66 | QUEST FOR THE TEACUP OF MINOR SENTIMENTAL VALUE
66 | QUEST FOR THE TEACUP OF MINOR SENTIMENTAL VALUE
by: Damon L. Wakes
Progress:
- I played this game for about 30 minutes, receiving several hilarious “bad” endings, and two “good” endings.
Things I Appreciated:
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When I first looked at the IF Comp games, this one stood out to me with the content warning, “Actual, Literal Satan,” but the randomizer assigned it to 66th, so I just kind of had to keep waiting to play it. I had a lot of time to idly speculate about what this would look like in-game. Actual, Literal Satan is so adorable and ridiculous! I loved the house tour scene especially. I thought at first because of the RPG graphic presentation this game might turn into a dating sim (sadly, it did not) and he unfortunately still turned out to be the actual, literal villain of the narrative, but I couldn’t even be that disappointed because of how weird and funny this game is.
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This game is super unique in its use of an RPG-Maker interface which is made into a choice-based narrative (thankfully avoiding the annoying wandering around that you’d have to do as she just walks along pre-determine routes when you make a choice), and this interface is used to produce several shockingly funny gags. I actually laughed several times because I was surprised/amused by things that were happening. Like omg she did NOT just run face-first into a toxic swamp and die. (She did.) She did NOT just get ejected from a completely different scene to fly into the same swamp and die (She did!). There was another movement-based gag where you spend forever walking up a multi-story tower for no reason. I just really liked the playful way that the interface was used to great comedic effect.
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I thought the autosave system worked well. Every time I reached a bad ending, I would just reload and continue on without much of an issue, so I didn’t feel like my time was being wasted that much to encounter these goofy endings.
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The writing was really funny, and I loved the comedic timing of a lot of the line delivery, especially when multiple characters would roast Jasmine for how ridiculous her quest was.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
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Honestly I don’t know that I can fault the game much, I feel like it did exactly what it set out to do, be a low stakes, funny game using a campy interface to tell an absurd short story. I could ask for more developed characters, for instance, but would that really serve the purpose of the game? Make the game longer with more choices, but wouldn’t it start to wear thin and become grating if it was significantly longer? Maybe add even more JRPG mechanical jokes? But I feel satisfied with my experience of playing this. Sorry for not offering much in the way of constructive feedback
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Ok I actually thought of something—the interface made it hard for me to collect quotes because I would sometimes accidentally click through something I didn’t mean to. I mean granted, under ordinary play circumstances you’re probably not going to have people taking notes on this game, but I wish it had been possible to copy/paste text or otherwise save/recall it without messing up the conversation flow.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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This was a great exhibition of using a graphics-forward format like RPG-maker and creating something that is structurally just like a choice-based interactive fiction piece. In this case, the format was used to explore comedic moments—which works well because let’s face it, RPG-maker is campy as hell and hard to take that seriously. But it raises an interesting question about how a controlled-movement graphical map like this could be used in a choice-based narrative, and I bet it could be used for more dramatic ends as well.
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Extending the above: making jokes that could only be told in this exact medium. In this reading/playing journey I’ve been on these last few weeks, I’ve enjoyed a lot of different kinds of interactive fiction pieces. And frankly, I still love a lot of the pieces where the interactivity is more of an accompaniment to a more static text rather than being made central to the structure of the piece. Even so, isn’t it just satisfying when you encounter a piece like this that could only work because of how its interactivity is implemented? It makes the work feel more special to know that its interactivity is essential, rather than peripheral, to its existence.
Quote:
- “So it’s basically a regular white teacup?” ( … Yes.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
- It has to be when the genie ejected Jasmine out of the scene into the toxic swamp. I was so shocked and surprised that this happened, I probably laughed for a good 10-15 seconds at the “Bad Ending” screen.
By process of elimination:
I can now give a dubious congratulations (?) to the game Why Pout? for being assigned 67th out of 67 on my personal shuffle list.