Caroline & Alexander

Caroline & Alexander is another playable link to the tangled bits of RMN’s early history. Looking at the gamepage reveals it was made as an entry for the mapping event on Meridian Dance, a website that was apparently born as part of what must have seemed like an all-consuming rift to everyone present on here all the way back in 2011. However, it all seems to have fizzled out quite a while ago (as in, the event, the website, and the feud, all at once). For (relative) newcomers like me, there’s likely no real need to know more, although it helps explain how Caroline & Alexander has so much and so little at the time.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)

It is certainly one of the prettier resource-using games. Each map is styled to appear as cinematic as possible in spite of the resources' limitations, and so no object’s position is random, with one or several focus points (like the abbey’s large frame, or littoral wildlife on the beach) meant to guide your perspective past the occasional clash. There’s also the range of overlay effects & character animations aiding the game that goal. Similarly, the people’s portraits could've done with some post-processing to adjust colour gradients and remove certain black lines. However, you forget about all that during the conversations, as they are all animated to either blink slowly, which actually looks pretty good, or to move their lips (which really doesn’t, but is still kinda cool). The largely melancholic piano OST sets the tone very well, to the point where largely innocuous speech sounds annoys a bit after a while. The main downside, though, is that there are only 2 maps you actually get to walk around in.(Two more appear in brief non-interactive cutscenes, but they are tiny and obviously didn’t have anywhere near the level of care.) And speaking of walking…

Gameplay

Caroline & Alexander is a nearly pure walking simulator, made right before the term became a thing in the first place with Dear Esther's release. If you try opening the menu, you’ll see that all the default RPG categories like Items, Equip, etc. are present, but blank, while Alexander does not even have a menu portrait, and his stats are all set to 1. You do not even get to interact with any of the objects in the environment. You do talk with the other characters, though, and these dialogues even occasionally include choices, though these only enable you to get extra information and do not change the outcome of anything.

Storyline



Nevertheless, the information you get from going around and talking to people is by far the most solid one in the game. While there are only 5 characters or so besides the titular duo, they all have a good amount of dialogue and it gives a pretty good idea of the kind of a world this is set in. For instance, the language everyone speaks is in the transition between formal medieval English and more normal one since then. “ye”, “thy,” etc. is dropped, but you still have “Aye my lord, verily”, or “Pray tell what bothers you so, my lord”. Notably, it still manages to sound largely natural, with a good mix between (characters’) attempts to wax lyrical and more down-to-earth observations: for instance, Alexander asking about Caroline’s health, and whether she needs her coat on the winter’s day gradually leads to Caroline creepily replying “The light will consume you.”

The language stylistics can backfire, mainly when a typo slips through, like in “The statue of Lenore is most beauteuous today” and the atmosphere suffers somewhat for that. Nevertheless, it’s just one detail of a world in its transition period, since there are (old-style) cars, while one of Alexander’s main concerns is “preventing the fall of the Aristrocy”. Some war is going on as well, and it’s even referred to in the ending’s few lines, even though the actual events don’t seem to be particularly connected to it.

I say “seem”, because unlike the dialogue, the several cutscenes are all vague about the motives, showing the basic (and underwhelming) “what” without “why” or even “when” (a small cutscene that was clearly made to fulfill contest’s “ship, island, riftraft, include Alex” requirements also proves beyond doubt the narrative is non-linear and/or unreliable). Creator mentioned that several planned scenes were left unmade, and this is certainly believable. Without them, the storyline’s earlier efforts and hints largely build up to nothing, Caroline is little more then a typical sympathy-token ill girl, and guessing about the true version of the (few) events is not really that interesting.

Conclusion



All in all, I suppose Caroline & Alexander is an entirely fine mood piece if you feel up for a few minutes of interactive melancholy. Its visual efforts likely deserve more recognition as well, and can potentially inspire someone. It’s also likely that this game could’ve meant a lot more then what it now does, but this is simply not the world we are living in.