The Island Of Rhynin
Ilias Seferiadis
Ergh, I dunno, man. This was a competent game, and I didn’t like any of the choices it made. Or the choices it gave me to make, either. It’s a stats game, where your choices make number go up or number go down, and for your first choice, you’re given three options, then berated when you pick the wrong one by the people in the game who gave you the choice in the first place. Why give me a choice if there’s only one good option? Then there’s a similar gauntlet of making the right choice amongst seemingly-reasonable options, and either being rewarded for thinking the way the author thinks, or penalized for trying something different.
Then… well, OK, spoilers, I guess:
Then you find a hidden native tribe on this island you’re exploring, and you talk to the king who tells you “Please ignore the weird storytelling here, just accept it at face value. Now you can become king for reasons, but only you or your companion.” And the only vaguely reasonable option is ‘let your companion become king’, so he kills you and that’s the end of the game. And if there had been ‘undo’ I would have sighed and tried one of the dumb options, but there was no ‘undo’, and I was not going to replay the whole thing just to try a dumb option, so I quit there. Will, I hope you bring some sense to the island by abdicating the crown, because wtf.
Did the author have anything to say? Some sort of English Explorer wish-fulfillment fantasy?
Did I have anything to do? Make ‘wrong’ choices and die.