We played this at the London IF Meetup, with one of our members reading aloud, doing voices, etc.
Given the themes, we declared that anyone in the group could request at any time to move on to another game – we weren’t sure how far some of the content-warned themes were going to go, and we didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. (I think we may do this a little more officially in future sessions of large-group IF play, especially with games that we haven’t been able to fully vet in advance – adopting the tabletop storygaming convention of “the X card” or “drawing the veil”.)
I include myself among the people I was worried about, btw: there are some moments in the game that touch on dubiously consensual sex, and if the story had gone much further than it did, it would have entered territory I wouldn’t feel comfortable playing in a group setting, especially a large public group.
But no one did opt out, and the game played well that way – lots of laughter, and then a few choice points where people sort of stared at the screen in bewildered silence and we weren’t sure what to say.
Also one point where the reader stopped and said “oh no” because one of the Prince of Persia jokes was so blatant he wasn’t sure he wanted to read it off.
I did not want to stop the flow of action long enough to explain the Rameses reference/joke, though I was tempted, because I felt like that portion is not just referencing for in-joke points; reminding us at this point of the story of a socially anxious teenager adds a bit of nuance to the idea that people are not always able to be themselves. But in the Bond game, Rameses never does get to break out of his limitations, whereas Gijsbers’ Calaf does.
As for the riddle sequence, that was up there among the finer interactive-frustration-comedy sequences I’ve ever played.