The story revolves around a two deity lovers who were separated and only by uniting them can the world be saved. You get to play as characters in 3 different time periods to accomplish that mission. The story was plain and simple. Playing different characters just gives you different rules to toy with. I was hoping that somehow finishing a story with a character in an earlier time period will change the story for the other characters if I replayed.
The rules was where the game truly won me over. However, having to swallow 5 pages of rules and 3 pages of appendix was very off-putting at first. But once I start playing, slowly with plenty of page flipping, I managed to get the hang of the rules and boy it was fun! Very quickly, I forgot what the story was about and obsessed over every new item, weapon, and armor I got. However, I can foresee that this will not suit everyone's taste. I only find it enjoyable because I am a fan of tabletop RPGs and this type of game was just my cup of tea.
Complex rules eh? My munchkin senses are tingling
Despite the rules being its strongest selling point. It had a few minor weaknesses. The armor system was kinda confusing, the crafting rules did not clarify what counts as safe location, and the random encounter table sometimes coughed out enemies that were not in the same time period as my character.
Overall, this was a fun game but it will only be so for people who like pen and paper RPGs. In my opinion, complex rules works best when combined with an open world. So perhaps with less railroading and a nice map, this game will be solid. However, to make this game fun for the general public, the author must answer this question: "If I liked games like this, why am I not clicking away on Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft instead?"
Thankyou ChanSing Goh for your kind comments.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest question to answer for me is "If I liked games like this, why am I not clicking away on Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft instead?" .
Quite simply I discovered Gamebooks through my local libraries - both the one at my school and the one in my town where I still live. I do not come from a rich family so we could not afford the equivalent of consoles or computers back then. I was 18 when we got our first computer and that was second hand. Provided a reader can access the internet, anyone can read my story; time has come full circle as the same library I used as a child now has free internet/PC use - my local library in theory contains my story!
I guess I am officially Old School. I love tinkering with rules. To me a Gamebook must be as much game as it is book but this view is increasingly falling out of fashion. With so many ways to game these days using a variety of media, the need of a strong story is the most important element.
When I wrote Archipelago I exceeded the word limit. I made the wrong choice - I cut the story rather than the rules. I appreciate that now and have been kicking myself for it. The Armour rules were a late edition and on reflection were not well done - was a rush to finish in time in the end. Still not as bad as my other entry A Familiar Story from 2012 where I only wrote the story in two weeks as that is when I found out about the competition and had to really rush (again rules heavy, little story).
It is interesting that you picked up on the story being open world game play - originally it was but I changed it to fit the word count. (The word count was exactly 25,000 words, including those on the Character Sheet.)
I thought the Crafting rules were clear but you are not the first to mention they were confusing, so my mistake - sorry! Not sure what you mean about enemies not from your time period - I specifically wrote it so that there were - pirates for example can fit any time period, it is just how you picture them. For example, there is a part where the Shodani/Ancient Tribesperson notices a dangerous plant, which means that only the Conquistador & Smuggler can 'find' a Musket. I took great pains to keep the time periods accurate but if I have missed something I'd love to know more detail.
That is one thing about the Feedback I found disappointing. I had one person complain about spelling but list no examples, it could be because I am English we spell Colour and Armour with a "U" or was it something else. Again I had a complaint about Grammer and the person preceded "But" with a Comma. I wanted feedback about what people thought about the actual rules but got very little.
I think my main problem was that I tried to write the story as the Gamebook I wanted to play rather than a competition entry. I wanted to test out some rules ideas but I put too much content in and didn't give enough chance for individual parts to work. If I had a bigger word count and could make the adventure more padded it would work a lot better.
I look at Gamebooks that came out when I started, like Bloodsword or Demonspawn, some of the rules were incredibly complex and required a lot of concentration but that was part of the fun. These Gamebook systems are coming out as Phone Apps now, where the math is done for you. Dare I say, at the risk of being unpopular, that gamers/roleplayers/gamebook readers are becoming increasingly lazy these days? We don't want to calculate things/record everything, we want it all prepared for us in advance so that we only have to roll a dice (or sometimes not even that!). I hope I'm wrong. Mind you a Character Sheet that looks like a spread sheet is not fun either - we turn to RPG's, etc. to escape such things!
"I was hoping that somehow finishing a story with a character in an earlier time period will change the story for the other characters if I replayed."
Man - Why didn't I think of that? Maybe next time...
Thank you for your reply.
DeleteI understand. I too turned to gamebooks because I had no computer on my own and computer games those days could not deliver what gamebooks could provide. However, times have changed. Now all authors have to figure out what gamebooks can deliver that computer games cannot.
Concerning the time period mess up, what happened was I played a shodani and I faced a pirate. Yes I know that pirates can reasonably exist in all time periods but this one had a cutlass which I was more than happy to loot after I pierced his skull.