The Island of Rhynin
The Island of Rhynin starts by setting the mood:
Not very vast, mind you. It’s, like, about five minutes of play time, and either one or two days of game time. Those days are spent gathering some resources and taking some rather obvious decisions until
They’re tribal people! And they’re wandering about! Because that, I suppose, is what tribal people do? What else could they be doing? They’re definitely not governing themselves, because they got some non-tribal dude to do that for them. And your non-tribalness is enough to make you the perfect heir of the king, the perfect next king, at least if you’re willing to kill you crew mate for the privilege. It is not very clear why you would want to become King of these tribal people, rather than returning to your own country and your loved ones; nor is it clear why the game is telling me that I will become the next king even though I entered my name as ‘Elizabeth’. But that’s what it is.
I’ve been adopting a joking tone throughout this review, but I think that’s better than taking the game seriously. Taken seriously, one would perhaps have to be outraged at its portrayal of non-Western people, and its facile, even unthinking use of the colonialist white-guy-is-adopted-as-king-of-the-natives-because-they-recognise-him-as-obviously-superior plot. Better to just shake one’s head and walk away.
(When I was reading Pippi Longstocking to my children, I definitely changed the passages where her father is described as ‘King of Negroes’; an obvious title to attain for a white guy who washes up on the shores of an island inhabited by black people, apparently. But Astrid Lindgren wrote in 1945, not in 2025. Still dubious, but not quite as tone deaf.)
The programming is competent, and there’s a fine use of stats throughout. The game would have been more interesting if one’s choices had been less about finding the optimal path, and more about influencing the way that the story unfolds.