The Saga of Oedipus Rex (Released)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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@Rogar Huh, learn something every day. For some reason I always thought the versions where that happened were part of the same curse rather than a new one.

Ok, I think you’ve convinced me. I’m actually happy I put this up now as I’ve only just started writing a scene where this matters so I’ll scrap that and rewrite. I’ll put a mature themes warning on it, and if people (or apple) freak out when they read it, I might have to rewrite later. Anyway, once I get it done I’d actually love to hear your thoughts on the alternative ending. I think it’ll still carry the point of the curse across but let’s see :slight_smile:

I’ve actually written it in as two riddles, although I’ve made the sphinx a bit less nice about it :slight_smile:

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The damn the people freak out this story is older than many countries and it’s shocking that no one doesn’t know it. Growing up in the western world and not knowing the fate of this curse came is the equivalency of not knowing about I daresay Christ crucifixion. You may not understand the meaning of it but you are most likely taught it high school or college at some point. And let’s think about our Prince for a second here. If we strip them down to his traits he’s good in combat he’s obviously cares about his honor and the morality of the day, he’s incredibly intelligent and cunning for the Merit he gains his kingship and he’s actually generally invested in his job he tries to be good at it and do good by his people and all and all he good king in the traditional way. His flaws is hubris his excessive pride in his ability he’s a good man that’s proud. Which is his flaw but deservingly so. you know Aristotle he talked about virtue you had to do a balance and everything and our protagonist does except with his pride and that is his destruction and because if he was any less of a man he would have took another way. And it got to look at the fate of his sons their fault was their greed. I haven’t looked up by necessarily his daughters got screwed out of the fact that they just caught caught in the tornado Supernatural b*******.

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Out of curiosity, will you be referencing any of the other plays in the Oedipus series? Or as I like to call it, the Oedipals? (see what I did there???)

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@RedRoses Haha :smile: Probably not in any major depth. There’s entire stories of their own wrapped up in those! I am probably going to borrow some ideas from Electra/the Oresteia though.

@Rogar But no one’s made a blockbuster movie about it. If Percy Jackson was in it everyone would know about it j/k. Honestly though, most people who haven’t read a lot of mythology and folk tales think they’re boring. They just don’t seem to be taught in schools which is kind of odd really. Maybe we can slowly change that one choicescript game at a time?

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You’re interesting in again this is according to Wikipedia so I should take it with a grain of salt but in the plys and the myth for different reasons that this is the one that lay curse on sons and relatives also in the one play where he dies becomes holy to the gods. Even though he’s wretched and broken if you come as a holy man of sorts both going into the wilderness clensing himself of his pride. Enough power to Damn his house with a curse. .

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I have heard a few versions of where Oedipus ends up. (Probably should check out good old wikipedia as well.) I think the official version from memory is where he goes to a neighboring kingdom and is taken in by the king there. But I’ve heard of another which I think might be the one you’re talking about, where he becomes a humble, wandering prophet trying to atone for his families sins for the rest of his life. I kind of like that version better (although it’s not so good for Oedipus.)

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I think there ones version that’s a fusion of the two. Either way he’ll know how it ends for him at this point of his life. It could make a good Epilogue. Closest to happy ending I think you could get for are King.

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Ok, so I’ve put up an update to the point where I need to makes a few changes after the discussion that happened in this thread today :smile:

I’m really hoping all the bugs are out, for something so short it had a heap of them! If anyone gets repeated or weird sequences that don’t seem quite right, particularly in the guard scene or the sphinx scene I’d love it if you could let me know. (I’ll have to have another few runs through it as well. Seems like every time I think it’s bug free, another one pops up).

Thanks everyone!

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In The USA (Not knowing your nationality), we have a saying, “The Rule of Thumb”. This actually comes from a time when it was legally and culturally allowed to beat your wife with anything as long as it was no thicker than your thumb.

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Summary

“Well, first they crawls as a baby. Then walks on two legs in their prime. And finally, they hobbles with a stick in old age.”

crawl & walk

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Thanks @AmericanShakespeare, should be fixed now.

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Fairly sure that’s not a real etymology for the phrase.

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=95;t=000001;p=0

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Here in the Deep South it sure as shooting is!

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So is your mom going to be RO in this

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She’s the only option :joy::joy::joy::joy: unless the sphynx falls in love with you​:joy::joy::joy::joy::joy::sob::sob::sob:

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Besides the urban legend origins of English common-law, it was (if I remember one of my law classes) actually brought up in US case law so you’re both right. Isn’t English a great language? :classical_building:

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Edit- actually never mind! Sorry just remembered, there’s an extra alternative track I need to write in one of the chapters! Getting way ahead of myself :blush:

(I’ll just content myself with a word count update- it’s now about 50,000 words)

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Hello there! I played the demo and I loved it. I find it very intriguing as I played, since I kept wondering: would it be possible to mitigate the curse? I tried to play the game as ‘lawful good’ as I could, in hopes of being able to do this. Anyway, I definitely want to see more!

Your writing is very strong, and you have a really good grasp on the time period-- ancient Greece is not the easiest period to write. However, I noticed a lot of the names did not fit with the period. Some of the names were okay, like Orestes, Nysa, Amytas and Nestor. Here were the problematic names I noticed:

-Petrina (Latin ending)
-Rouvin (Hebrew, alternate form of Reuben)
-Baltsaros (Greek form of Balthazar, which is alternate form of Belshazzar… okay if he’s Babylonian, but that doesn’t seem like the character… also Greeks were very xenophobic about outsiders)
-Eleni and Costa are modern Greek names (Costa comes from Latin)

Names that were common in ancient Greece were names like Diodorus, Polydora, Athenodorus, Apollonius, Hermokrates, etc. If you need a site with a lot of good ancient Greek names, this place is good for a look:

https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/ancient-greek

There were a few other minor anachronisms I noticed. For example, in the scene in Thebes where Oedipus first hears about the Sphinx, he runs into a “perfumed spice merchant in a dark blue toga.” The toga was a specifically Roman garment that wasn’t around in ancient Greece (at least not before the Romans arrived, and was restricted to Roman citizens).

In the Thebes scene, there is also a mention of a “goodwife” which is a very 16th/17th century and makes me think more of the Salem witch trials and colonial America than ancient Greece.

Anyway, I would love to see more. The demo is great already, and I hope you don’t mind my going through it so closely. :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much! I had a heap of names I needed (and didn’t want to pilfer all of them from mythology and philosophers, or use names too close to that of the Greek gods that might get confusing to readers like Apollonius) so I found a site that supposedly had names used in ancient Greece,. It seems it was not great. They’re easily changeable though. I’ll go through them.

Whoops that’s my bad, I’ll change it. I think I’ve got tunics and dresses (which I know probably weren’t technically called that, but I was getting a bit worried about making people check the glossary too often.)

You’re right, I’ll get onto that too.

No that’s great, thank you for the help! :smile:

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You’re welcome!

Yeah, I think using “tunics” and “dresses” is fine. A chiton is a tunic; using “chiton” would be unnecessarily confusing. I would use “robe” or “himation” instead of toga, since a toga is a garment specific to the Roman culture.

Re: names, apparently “Lucas” is also Latin. It comes from Lucius, so I’d change that too. Luke (given name) - Wikipedia

As for the name list I linked to upthread, I was paging through it, and most of the names are solid. I’d probably stay away from names that are too Christian in connotation (e.g. Anastasia), names that have a Latin origin (e.g. Ambrosius) or names that are associated with some famous person (e.g. Alkibiades, Kleopatra, Sokrates). But otherwise, you’re good!

Do you think I’d be able to play the longer game at some point? I’m very curious! :smiley:

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