This review is for the IGMC 2014 version.

It's a red letter day for our heroine Whitty Gawship, she's been invited to a party at Chatter House, the home of Professor Chet Chatter. She knows she's in for an intellectually stimulating evening with some of the best conversationalists the city has to offer, but all is not as it seems. In a world where getting in the last word means you win the conversation and gain power over your sparring partner the introduction of a one way intercom causes disruption in the balance of power and could potentially force the party goers to bend to Professor Chatter's will more and more with each successive verbal victory.

Whitty and her new naïve friend Seymour Saymore must find a way to overcome the advantage that this infernal machine grants the devious Professor, and return order and structure to the debate.

The graphics in this game are all custom, and they are charming and intuitively used. Each of the characters has a distinct colour to identify them as a sprite as well as a single defining accessory for their profile silhouette, and for some reason gave me the strangest feeling of stepping bodily into a game of Cluedo, Reverend Green in the Library with a pipe, but this isn't a who-done-it, it's much more subtle than that. Oddly enough by game's end the colours chosen really did reflect some of the aspects of the characters they embodied, Beige with a jaunty butonnière for the snarky and fashion conscious servant, Red with defined lips for Mrs Prattle because she's argumentative and quick to provoke ire in her audience.


Yeah, just watch me sister.

Unlike a lot of the games in the contest this one was made with RPG XP, which means that the walking speed is set to a reasonable level by default, which is something that always irritates me with VX/A, and given you need to traverse the party to engage in gossip, debate and verbal sparring in order to proceed, being able to move with some alacrity is a plus.

There is no such thing as idle banter in this game, all conversations be they deep and meaningful, or frivolous and banal hide a deeper truth and you must engage in all levels of discussion if you hope to succeed.


Who says nothing good ever comes from gossip?

However topics aren't just indicated by conversations, objects within the game highlight topics you need to discover and give you some goals to attain. For example in the first room you enter there are a lot of expensive looking wine bottles all of which this early on are locked topics, which means that you can deduce you're going to need to find the wine aficionado in the group of people attending and talk with them in order to gain knowledge and unlock the topics relating to those bottles. Not all topics can be unlocked in full in this version of the game, photography being the one I could never fully explore, but I believe this will be updated in a post contest version.

Save is restricted and is done via bow ties, no really, though not unfortunately the one your character appears to be wearing in her silhouette, you have to go and find them, but it's not a long trip to find one. The bow tie also gives you access to an information options as well as exiting the game, though for some reason this was a little glitchy and only worked sometimes, so the handy F12 had to be utilised.


Floating bow ties are even cooler.

Custom music is played throughout the game, and it's not bad, it's just not great either. I believe the developer was aiming for a semi-classical piece as the backdrop for the party setting, to indicate the high-brow nature of the event, but the main piece chosen is a little too loud for a party where conversation is the main objective and too modern sounding to really fit the atmosphere. Still it's not offensive, just a little intrusive. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the background dialogue sound effect used for conversations, it's actually too inarticulate for the subject matter and when you get multiple participants it becomes simply cacophonous and does detract from the enjoyment of the game.

The combat in Last Word is called discourse and that's exactly what it is, though it is classically turn based, that's the only familiar thing about it. It is tricky and extremely strategic, and isn't just a thinly veiled standard, the system was actually quite cleverly thought out and very entertaining. You have an option of three styles of conversation, disruptive, submissive and aggressive all of which have pros and cons in terms of strategy; disruptive increases power but lowers tact, submissive converts power into tact, therefore lowering your power and aggressive uses the stored tact and power in a compelling argument to move the conversation towards a decisive victory. So the flow is generally disruptive to build power then submissive to convert some of that power into tact followed by aggressive to expend that saved resources, however each of the three main components have an additional 3 sub options of Overt, Common and Subtle known as tones which require certain levels of power or tact or both to use, much in the same way that spells require MP to cast. So you need to balance how much tact and power you have to enable you to use the most focussed tone in your next move.


Debaters, start your engines

Composure also has a modifying effect, and stronger tones can damage it. A lower composure makes an aggressive phrase more effective and moves the conversation closer to a win, so try to damage your opponent's composure as much as you can before you hit them with an aggressive statement. Whilst the discourse system does take a bit of getting used to, the developer has enabled you to spend as much time as you want discoursing until you feel comfortable for no penalty, in fact even if you lose an argument you still gain experience, though much less than if you win and those points both increase your level, and therefore your starting point in any battle, and also enable you to purchase skills that you can use in later discourses. You can spend a great deal of time getting the hang of the combat system but once it clicks it becomes a joy to play. Though I am perfectly willing to concede it will not be to everyone's taste and if it is not I doubt they will finish the game since it is vital to win arguments to proceed.


Nothing is more cutting than a piercing gaze coupled with a polite smile.

A problem I have with this game is that for a premise so strongly steeped in word play and clever conversation; some of the dialogues are actually quite clunky and at times grammatically dubious or downright incorrect. There were quite a few places where that dubious nature made me think 'it's ok, but that could have been worded better'. It's a subtle distinction, but in a game of this nature subtlety is everything.

There were also a few small spelling errors, most of which have been corrected in a post-contest build, but the version of the game I downloaded was the contest one, so I do unfortunately get to see them.

For a language junkie like me, this game is a refreshing and enjoyable ride, and I can only recommend it to anyone else who enjoys the challenge of a well structured argument, the novelty of discovering an addition to your vocabulary, the utter joy in the verbal joust and the love of witty repartee, and that's all before dinner is even served.

Given the issues with music, grammar and the like I can't justify giving this game as high a score as the logophile in me would like, but even with its flaws it is an intriguing original game well worth the time and effort to play and master.