Lazarrien: A Love Story, by DemonApologist (THON)
There’s something recursive about the Single Choice Jam: because the jam’s constraint requires the player to have only a single moment when they can make a choice, the author’s choice of where that choice should go likewise takes on disproportionate weight. The obvious way to play things is to put it right at the end, so that the player is confronted with a dramatic climax after a comparatively longer build-up, but while this orthodox answer is hard to argue with, it’s also a little bit conventional. So I admit to feeling a bit underwhelmed when I realized that’s probably where Lazarrien: A Love Story was heading – the more so because the central dilemma the game was clearly setting up (try to end the curse on the Dark-Souls-esque fantasy land, or turn away from my quest in favor of the sexy demon with whom the main character has an immediate if underdeveloped rapport) also seemed like one I’d seen before. Happily, though, that meant that I was not at all expecting the way things actually played out, with a late-story twist that reconfigures everything that’s come before while sneakily getting an extra choice into the game while still obeying all the rules.
Admittedly, Lazarrien doesn’t put its best foot forward: stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but an amnesiac knight wakes up in an abandoned crypt, only to find the world is a blasted hellscape and the few survivors tell him he needs to climb to the castle on top of the mountain to set things to rights? Meanwhile, the adjective-heavy prose in the opening section sets a mood, but with visible effort:
He traced the contours of the dusty shrine, taking in details that seemed familiar in a way he couldn’t place. A painting of a storm-battered mountain. A vase of withered flowers. A blackened ring set with a raw, gnarled garnet. Across the room, a strange statue stood on a plinth. Carved with uncanny precision from dark stone, a fearsome horned man reaching, his claws outstretched.
…
As he approached, the music grew louder, richer. He peered around the doorway. In the middle of the cobbled road stood a short woman dressed in an impossibly vibrant array of quilted patchwork, frayed paisley that defied the bleakness of its sky.
Happily, things quickly settle down. The game is structured around a series of encounters with four characters – as well as the aforementioned sexy demon, who’s pursuing you as you climb – and all of them have distinctive voices that nicely break up the more portentous narrative voice. And as the landscape gets more outre, the writing doesn’t feel like it needs to do quite so much work to get its point across – this bit is much more understated, and the more effective for it.
The city gave way to a field of bramble, scorched rose vines that wove a thicket higher than three men. Thorns scraped against his armor and flesh alike as he rushed past. Crisp gray blossoms crumbled to ash in his wake.
Meanwhile, as the confrontations along the way get away from exposition and more into action, I likewise found the story more compelling. Lazarrien has big-time daddy issues that are familiar in broad strokes, but having a candle-wax effigy of his father shout his disapproval at his fleeing son is an effective way to make them more engaging, and while the inevitable sex scene with the demon may feel like it cuts to the chase oddly quickly, there’s an in-story reason for that.
So as I said, my opinion was trending positive when I hit the decision-point and the twist that immediately follows it. I won’t spoil that, but I’ll just say that if you think you’ve played a version of this game before, think again – it’s definitely worth following this journey to its destination at least once. More spoilery thoughts – largely gushing – are in the blurry-text below.
So having the big choice of whether to be a loser and kill Agramith, or spare him and try to escape the curse some other way, wind up completely irrelevant to the actual nature of the trial is inspired – it made me literally cackle aloud, and I adored the fast-talking demoness who rolls her eyes at how dense you’ve been on this, your umpteenth time failing the challenge. Admittedly, I’m not sure this late turn into comedy fits completely smoothly with what comes before (in retrospect, it makes Agramith’s slide into the abyss feel even more slapstick – and also, Lazarrien, buddy, if you get told you need to bring the demon, your sword, and a ring to the castle, and you’ve screwed up a million times before, and there’s a giant pile of swords but not a single ring to be found, maybe put the ring first on the list of stuff you’re trying to remember, not last???) There’s still some pathos in Lazarrien’s plight, however, especially since the twist of course made me curious to replay and see how things differ when you encounter the characters in a different order – or see if there’s an invisible link that allows you to actually take the ring when you find it. Going through the same steps time after time, always hoping to find a better ending but always returning to the same place, put me in the shoes of the protagonist in a way a lot of eternal-recurrence stories struggle to achieve. The timed text does make replays a little slower than I’d like, but there is a satisfying level of variation, making the choice of whether to start over as, if not more, significant than whether you kill Agramith or allow him to fall to his doom, which is a clever subversion of the Jam’s constraints.