today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games where the PC is significantly influenced by a trio of unearthly weirdos
Civil Service by Helen L Liston
Playtime: 25 minutes (16 minutes to first ending)
The one where: we haunt an office
Look, I can’t stop thinking this–could the game possibly be inspired by this real life event (erm, if you click the link it will spoil parts of the plot for you)? If so, the game must have been written INCREDIBLY quickly, but what a coincidence if not.
This game rejoices in making the player put together pieces to figure out what is going on, but to roughly shade in, it’s a sort of A Christmas Carol riff where the PC is the spirit of a dead person, sent on a redemption quest by three spooky witches supernatural figures from the afterlife. In their initial speech, they keep exhorting the PC to stay positive. (Like others, at this juncture I wondered if that was supposed to land as a sort of backhanded comment—am I about to be tortured and then criticized for not being upbeat enough about it?)
The “mission” turns out to be something like haunting an office. As we observe the PC’s actions, she does seem to take a negative view on most things, and she also has a quirk of rating things on a 1 to 5 star scale.
The writing was generally good, and appropriately conveyed the stakes:
I quite enjoyed it, the pieces of the mystery come together in a satisfying way. The star rating bit in particular is VERY well paid off. (My own take on the “stay positive” by the end was that that’s just perhaps good advice for this particular PC, but ymmv.)
It’s not a piece where you get any particularly consequential choices (I saw at least two endings, but others mentioned that’s just based on the star ratings), although you do get interesting and different background on the office workers depending on which you focus on.
There was some timed text, but it was at least forgivably quick.
The main aspect that didn’t land for me was the B-plot with Cafe Guy. It just didn’t particularly work for me as a romance (what do I see in him?) and I didn’t quite understand the ending (in the “good” ending, do I . . . give up on having him see me? Why? And in the “bad” ending it seems like Cafe Guy is affecting what happens to Jess, which I don’t get).
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
The blurb uses a lot of questions in a row, might want mix that up. Together, nothing in the front matter really conveys to me the supernatural elements (and those elements are in the prologue to the game, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a spoiler concern)
Overall, a spooky story with some well-observed details and an emotional kick
Gameplay tips / typos
- coworkers toward the end “this is wierd” should be “weird”