That sweet music. That joyful, upbeat tempo, which promises to deliver mirth to all. You must get to it. You must see what is causing it. You must be part of it.
The circus has come to London’s shores! And none of Mrs Plenty’s common-and-garden sideshows, either; the mere music is enough to buoy you upon a tide of joy. The Downtrodden Dreamer, too, is caught up in the crowd – a little rat searching for a big break. Will the circus offer the fame and recognition she seeks? Is the circus all it’s cracked up to be? And why does the ringmaster look like that?
If the amount that she spends on buying my ridiculous skeletons in the Bone Market is any indication, she has Plenty of money. She could use a little competition!
I think this may be the closest Fallen London has been to pure horror genre. Maybe I should put this on spoilers, but I guess the portrait of the ringmaster has already made most people guess that this is not the happy fun kind of circus (is there actually a happy fun kind of circus?).
So, a word of content warning: this one gets dark. Viscerally dark.
I liked the way the story sweeps you in. I was in the middle of the current Firmament chapter and had only descended to London because I wanted to collect the weekly Balmoral payment, so I clicked on the first storylet on this story intending to simply mark it as started and pick it up later, only to find that it doesn’t give you an out until much, much later. That was quite inconvenient to my plans, but it fits the tone of the situation very nicely. Even when I was given the chance to go back to London I stayed to complete the story, because it didn’t seem like the kind of thing my character would just let be for the moment.
Unfortunately, I can’t say I liked the way the story was done. Mostly, because it is one of those where your character is just going through the script, with little to be done about it. There are basically two instances in which you can really decide what to do about the story (and the first is more about how to take what is happening), the rest of the time you are just seeing what happens next. And at times it made the story seem like it was going on forever.
Not one of my favourites, by a long shot. Not a bad horror story, but it felt like that: a story I was just reading.
Did anyone get echoes for advising the Dreamer to stay? I love strange things and creating stranger things in the Neath, but the hope of ‘making it better maybe’ wasn’t quite enough to avoid the disquiet I feel with Fleins’ animals.
A deliciously creepy Exceptional Story. Although it’s fairly linear, I enjoyed being able to explore the games and sideshows of the Circus at my own pace, both before and after seeing through the illusion, and gradually uncovering the truth about the Circus. Fairly early in the story I connected what was really going on with its similarity to the enthralling illusions and mind-altering music in Dahut (in Sunless Sea). The climactic escape from the ‘island’ was thrilling, and I loved the ending I got with the no-longer-Downtrodden Dreamer. I hope we see more of her in the future!
For those who enjoyed this story, you may want to check out the game Cabernet, which the author (Ben Sabin) was a writer for.
Super cool story. Creepy carnivals have always been a favorite motif of mine, so having one set in the FL universe was a treat. Echoing what other folks said, this one felt a little too linear for me. It felt like a super cool story, but one that could pretty easily be set in any universe as opposed to being FL specific. Swap your partner for the story for a human, and it progresses just fine. I know there’s often not a lot of choices that can be put into an ES, but this is one of the ones where I felt more like a passenger than a player, which makes it harder to get into the story.
So, I did end up playing this despite the warnings upthread – and it seems that if you’re not especially bothered by scary clowns and creepy circuses, it doesn’t hit home that hard. In fact, I found some bits laugh-out-loud funny.
There was a scene quite early on the ship, where there was an option to resist the music. It was greyed out, and there had been very few decisions prior to that point and none that I’d not made on the side of caution – so it wasn’t clear to me how you could have the required quality. Was it playable for anyone else?
The other niggle was to do with the deaf (?) woman who headed back to the ship – why wouldn’t the Dreamer and I do the same at that point? It struck me as one of those points a scriptwriter needs to raise just so they can put it to bed and not have people wondering.
The story built to a nice climax, though. I would have liked to find out more about what kind of a zee beast exactly this was. The Epilogue was perfect – though I did wonder about the scale of the stage and the performers (at least it’s not a flea circus!). I’m with those who would like to see more of the Dreamer. If only rats in real life were such appealing conversationalists!
My understanding of the greyed out option was designed to show how impossible the music was to resist (in the spirit of ‘No, not even you.’ from when we all got crushed by a stalactite a few summers back). The alt text for the quality reads ‘Now why would you want to do that?’ reinforcing this. I think it’s trying to build the sense of unwilling compulsion into the game mechanics, by giving you options but refusing to let you take them.
Ah, yes. That makes sense. Shows how little I know about writing for this type of game. Thank you. (I have no memory of being crushed by a stalactite --maybe I was on FL sabbatical at the time.)
It was Estivale 2023 looking it up, so it’s been a while. They used the trick memorably at the start of the story, giving you an option to be crushed by falling rock then an option to ‘Endure’ locked with a ridiculous dangerous stat (500 I believe) and the message ‘no, not even you’. Later in the story they then did the opposite, giving us good options unlocked by the allies we’d gained with locked bad options showing us what could have happened without them.
It’s probably my favourite example of game-story synergy after Evolution’s diving increasing the actions it takes as you go down, but it might have worked a little better here if it had been invoked more than once? I guess the zero percent chance to listen to the music after it breaks somewhat recalls it.
Is it me, or there are muted Fisherman vibes (Langan’s cthulhu novel) ? Especially when the illusion is lifted, the descriptions of a zee-veil being lifted, etc.
I liked this story a lot so far, i am a horror/mystery fan anyway. The writing style is excellent in my opinion, and the mechanics are ok I guess. It did not feel so linear as others describe, I felt like I had some choices every now and then. I understand that it is a smaller story of course, and cannot expand too much - for me it was a 7/10, I enjoyed it.
