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Le mot de la fin

  • Hasvers
  • 07/08/2014 07:21 AM
  • 2272 views
Oratorical RPGs are on the rise: after The Logomancer and Profit Motive, here comes Last Word, spawned from the mind of Fleuret Blanc's Merlandese, and headed straight for the top of the IGMC '14 crop.
I have something of a vested interest both in the contest and in the notion of discourse-based games, so I could hardly pass on the occasion to play this one. By the time I reached the end, I knew I had to preach the word.



Story & Setting: 4/5 Wit, characterization and fin de siecle

Sure, there isn't a lot of plot happening in the game: mostly members of the gentry sitting around, tasting wine and throwing pleasantries and not-so-covert insults at each other.

The thing is, those aristocrats are actually quite endearing. They are a curious bunch, a mix of cartoonish archetypes (as suggested by the faceless iPodesque portraits in solid colors) and genuinely human traits, sometimes touching, revealed as the investigation progresses. An interesting choice is having someone else than the protagonist be the newcomer in need of some explaining; this trope is a personal favorite, as it allows for more savvy protagonists who have at least a partial idea of what they are doing.

But mostly, you will stay for the quirkiness of the setting, with terrible puns for names, melon-based wines and battle linguistics. This is a world where having the last word literally gives you power over your opponent - in a slight exaggeration of actual psychology that is both absurd and pseudo-realistic enough to have great satirical potential. The setting also achieves a surprising measure of depth given that all we see of it are offhand comments by bored oligarchs, served by a consistently funny and pleasant writing style.

Gameplay: 3.5/5 Relatively new, well executed

My grief with The Logomancer was that the rhetorical theme was a simple cover for the standard RPG course. Less so here: it is perhaps not the most strikingly original gameplay ever found in a RPG variation, but it certainly holds its own.

The gameplay is divided in two parts. First comes the Topic Unlocking phase, which is your usual wandering-around-talking-to-people-to-advance-the-plot deal, and could verge on the monotonous. But it is made strangely satisfying by two simple additions:
- the choice of the topic at hand works like a kind of adventure game's "held item"
- each topic has levels, and popups appear to tell us which level is required for a conversation or whenever this level increases (accompanied by XP gains)

This is purely cosmetic, but it works - through the mysterious seduction of increasing numbers, achievements, things that blink and victory jingles.



(My only complaint: the impossibility of skipping already-read dialogue, especially the butler's laments that I incited by mistake every time I wanted to buy a new skill)

Second comes the battle, or rather Discourse, system. It is the lovechild of a tug of war, a rock-paper-scissors, and a resource management game, all combining into a surprisingly pleasant experience as you try to shove your snootiness down your opponent's throat. By the end of the game you will have pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the system, but there is enough variety from one opponent to another to force you to renew your strategy a couple of times.

It is however worth noting that this system is (not identical but) quite similar to Profit Motive's, both in concept and in presentation, to the extent that I wondered whether the author belonged to the same group. This is by no means a bad thing - I have been waiting for PM's next chapter for a long time, and perhaps two games a trend shall make.
(A perhaps more famous referent could be Deltree's battle concept in its various incarnations, with multiple gauges and the importance of momentum and advancing on your opponent, but the similarity is not as clear.)

Still, it feels like a little bit of a shame that the battles only fit abstractly with the conversational theme. You have on one hand meaningful conversations without real gameplay, and on the other hand battles without real meaning, when all the pieces for something more were there. But perhaps I'm biased.

Graphics and Audio: 4/5 Packaging is worth a thousand maps

The mapping is quite nice, with a lot of little touches (animations, fireflies...) but would not have been exceptionally noticeable in itself. Instead, this game's unique visual flavor comes from some more radical graphic choices in the interface and the character art.

The portraits in solid colors with only one distinctive trait in black, like an inverted iPod ad, turn out to be curiously effective, although they sometimes made characters slightly difficult to memorize (I had some trouble telling the gentlemen in top hats and moustaches apart, for instance). It gives a very Clue-like atmosphere to the game, even coming pretty close to having a Colonel painted in mustard.

Furthermore, the protagonist's trait - the bowtie - is omnipresent in the UI and even appears in the gameplay, as your equipment slots are expressed by your number of bowties (I had fourteen by the end of the game, not quite sure where I put them all). This gives a nice consistency, and really, who doesn't like bowties?



The original music was pleasant and adequate, although not extremely memorable - it fit the atmosphere and did not transcend it (except possibly in the epilogue), which is perhaps as well given the rather humorous and casual tone of most of the game. The characters' snobbish hums as they speak are funny, then tiring, then blend in the background as you get used to them, but they do add a little to the ambient snootiness.

Conclusion: 4/5
One of the finest games in the Indie Gam Mak Contest, and especially one of the best-made all around: while others may outshine it in some aspect or another, Last Word is remarkably well-rounded, with no large flaw, and a lot of character.

It provides two or three hours of genuine fun with a definite Freebird-esque (To The Moon) touch in the focus on polish and characterization and humor and mise-en-scene. The gameplay has something going for it; it could have been more than it is, mechanically or conceptually, but the interface partly makes up for it (in a mild case of form over substance that is also Freebird-esque) and given the short timeframe of the contest, one can hardly be blamed for not making everything perfect.

In brief: perhaps not revolutionary, but idiosyncratic, pleasant to look at, to hear, to read and to play, and witty throughout - what more could we ask for?

(That was a rhetorical question. Do not reply.)

Posts

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Awesome. I was pretty stoked to read this review! My only immediate regret is not naming the game Le Mot de la Fin. Dammit... XD

The great thing about this being a contest entry and still getting great input like this is it allows me the chance to implement user feedback whereas I had very little of it during that thirty days. A lot of what you've said here is extremely helpful. :)

It's also nice to hear about similar games. I've been made aware of The Logomancer recently, but Profit Motive is new to me. If it has some similar things happening in it, that means I get to play a new game that I know I'd like! Thanks again!
author=Merlandese
My only immediate regret is not naming the game Le Mot de la Fin
There's always DLC. An excursion across the Channel, perhaps?

Glad my feedback helped a little!
Actually, what are you intending to change for the potentially commercial version? And since we're at it, do you have plans for other games in a similar spirit?

PS: Profit Motive has a lot of charm, it's more about business management than idle conversation but I'm quite sure you will like it, perhaps more than the Logomancer.
Actually, speaking of channel excursions and "other games" simultaneously, I was contemplating making a sort of indirect sequel to Last Word starring a different person about five years later on a luxury cruise-liner. XD

I kind of like the world of it, and I've been tossing around an "upgraded" idea of the Discourse system that uses body language as well. But that's, like, incredibly early right now.

Just like how any expansions on Exeunt Omnes is made easier because you worked hard on the foundation already, I've also got a set of resources and style pre-made with Last Word that would let me tell another fun story with a bit more time to make it better.

And as I read your comment, I was listening to a quick-y review of Profit Motive in another tab. I'm already way interested. Some of the dynamics seem right up my alley. Design-wise, I like things that have depth but have simple decisions that seem relatively similar in function at first. Not sure if Profit Motive is like that, but I can see from the few battle descriptions and video bits why it and Last Word's Discourse come off as similar, no doubt.

All of these new chatty game possibilities have gotten me pretty excited!
author=Merlandese
Actually, speaking of channel excursions and "other games" simultaneously, I was contemplating making a sort of indirect sequel to Last Word starring a different person about five years later on a luxury cruise-liner. XD

I kind of like the world of it, and I've been tossing around an "upgraded" idea of the Discourse system that uses body language as well. But that's, like, incredibly early right now.


That would be fantastic, I'm imagining something along the lines of "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", but with monocles.

In any case, you absolutely have to do more with this world, this style and these concepts. Even if Last Word has something slightly final about it, it can certainly work as setting-building, The Hobbit-style. A prequel on the origins of the legendary Whitty Gawship. Will we ever get to know how her house fell, by the way?
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