2 | FANTASY OPERA: THE THEATER OF MEMORY
2 | FANTASY OPERA: THE THEATER OF MEMORY
by: Lamp Post Projects
This is a Main Festival entry.
Progress:
- I reached the ending of the game in 1h01m, scoring 95 points out of a possible 100. My custom character was Apollo, a tiefling architecture enthusiast with questionable social skills.
Things I Appreciated:
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In general, this was a highly polished game with many thoughtful quality of life features. For instance, at one point I thought, oh, I really should be taking notes, but the game has a “notepad” tab that had already recorded that information. I ended up referring to that when I needed to and found it really useful. Additionally, the game is up front about indicating how its mechanics work, marking which choices you can return to later, and signaling when choices are about to run out (such as irritating someone by asking too many personal questions).
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The character customization has some thoughtful and subtle effects. For instance, because I chose to play as a tiefling (obviously, lol), the tiefling character Lionella recognized and responded to that. This is a great way to, if you’re going to go the character customization route, have it have some subtle effects on the experience.
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The central puzzle was elegant and I found it really interesting to actually be performing analysis in-game on the information that I had gathered during the day. I thought made the “detective” role feel more immersive and gave me at least the illusion that I had actually done some work to solve the puzzle and figure things out.
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The visual presentation is stylistically cohesive, and I thought the watercolor portraits looked nice! I thought that the image of the tiers of five paintings was also mechanically helpful as a helpful visual aide.
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I was fascinated by the worldbuilding implications of Vitale’s resentment toward Alvisa, envying her comparatively very long elvish lifespan and materially consequential contributions. It tapped into the very relatable horror that your time is slipping away and you haven’t been able to accomplish anything meaningful. This is something that I’ve been feeling lately, not to an extreme degree, but I’ve had a lot of nights thinking that I lost my chance to do something with that day. So I can connect with an antagonist who feels envy toward a long-lived elf. It made for an engaging conflict.
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The most interesting choice in the game forces the player to decide what they think counts as justice in determining the fate of the antagonist. The options were things like, report the antagonist to the guards (legalistic, more punitive), let them go after fixing the theater (lax), try to leverage their guilt to get information about the mage (opportunistic). The option I chose was letting the victims of the crime decide, which I view as a kind of deferral of accountability on my part. They ended up choosing a more punitive option collectively than I expected, and in hindsight, I thought there was something kind of sinister about letting the orchestra vote by plurality to decide what happened. I thought this choice was an interesting Rorschach test.
Miscellaneous Comments/Recommendations:
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At the selection of who to attend the opera with during Epilogo, the player is given a list of names with not much context. I picked someone called “My partner Benetto” and hoped for the best. This felt off to me because it is at odds with most of the game’s approach to customization, where you know a lot more about who/what you are choosing. Because Benetto only showed up at the very end, he didn’t feel very connected to my character or the game I had just been playing. I wonder if it would’ve been nice to have an interaction with the partner (or friend or colleague, etc, depending on the option the player chose) during the night before, so that they would feel more integrated in the game.
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While the dream analysis task was a novel experience, it did also feel like the most tedious part of the game. I kept hoping that dreams corresponding to themes that I still needed would pop up, but I felt like I got a lot of repeats. After a few times, I was craving the agency to pick which two dreams from my notes to compare, rather than having that decision made for me.
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Something I was really missing from the endgame was an emotional resolution for Vitale’s personal crisis that caused him to commit this crime. This could’ve been the result of the choices I made, but I wanted an opportunity to hear his reflections on his aging resentment after going through this whole ordeal and public scandal, and how he felt about me choosing to air all this stuff in front of everyone and then left them vote on what happened to him. Does he now resent me, for figuring it out, and letting the orchestra vote to get him arrested? Was he able to find a way to come to terms with his age and legacy in light of everything that happened? I wish there had been more of a beat there.
What I learned about IF:
- The thing that most stands out to me about the design of this game that I want to focus on is how it arms the player with information about stat checks and choices. Personally, I don’t write very game-like IF, but despite that, I still think a lot about what how the choices I do include are presented and how much information to give to readers. This game gives you information about which choices you’ll be able to return to, which stats or interest areas are being invoked, when a dice roll is going to happen, when a choice is unavailable due to not meeting prerequisites, what personality trait the choice corresponds to, and so forth. Sometimes, information is withheld. When making a critical choice about the puzzle solution, for instance, you don’t necessarily know if you’ll be right or what the implications of an incorrect deduction/analysis will be. You also don’t know how difficult a check is (at least, I didn’t, but I may have missed an indicator of that) before rolling it. Another choice I was allowed to make as a player is to turn off mid-game indicators about score (which I chose to do because I didn’t want to be preoccupied with missing points and so on). That gave me the option to not have certain information in a way that I thought enhanced my experience. So I think my takeaway point here is that I would look to this game as an example of how giving the player a lot of information about their choices can feel empowering, and doesn’t necessarily have to detract from a sense of novelty or surprise.
Memorable Moment:
- My favorite part of the game was the “final exam” where you have to prove that you understand the puzzle by severing the curse correctly on five of the musicians. I thought it was really satisfying to look at the list of options and know exactly what I was picking and why, and knowing that it would be correct because the game had demonstrated the puzzle mechanics so thoroughly to me.
FantasyOpera_Transcript_DemonApologist.txt (110.0 KB)