The Path of Totality (Lamp Post Projects)
(edit: I’ve removed a couple of references to suspicions of AI, as I’m satisfied this game doesn’t use AI in any capacity (see Nell’s post below) and bringing up the idea was unkind of me. Apologies to the author.)
Played on: 2nd September
How I played it: Online via the Lamp Post Projects site using Firefox
How long I spent: 1hr 5mins for one playthrough
So I admit I came to this one with a lot of scepticism. I’d noticed that Lamp Post Projects have three games on the ballot, the shortest of which is billed at one and a half hours, and I wondered if the author(s?) might be stretching themselves too thin. I also found the relentless adjective-noun rhythm of the blurb just a little stodgy. Happily, though, The Path of Totality is much better crafted than I was giving it credit for.
This feels like a Choice of Games-type product in miniature. In The Path of Totality’s high-fantasy Middle-Earth-y setting, your custom player character undertakes a weeklong pilgrimage to a set of standing stones to await the eclipse. Along the way, you can optionally choose to befriend or romance your travelling companions. It’s a decidedly fluffy and wholesome game throughout.
I wrote a bit in last year’s reviews about how I don’t usually engage with romance and sex options in games, but I’ve been trying to break that habit and take games and adult content on its own terms. And so it was that Eggory the Halfling Astronomer (“Egg” to his friends, which is everyone) began a whirlwind romance with Jasper “Jazz” the Half-Orc Blacksmith. Just look at that cover art; how can you say no to those kind eyes? The romance subplots are largely supplementary to the main quest to reach the standing stones, and there are no sex scenes and the canoodling scenes are kept brief, but there’s a pleasing sensuality to how they’re written, or at least there is with Jazz. The description of Jazz’s musk and the sensation of their tusks engages the senses and the body in a way that feels authentic.
In addition to romancing one of your companions, you can befriend the rest in one conversation per night; every character gets their turn for you to explore their backstory. These are written well enough for me to enjoy, but I think they’re a teensy bit less successful than the romance, because the dialogue options tend to be quite rigid. You usually get a nice option, an indifferent option and a mean option. The mean options are often cartoonish – threatening to shop your companions to the lawkeepers of the land, that kind of thing. One lets you be casually transphobic. I didn’t explore these so I don’t know the consequences. I largely stuck to the nice options, but many of those sound a little unconvincing, or even insincere, as if your character is reciting what they’re supposed to say rather than giving an authentic compliment – I think they would feel right if the compliments were just a little more offbeat so that they had a little more personality. I understand why they’re written this way, though; roleplaying is encouraged by the game’s character-building, and I expect that too strange a compliment might feel like overwriting whatever personality you’re trying to play to.
There are a couple other writing missteps. The introduction does still feature that claggy adjective-noun prose from the blurb, though thankfully this clears up significantly once the character dialogue begins. There’s a strange line “You recall that kobolds are small, animalistic creatures known for their poor morals” which runs conspicuously against the more friendly multicultural world that Lamp Post Projects consciously builds (it’s notable that orcs and half-orcs are presented here as just big people, rather than as monstrous or power-hungry as in Lord of the Rings and similar fantasy works). Just little bits and pieces, really – I mostly enjoyed the writing, I just think it wanders off-tone here and there.
Let me complete the compliment sandwich by saying that I quite liked the adventure itself, which I’ve ignored up to now despite it being the central mandatory part of the game. I had expected The Path of Totality to be mostly conversation-based, but there are a couple of little gameplay set-pieces that took me by surprise, a navigation-based mist maze and a peat bog misadventure being two of the most noticeable. They’re not all winners (the dice game bothered me, not least because the rules seem terrible; I think if more than half of your dice rolls are rerolls, it’s time to establish some house rules) but they do enough to engage the brain and break up all the talking throughout the game, and they sell the central storyline as a dangerous pilgrimage. They’re simple and effective, and they make this a much stronger game for me.