The Saga of Oedipus Rex (Released)

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Hi everyone,

So I decided to drag The Saga Of Oedipus Rex out of the depths of my computer. It kind of seemed a shame to let it gather dust and I needed a break from all the editing I’ve been doing on NaNoWriMo’s effort on Abysm’s Veil (It reminded me why I normally try to edit in chunks while I go rather than 60,000 odd words all at once).

It is actually semi finished. Still needs some editing, and it had a heap of bugs which I think I’ve gotten out of it. But if anyone would like to have a read and let me know if you see any weird loops or come across paragraphs that don’t seem to quite match up, I’d really appreciate it. In fact as always, any constructive feedback is very welcome.

I’ve only put a short demo up for now, the rest still needs some editing. (Prologue and chapter 1). The rest of what I’ve written will hopefully go up within the next week, so feel free to hang out if you’re interested but want to wait until there is more to read.

Anyway, back to what it is. I’m not sure how many people are familiar with Oedipus, but this is based on the ancient greek tragedy about a prince who finds out from the Oracle of Delphi he has a rather unhappy fate planned for him. (*With some modifications, particularly with the more icky aspects towards the end which might not have otherwise been apple store friendly (Seriously! Some of the stuff that makes it into mythology would never pass modern day censors!) Since there’s spoilers for the game for anyone who doesn’t know so I wont go into it though.)

It is semi-finished, and while I may add extra paths and choices if needed. I’m really trying not to turn this into another one of my unfinished WIP’s, so it most probably going to stay on the short and more linear-ish side, particularly as I foremost wanted to follow Oedipus’ story as in the myths. And it’ll have some riddles. Nice bug inducing riddles.

So I’ve broken a few of my rules I’ve been trying to stick to:

It’s currently about 36,600 words, When I’ve written the endings, it’ll probably be in the 50,000’s somewhere at a guess. So not really long. (Edit: Every time I say this, the word count doubles, currently at 100,000+)

It is genderlocked male to a particular protagonist (Oedipus) and I’m pretty reluctant to unlock it at this stage sorry (Again it’s for the story, I’m actually female, so it’s not any kind of bias coming into it.)

It is very light on the romance front since it’s a greek tragedy. (I just couldn’t bring myself to make the sphinx a RO. It would not have ended well I’d imagine :smile:) (Edit- Ok, I’ve relented due to popular demand. Attempt to romance her at your own risk :wink: )

It has a prologue with few choices. (Although there are obviously lots in the main story once you get past that.)

The game branches a lot more towards the end after you leave the play this is based on.

Anyway, thank you to anyone who would like to help. Maybe I can actually get one of my WIP’s finished before the end of 2018!

(Please note there are big spoilers under some of the spoiler tags. If you don’t know the story and don’t want to know how the original one at least goes, I’d not click on them )

Edit: Full game has been moved to private testing, please ask for access if you would like to test. The game has been submitted and is in the HG publishing queue so beta testing is closed. Thanks to everyone who helped!

Demo only link (Nothing new here for anyone who has already read the previous link I had up)
https://dashingdon.com/play/jacic/the-saga-of-oedipus-rex--demo/mygame/

The game has now been published by HG. The first few chapters are now available to demo there for anyone wishing to :slight_smile:

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Oh gosh, Oedipus is one of my favorite tragic heroes…he’s just trying to do the right thing! He doesn’t know what he’s done!

Curious about where you’re gonna go with this. When I had read the story, Oedipus learned of the prophecy to kill his father, so he left so he could spare the man he thought was his dad. He hadn’t known he was of royal blood. I’m not quite certain of what will happen in this story now!

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I know, Poor Oedipus!
Yep there seems to be a few versions floating around with some variations on the story. I’ve kind of done a pick and choose from them (and added some of my own stuff in). Hopefully I’ll have some more up soon. Thanks for the support :smile:

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Very interesting so far! I would love to see what happened next. xD

Summary

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Missing quotation marks.

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Always love to read your games! :smile:

Summary

“There seems to be a lot of people heading to the temple today.”

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That’s the thing about mythology. It was often written or thought up in an era where in some of the most influential cultures it was allowed, by law, for you to beat your disobedient child to death in broad daylight.

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@AmericanShakespeare and @Umbreonpanda Thank you both! I’ll fix the typos and bugs :slight_smile:

@lovinglydull Actually, weirdly enough (or perhaps not that weirdly?) killing your relations seemed to be generally frowned upon (among people at least) in ancient greece to the point that they had a set of goddesses that would hunt down and torture/kill people that appeared to have escaped justice from things like that. That’s actually why in Oedipus’ story, they don’t just kill him outright. They’d try to let the elements/starvation do the work for them so they weren’t ‘directly responsible.’ (Basically if it was meant to have lived someone would have picked it up, so obviously it wasn’t meant to be).

The myths often do other things that are not at all apple store friendly, but they often also seem to be punished pretty harshly as well. (Not that any of that makes them any more apple store friendly. Actually probably less so :stuck_out_tongue:)

There’s more stuff that gets pretty cruel and unusual, like harsh and horrible curses that affect generations of people because of the misdeeds of a single person that no one else had anything to do with, sibling marriages, and you don’t want to know what Cronus did to his own father with the permission of his mother for that matter. (There’s a reason why Aphrodite is said to have been born of sea foam and it’s left at that without more details.) Actually Cronus had a tendency to eat his kids, so I’ll leave you guessing at how Zeus got them all back out again. Sometimes it’s best not to delve too deeply into mythology. I mean who actually asks ‘where did the minotaur come from?’ (No don’t google that! I just told you not to.) There are parts of mythology that are seriously messed up. This is just the short, short version.

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@Jacic I was referring a bit more to the Roman custom where the patriarch of a family had the right to execute any children who were not of age, if the other males of their family allowed it. The Greeks were far less bloody-minded and control-obsessed than the Romans, although that is a big thing in both Greek and Roman drama: what is acceptable by law, and acceptable by morality is not the same thing.

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Yeah the Greeks seemed to be a bit less bloody minded than the Romans. That sounds pretty nasty though, even by Roman standards.

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It’s seems good I like it so far but what happen to your other project about the mermaid

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This text will be blurredMy question is is there still blinding and the shocking finale? Because that’s the thing Oedipus was better then most men and still fell. FYI the writing is wonderful.

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@Rogar Thank you! I’m trying to work out a few different endings atm and I’ll see what you guys think. Being a choice game I didn’t want it to be a single ending :slight_smile:
(Actually would you mind spoiler tagging that please? I know most people probably already know the story, but just in case someone hasn’t read it).

@Harley_Robin_Evans They’re definitely still happening :slight_smile: I wrote about another 60,000 words on Abysm’s Veil for the November writing month, but because I was writing fast without editing as I went, I now need to go back and edit/bugfix/stat fix/finish filling in skipped sections before I can update which is going to take me a little while. (It’s actually getting up towards the ending branches as well although they’re far longer than this one) It’s nice to have something that hasn’t gotten long and complicated to write as a break. I’m hoping this one is 3/4 done which is why it’s been put up, since I don’t think it’ll take much work to finish off. (There’s a lot more than the demo that’s been pre-written, I just need to try and get the remaining bugs out/do some more grammar editing then write the endings I think).

Sea Maiden’s next on the list to finish after AV. (I have actually done more work on that as well since the last update but it’s gotten long and branchy and needs more written so everything joins up to be playable before I can release an update At the moment there’s a lot of dead branches and choices that aren’t finished so players would hit errors all over the place.)

Draconic Challenges is still on temporary hold until I clear the list a bit. It’ll get picked up again after the others are done. (Because that’s another I want to finish but it needs a lot of work/ some rewriting I think. So that one will be a while off).

Sorry about the delay on the others, I’m being the textbook reason why it’s a bad idea to accumulate multiple projects! I’m currently trying to clear the list from quickest to longest finish downwards. So it’ll probably be this one or AV out first (I’m really hoping to have both done over summer (or winter depending on where you are), then concentrate on Sea Maiden, then Draconic Challenges :slight_smile:

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It was extremely uncommon, since at least some of the others would object based on practicality more than anything, but it was a very effective threat when it came to keeping Roman children in line: the fact that their father could potentially murder them with no repercussion.

Considering the Spartans segregated men from women until they were thirty and their solution to the declining birthrate was to levy more strict punishments on anyone attempting to sneak away to be with their wives because they thought that anyone who wanted it bad enough would be more likely to try if the punishment was greater.

Rome, as a nation, was basically suffering from lead poisoning. I don’t know what Sparta’s excuse was.

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I’m shocked that nobody read this in high school considering his famous blinding in the founding out that he married his mother along with killing his father by One of the best plot twists and deepest tragedies in literary history. My question is is it still going to be one of the endings. if it is you should make it very hard to avoid because you’re very much fighting fate and the gods.

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Yes, it’s problematic because of the reasons you’ve listed. While at the same time if it’s railroaded to a single ending, it stops becoming choice. Once I’ve got it up, I’d actually like to hear what people think of what I’ve done with the endings. It could need some moving around to make it work.

I’m also really surprised it isn’t taught in schools, to the point that when teachers talked about Freud and Oedipus Complex, they didn’t seem know where Freud got the term from in the first place. My guess is that some of the content is iffy and they worry there may be complaints from parents.

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I mean the tragedy is the twist and it’s so deeply ingrained I say altering is little but weak sauce. What I recommend in your writing is again fantastic it’s either our decisions color what type of person are Hero is is greatness is what made them fall inability to escape fate. Fact that he tried to is one of the reasons why his punishment was so brutal. Keep the ending this team and just the fact to the protagonist becomes or give a type of earlier happy ending scenario where could be Alter a great cost.

Alternate the ending is almost the same level of changing the ending of the The ending is almost the same level of changing the ending of The Great Gatsby He had to die for his dream. Like Oedipus must fall in the most cruel both cursing his bloodline through an incestuous marriage and only able to hear the death of his house because he cannot bear the sight of it’s Decay.
Many people are adults here I think they can handle it if they’ve been teaching in high school for ages. Maybe Oedipus is feed is written in stone but he can save his children.

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Thanks @Rogar! That’s actually very helpful. I’ve been debating what to do with the ending which is why it’s written up to that point and stalled.

I’ve been wondering if I needed to water down the incestuous marriage part a bit for general audiences, (political rather than full blown marriage so people don’t get overly upset) but I’m thinking maybe that’s a bad idea? I’ll see what I can do with it. I’ve actually got a spin off idea for an alternative ending that’s actually been heavily influenced from a different myth and still has some potentially nasty consequences that you /might/ be able to work your way out of, so I’m thinking about working both those in.
By the way, in some versions, his sons end up killing each other later. Multi generation curses really suck for those involved don’t they?

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The thing about Oedipus is fate it is so quintessentially him in the same way of Achilles anger and his heel in the same manner of Hercules strength. Part of the reason he is heroic is because he was great and fell. His fate is such part of him. interestingly enough his sons where curse by Oedipus himself over being disrespected twice by them. He won the throne and queen for Killing the Sphinx. I said maybe how you deal with this his fate unavoidable. Depending on what type of person you make him he may spare his sons and save his daughters. for this to make sense you got understand what was the king this role during dark ages they were incredibly religious along with being rulers. You see this in the classical period beyond when Greeks gone beyond proto kings evolution oligarchies and democracies. If the office of the king existed was incredibly religious. Also during his trial he may get more than one riddle depending on the telling he may get that because Sphinx loved him and did not want to kill anymore check the the play the Infernal Machine for that one. Also culturally it symbolizes him being a figure in the Greco Hellenistic religion of transitioning from the old rustic cults to the olympian gods.

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Also maybe you can have a fun rulership minigame Dealing with the dramas of kingship in the The Hellenisc dark ages. Orsic I think about the classic Hero in the Greco-Roman sense he is both morally good by the standard of day other words duty-bound honorable virtuous etc incredibly capable but have have hubris to make them fall. And because they’re so honorable it’s so tragic because if they were nit Honorable they would’ve took another path. They represent are humanity in our imperfection and great ability.

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Forgets oedipus’ story

Plays the demo

Remembers the story

Realizes what is gonna happen

Gauges eyes out

Nice demo :+1:

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