Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (no spoilers)
So after much squee by 
ember_keelty I checked out Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem. And I really liked it!
It's like a cross between Long Live The Queen and The Royal Trap: you're a noble from one of six not!18th century!European countries at a diplomatic summit, and your choices about skills and dialogue affect your success and relationships. You can choose to play on story mode which makes it easier to pass challenges and impossible to die, or challenge mode if you LIKE failing and dying (I have not played challenge mode. I have heard it is fun if you like that sort of thing)
It's only a demo, afaict it stops at the point where the plot would split into love interest (or lack thereof) specific paths, but it makes for a fairly satisfying little story as it is.
I've played five of the six origin stories, and six of the eleven love interests (seven if you include being so unlikeable noone would date me), which includes three women. These choices interplay in interesting ways, especially since each origin requires/gives certain skills that may affect your relationships. In my first playthrough I was a bookish, well meaning not!Chinese nerd and got together with a blunt, outgoing warrior woman from the land of matriarchal vikings, which was GREAT. In my next playthrough I was a blunt, moral pirate and went after the bookish not!Chinese nerd dude and he rejected me for having too low an intelligence stat, but my consistent kindness meant someone else fell in love with me without me even trying.
Getting all the origins, relationships (including friendships, there's even more of those!) and hidden scenes is a fun challenge even on story mode. I've been playing with a fan made spreadsheet open and STILL can't get that sixth origin or some of the positive relationships to trigger, but am still finding new things.
ember_keelty has offered to give me advice but I'm not quite ready to give up trying yet :)
The writing is pretty good, with a range of interesting characters with complex relationships it's fun to poke at from different angles. The art is very mixed: the sprites are good but the backgrounds and UI are terrible, presumably the final version will be better. The worldbuilding is effective but sometimes simplistic and has some unfortunate implications, eg there's not!China the land of nerds, sexy brown pirate land and sexy brown not!Persia and everywhere else is implied to be 100% white (the browns are not very brown, either). On the plus side none of the countries are Evil Land, and there's evident variation in personalities and attitudes from most of them (except Vikingland cos we only meet the one and you can't be from there yourself, but I am sufficiently a fan of Hot Friendly Butch Warrior Ladies that I can't complain about a whole country of them)
You never see yourself and there's some nice diversity in the colouring and body types available even if they affect nothing gamewise (there's a beauty stat but it's independent) The characters you see are all kind of pale, even the browner ones, and there seems to be no analogues for any countries/ethnicities outside of Eurasia. Everyone's pretty skinny too, even the ones described in text as chubby. You have to play a cis woman, and afaict everyone is cis but the same sex relationships are given equal narrative weight, in fact Vikingland lady is the default love interest. It seems to be a world with little homophobia and relatively mild sexism compared to the pseudo!18th century-ish setting (maybe 19th century? I think the writer has a better grasp of history than me >.>). There's one background disabled character who's treated ok-ish.
This entry was originally posted at http://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/589218.html. There are
comments.
ember_keelty I checked out Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem. And I really liked it!
It's like a cross between Long Live The Queen and The Royal Trap: you're a noble from one of six not!18th century!European countries at a diplomatic summit, and your choices about skills and dialogue affect your success and relationships. You can choose to play on story mode which makes it easier to pass challenges and impossible to die, or challenge mode if you LIKE failing and dying (I have not played challenge mode. I have heard it is fun if you like that sort of thing)
It's only a demo, afaict it stops at the point where the plot would split into love interest (or lack thereof) specific paths, but it makes for a fairly satisfying little story as it is.
I've played five of the six origin stories, and six of the eleven love interests (seven if you include being so unlikeable noone would date me), which includes three women. These choices interplay in interesting ways, especially since each origin requires/gives certain skills that may affect your relationships. In my first playthrough I was a bookish, well meaning not!Chinese nerd and got together with a blunt, outgoing warrior woman from the land of matriarchal vikings, which was GREAT. In my next playthrough I was a blunt, moral pirate and went after the bookish not!Chinese nerd dude and he rejected me for having too low an intelligence stat, but my consistent kindness meant someone else fell in love with me without me even trying.
Getting all the origins, relationships (including friendships, there's even more of those!) and hidden scenes is a fun challenge even on story mode. I've been playing with a fan made spreadsheet open and STILL can't get that sixth origin or some of the positive relationships to trigger, but am still finding new things.
ember_keelty has offered to give me advice but I'm not quite ready to give up trying yet :)
The writing is pretty good, with a range of interesting characters with complex relationships it's fun to poke at from different angles. The art is very mixed: the sprites are good but the backgrounds and UI are terrible, presumably the final version will be better. The worldbuilding is effective but sometimes simplistic and has some unfortunate implications, eg there's not!China the land of nerds, sexy brown pirate land and sexy brown not!Persia and everywhere else is implied to be 100% white (the browns are not very brown, either). On the plus side none of the countries are Evil Land, and there's evident variation in personalities and attitudes from most of them (except Vikingland cos we only meet the one and you can't be from there yourself, but I am sufficiently a fan of Hot Friendly Butch Warrior Ladies that I can't complain about a whole country of them)
You never see yourself and there's some nice diversity in the colouring and body types available even if they affect nothing gamewise (there's a beauty stat but it's independent) The characters you see are all kind of pale, even the browner ones, and there seems to be no analogues for any countries/ethnicities outside of Eurasia. Everyone's pretty skinny too, even the ones described in text as chubby. You have to play a cis woman, and afaict everyone is cis but the same sex relationships are given equal narrative weight, in fact Vikingland lady is the default love interest. It seems to be a world with little homophobia and relatively mild sexism compared to the pseudo!18th century-ish setting (maybe 19th century? I think the writer has a better grasp of history than me >.>). There's one background disabled character who's treated ok-ish.
This entry was originally posted at http://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/589218.html. There are
comments.