Second game: Turandot by Victor Gijsbers.
This game placed 2nd in the IFComp of 2019. And I seem to discover a pattern in my games already (or regarding my own memory) - this is another game that I realized I played before only after playing it again - the short description on IFDB had not directly jogged my memory. I chose this one during my long run because (1) the content warnings were quite fascinating (sex; sexism and other gender issues; suicide; torture; homophobia; xenophobia), and (2) I’ve heard a lot of good things about Victor Gijsbers before (and I’m always interested to play a game from a fellow Dutch person). It’s loosely based on an opera of the same name, that apparently premiered exactly 100 years ago - I’ve never seen it, but read the brief summary, and it’s quite a weird one.
I’m usually mostly interested in parser games instead of choice-based games - also my own future game would be a parser game - but I’m willing to make exceptions (and apparently have done so in the past).
It was a completely different game than my first one: there were no puzzles. You can make different choices (primarily dialogue choices), but they did not lead to completely different settings or endings as far as I know. So the biggest focus was on the dialogues, mostly between the player character Calaf and the princess. And they were very cleverly written, and very fun to read (but do keep in mind the trigger warnings mentioned above) - I laughed several times while playing.
Some elements that I might want to incorporate somehow into my own game:
- I like witty dialogues and funny scenes - though I’m not sure yet whether my own game would be a funny game, it is something I want to consider.
- Also, I’m not yet sure how much I want to deal with other characters in my own game, and having to incorporate ways to communicate with them (seems like an additional hassle for my first parser game), but if I do, it would be a nice way to convey more information about both the player character and about other characters in the game.
All in all I really liked the game. Up towards the next game!