting in the diner for strategy sessions, and putting the key ring your grandfather left you to good use as you delve into the secrets of the man you once believed you knew.
It was inevitable that the first (and so far only) volume of Aelsa Trevelyan’s Fernweh Saga would remind me of nothing so much as Jim Dattilo’s Out for Blood, but although the similarities are undeniable (from a protagonist whose car breaks down just outside the small town to which they’re returning after the death of an estranged grandfather, to an organized search for a missing teenage boy), Fernweh is much more tauntingly enigmatic. Likewise, the wooded setting, eccentric townsfolk, and hints of layered secrets will feel familiarly uncanny to fans of Twin Peaks (and there’s a certain extended dream sequence halfway through that’s so Lynchian I could almost hear some unwritten Badalamenti composition droning in the background), but ultimately Fernweh is sui generis. Every time I thought I was starting to understand what was really going on, I was mostly wrong. Since this is intended as a series opener, Trevelyan doesn’t clear up the mystery in the end - there are answers, but they raise more questions than they resolve - but whatever is going on in Fernweh is legitimately spooky and downright weird.
Relationships with other characters are a major aspect of Fernweh, although I found them less satisfying than the mystery elements. All four of the PC’s frequent companions can be romanced, and J and R can be romanced as a throuple, but it’s all slow-burn so far, at least on the route I played. That’s not a problem in itself - the PC has known most of these characters as adults for all of a week, and I prefer romance that takes time to develop. Unfortunately, much of the space that could be devoted to developing the ROs as complex and interesting characters goes instead to awkward exchanges and either endlessly looking at each other or studiously avoiding eye contact, often in monumentally inappropriate situations. (There’s a reason the way the body responds to threats isn’t called the fight-or-flirt response.) But although the characters were less developed than I would have preferred, they were pleasant enough, with moments of genuinely winsome banter, and I hope they’ll become more compelling as the series continues.
What disappointed me most about Fernweh was the quality of the writing. It’s not awful - Trevelyan even manages a nifty turn of phrase here and there - but it’s very amateurish. Although it’s written in second person, the narration frequently touches upon what other people are thinking or feeling that the PC couldn’t directly know, breaking the immersion of the limited perspective. Trevelyan has a tendency to overexplain, not only in the sense of telling rather than showing, but also in ways that rather insult the reader’s intelligence. She delves into such mysteries as why people drink coffee in the morning; why a medical office that handles corpses might have a utilitarian interior even if the reception area decor is a little more creative; and why a person might ask a friend they saw suffer a severe injury the previous evening, who is now walking around with a heavily bandaged arm, how they’re feeling today. As for the copyediting … it seems, based on a note at the end of the game, to have been done by a personal friend of the author’s, and I don’t want to be unkind, so I’ll just say that I hope Hosted Games insists on hiring a professional when Book Two comes out.
But for all the room there is here for improvement, when Book Two is finished I’ll be buying it not merely as a HG completionist or even as a self-appointed ChoiceScript game reviewer, but as a fan. I want more Fernweh. I want to uncover the town’s secrets, to explore corners I haven’t yet, to find what exactly is going on in the woods, why there’s a server at the diner who’s creepily fascinated with my character, to understand why the [redacted] [redacted] in the end when I tried to [redacted], which actually didn’t surprise me that much because [redacted].
If you’re looking for a spooky story that will leave you haunted, shaking your fist at that cliffhanger but hungry for more, The Fernweh Saga: Book One delivers.
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Love your reviews @AletheiaKnights ! And your own writing is great, I hope you have a WIP?
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Thank you so much!
No, sorry. 
1 Like
Starship Adventures
“Absurdist romp aboard a spaceship full of quirky characters, written by a team of ChoiceScript superstars” might be my new favorite bizarrely specific IF genre. Last year, Stewart Baker got together with a bunch of pals, most of them Nebula nominees, to write A Death in Hyperspace, which won this year’s Nebula Award for Game Writing. But nearly a decade before that, Felicity Banks got together with a bunch of pals, most of them up-and-coming Hosted Games authors, to create Starship Adventures. Banks organized the project and wrote three chapters; Adrao and Eric Moser contributed two chapters each; Doctor and Jacic each wrote a chapter; and they all worked together to contrive a coherent plot and unified tone and to make decisions about game design. I’ve worked on betas with Banks and Adrao. I’m a huge fan of Moser’s games, and I’ve enjoyed some of Jacic’s short pieces - but somehow I’d never got around to giving Starship Adventures a try. This week, I rectified that.
Starship Adventures is a brilliant satire of old-timey science fiction tropes. You’re the captain, a daring leader with perfectly styled hair. Your crew consists of a gruff mostly-alien engineer, a surprisingly effectual damsel in distress science officer, an android with a penchant for saving the day in deus ex machina fashion, and some guy named Joe. You travel among worlds populated with brightly colored alien races, dangerous plants, and sentient machines, getting into episodic scrapes that are always neatly resolved by the end of the chapter - but could there be a more sinister plan afoot?
It’s a short and silly game, but it’s worth playing a few times even if you don’t die in the last chapter (which I did), just to explore the outcomes of all the different options, which range from relatively reasonable (attack your enemy with a flamethrower!) to downright ridiculous (attack your enemy with a mop!). If you like Spaceballs or Galaxy Quest or Monty Python, you’ll definitely find a few chuckles here.
Worthy of note is the Special Features section. Casual players may wish to take advantage of the opportunity to modify their stats, while those who are interested in game design will enjoy the commentary, editorial notes, and excerpts from discussions on development issues.
Starship Adventures is sadly underrated, and deserves far more attention than it gets. If you’re in the mood for something funny, or you’re a fan of any of the authors involved, it’s definitely worth a try.
11 Likes
You’ve just named some of my favourite “silly” shows 
. Thank you for the nice review 
(I think you might actually be the first to review it!)
6 Likes
If I can convince even one person to play this game, my tragic death - and what happened afterwards - will not have been in vain.
Shoes. They made me into shoes!
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Oh my goodness thank you for this amazing and highly complimentary review! Writing that thing was quite an adventure.
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You did a great job coordinating the project!
Thanks for stopping by - I’m always glad to hear from you. I hope your writing is going well.
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@Felicity_Banks Thank you again for leading us in writing us. That was my first ever published game actually, and I have very fond memories of the entire process. But, I know how much work you put into it!
@AletheiaKnights glad you enjoyed it! It is certainly not a game for everybody, but I am glad that you appreciated the humour!
5 Likes
Stronghold: A Hero’s Fate
Although I had enjoyed Jo Graham and Amy Griswold’s other games, and The Play’s the Thing is one of my all-time favorites, I hadn’t played Stronghold: A Hero’s Fate until last year, when I had the chance to join the beta test for the sequel, Stronghold: Caverns of Sorcery (by Griswold, working alone this time). Then I played A Hero’s Fate several times, to create saves to use in the beta - and quickly came to appreciate its understated brilliance.
The premise is a fairly simple one: you begin the game as a young adult traveling with a merchant caravan, but by the end of the first chapter, you’ve managed to kill a fearsome lich. It wasn’t some kind of quest for glory - you were simply trying to save your own life - but as a reward for your courage and skill, you’re given land to build your own settlement. What begins with a couple dozen people in a handful of hastily erected buildings will grow over the decades to be a thriving town. You’ll make decisions about the economy - do you want to focus on agriculture or mining? - and when your stronghold begins to thrive and attract the attention of bandits and goblins, you’ll have to consider matters of defense as well. And of course you’ll need to have a long-term plan: do you envision your town as a hub of commerce someday, or a center of learning and culture, or just a supremely impregnable fortress? Your personal life matters, too: do you want to marry? Will you have a child? As the years roll on, whom will you name as your heir?
What sets A Hero’s Fate apart from the rest of the civilization-builder/management genre is that it is, above all, not a game about resources, but about people. There are about a dozen major characters other than the PC, and many of them have their own story arcs, which are influenced by the PC’s choices over the course of their lifetimes. It’s not unusual for a management game to include a reputation mechanic, but Graham and Griswold take it to a more intimate scale. Even your decision whether to help make dinner feels relevant to the story: the innkeeper with a crowd of mouths to feed appreciates your help, while the gruff head of the town militia thinks that’s beneath your dignity as a figure of authority. The game spans the PC’s life from young adulthood to old age (unless they fall in battle before then), and the story unfolds episodically, with months or years passing in the space between chapters, but it never feels cursory or detached: I really cared about these characters and the community I was building, and Graham and Griswold somehow give a sense of the fullness of a life in this game that can easily be played through in an evening.
I don’t formally review games on which I have done credited work, but I would feel rather remiss if I didn’t put in a few words here about Caverns of Sorcery. It takes place several generations after A Hero’s Fate; and in most playthroughs based on a saved game, the PC will be the grandchild of the Hero’s Fate PC’s chosen heir. It’s rather different in some ways, with a more focused plot that spans the events of only a year or so, but I enjoyed how Griswold expanded the world she and Graham had created, and there’s a similar focus on both relationships and resource management, although in Caverns of Sorcery you’re deepening your study of magic rather than watching the town grow. A Hero’s Fate is my favorite, but both are worth your time.
5 Likes
The Fleet
originally posted on Reddit
The Fleet, by Jonathan Valuckas, is a rather short game from CoG’s early years, and one that represents something of a deviation from their usual style. There’s no character customization to speak of, not even the PC’s name or gender. There’s no backstory, and exposition is minimal. The Fleet is all business - it feels less like an interactive novella than a text-based military simulation with a really good plot.
In this well-written little tale of interstellar warfare, Valuckas takes a surprisingly deep look at what it means to be a leader. As the captain of a fleet of military spacecraft, the PC is faced with strategic choices about offense or defense, how to make the best use of resources, whether to fight smart or fight hard. But what makes this story truly compelling is the human element of warfare, as the PC is faced with weighty moral dilemmas: justice or mercy? Honor or revenge? Is it worth it to strike the enemy a crippling blow at the cost of the lives of civilians under your protection? Should you ration your limited resources at the expense of morale? How transparent is it wise to be with your subordinates? Whom should you actually trust?
Readers who seek intricate plots, emotional depth, and elaborate character customization probably won’t find The Fleet much to their liking. If the first thing you want to know about a new CS game is who the potential love interests are, this definitely isn’t the game for you. But if you enjoy the prospect of stepping into the military-issue astronaut boots of a no-nonsense fleet commander for an hour or so of tough decisions, The Fleet is quite a rewarding experience.
5 Likes
The Fog Knows Your Name
As a junior in high school, you had a pretty good life. Your father left the family years ago, but your mother had made a good life for you in the coastal town of Arbor Isle, Maine. You’d never be mistaken for part of the popular crowd, but you had a tight-knit group of friends you’d known forever. Then one night you went to a party, and your world would never be the same again. Rex Keller had been a member of your friend group once, until he left you all in the dust a few years ago when his athletic prowess earned him a spot a few rungs up the social ladder. Although his betrayal still rankled, you never wanted to see him dead - but everyone at the party heard him confront you over some perceived slight, then saw you leave the party together the night the fog rolled in and he never came home. (Bad things have always happened in Arbor Isle when the fog rolls in, or so the legend goes, but that’s just superstition … right?) There was surveillance-camera footage that showed you going your separate ways, and there’s no way you could have gone back that night to where Rex’s body was found - but even if you were officially no longer a suspect, that just meant to some of your neighbors that you’d gotten away with murder. When the whispers and stares got to be too much, you left town to stay with relatives for a few months.
As The Fog Knows Your Name, Yeonsoo Julian Kim’s first game for CoG, opens, you’re coming back to Arbor Isle a few weeks before the start of your senior year. You’re at least a little nervous about how you’ll be received in town, but excited to reconnect with the friends who’ve stood by you. Your first evening back, however, Rex’s grief-stricken sister tries to force a confession from you - and threatens to lure you into the fog to share Rex’s fate. Even more alarming is the night you look out the window and see Rex (at least, it sure looks like Rex) staring back at you. Then the phone calls start - and there’s a hint of fog in the air. The more you and your friends learn about Arbor Isle, the more certain it becomes that Rex is far from the first resident to die or go missing in the fog … and, perhaps, far from the last.
I don’t remember playing this game.
I mean, yes, of course I do, I just started playing it on Thursday and finished it earlier today and I wrote that plot summary from memory. I was sitting in my usual spot on the living room couch. I was drinking water out of my pink water bottle between choices. I know this. But when I think back on this game, what I remember is how it felt: the fun of camaraderie, the indignation of injustice, the grip of mingled fear and fascination. Aside from noticing a few typos, I was immersed in a way that’s precious and rare.
I could wax eloquent about the likable characters (and how they felt like individuals in their own right rather than existing to orbit the PC), the perfect pacing, the impeccable simmer of suspense, the surprising touch of comic relief, the delicious layers of mystery and lore, and the way the ending felt like a punch in the gut and yet I can’t deny it was right. I could, but I’d rather just urge you to play it and see for yourself.
The Fog Knows Your Name may not be the greatest story ever written about teenagers in Maine coming of age by way of eldritch horror (that would be Stephen King’s It, not that you probably needed me to tell you), nor the most chilling ChoiceScript game about friendship and growing up (Natalia Theodoridou’s Restore, Reflect, Retry), but it’s fully worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as either, while offering a far more streamlined experience than It and a more grounded one than RRR.
I don’t know when I’ll get around to playing The Fog Knows Your Name again, but I already know it’s going to be living rent-free in my head. Kim has a second game in development right now, and after such a thrilling and elegant debut, I’m excited to see what’s next.
18 Likes
Formorian War
originally posted on Reddit
The trouble with Liam Parker’s Formorian War begins with the title.
Irish mythology tells of a malevolent race of giants and raiders called the Fomóire, a name which alludes to their underworldly origins. There’s a manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library that traces their ancestry back to the biblical Noah. Some scholars believe they originated as personifications of nature’s chaos, with their warlike ways influenced by true accounts of Viking raids. In English, they are called Fomorians.
Not FoRmorians.
I don’t know if Parker was confused on this point, or if he changed the name deliberately. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not sure I can, because it just gets messier from there.
The worldbuilding? This world isn’t so much built as stitched together from old rags. The mythology is Irish, the character and place names are borrowed from English history and Arthurian lore, and the entire story plays out with feudal holdings and territorial gains and losses clearly marked on a map … of France.
The premise is strictly by-the-numbers medieval fantasy: you are the heir of one of three noble families that control portions of what used to be the kingdom of Albion, the others being the Saxons and the Tudors. When a prophecy heralds the return of the once-vanquished Formorians, you are chosen by a fairy-blessed sword as the defender of the realm.
When the Formorians attack, you prepare to meet them in battle by traveling around the realm building alliances, accompanied by your fellow nobles Morganna Saxon and Dagonet Tudor. That’s Chapter 2, which I’m pretty sure is longer than the other four chapters combined. The actual war seems to consist of a single battle that lasts around 15 minutes. After that there’s a big to-do about choosing a new ruler for Albion (surprise surprise, it’s you!).
There are very few meaningful choices along the way, and very little narrative branching, aside from a few early dead ends. The writing is too lazy even to qualify as bad. At best, Parker has no sense of character or pacing or narrative tension; at worst, he forgets punctuation exists. There are multiple major coding errors.
Along with building alliances in Chapter 2, it’s possible to start a romantic relationship with Dagonet or Morganna. If your character is a Lord, you can romance Morganna; if you’re playing as a Lady, you can romance Dagonet. I could respect Parker’s decision to make the PC heterosexual, but for two things. First of all, if you romance Morganna, you get to read several mildly explicit sex scenes: in one, “her hand moves up and down” in your private area, she “makes her way downwards” and you reciprocate, and finally she climbs on top of you and you “cup her breasts” as things finally fade to black. If you romance Dagonet, however, you’re told at this point that you “spend the night in Dagonets [sic] tent embracing the man you love.” That’s it. That’s the entire scene. Then, at the end of the chapter, you and your partner are overnight guests in another character’s small house, which doesn’t stop your partner grabbing your thigh with lustful intent - whereupon the homeowner asks if she can join in. Same-sex action is *hot*, doncha know, as long as it’s girl-on-girl and there’s a dude around to enjoy it. Honestly, I would have had a lot more respect for Parker if he’d just written the game as a straight man’s fantasy.
There’s a lot more I could say about Formorian War, but I believe I’ve made my point, so I’ll leave you with a final anecdote that sums up this game perhaps better than any other. In Chapter 5, black snow begins falling for some reason that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the events of the first four chapters. Simultaneously, people start dying immediately after drinking water. And it turns out the two things are actually connected, and the PC - the one chosen by the magic fairy sword to defeat the Formorians and unite the realm - has to have someone explain to them that (spoiler alert!) the poison is getting into the water supply when the snow melts.
That’s Formorian War.
15 Likes
Snow melts?!? Can we not get a spoiler alert for this, please?
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I assure you it is no spoiler. Snows. Always. Melt.
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