Isaac Gates wrote:

Well congratulations, you get the satisfaction of knowing you did a good deed- the ultimate cop out reward. :P

Sometimes you see something and a whole lot of other things make sense.

A) It was a joke.


B) How's the view from the other side of that pigeonhole?

Azothi wrote:

Tom Davidson wrote:

Out of interest, did anyone actually find a key? That was the one piece of content I missed out on, and I can't help wondering if that contributed to the ending feeling more than a little incomplete.

I didn't either, and I've been unable to return to the rat village to search more because raising the Hunted quality to 2 after finishing up in the workshop automatically triggers the Stalker fight. My best guess right now is that it's a rare success on searching the houses.

If you defeat the monster, you're free to explore any part of the island you want without cycling Airs. I left without looking for another key, though. It might be related to a choice back in London, such as possibly if you didn't take the ratling with you. If anyone found a key themselves, please speak up.

Took the ratling with me. I was only able to access a few places - the castle, the church, the workshop, the lake (redirected me back to On Daylight), the cove, and the forest, I think. I know I couldn't access the train.

I'd like to say that I very much enjoyed seeing a queer NPC relationship. It fits thematically. If the Bazaar is looking for Love Stories, then wouldn't it welcome Love in all its forms? It seemed almost like an error that no NPCs were in LGBT relationships unless it was with a PC. As if the default was straight but by the Power of Player Choice, we have the opportunity to "turn" them gay. XD

(I'm only a mid-tier player, so please forgive me if I missed some other queer couple or if I'm misunderstanding the Bazaar's motives.)

• The beginning of the story felt very linear with little player agency. The narrative simply assumes my character will help the Zailor; there's no point at which my character's motivations are brought up. My character would definitely help out of altruism, or out of interest in the Imaginator's work, or curiosity once the details of Daylight come up... but I'm never given the chance to decide so.
• The Zailor has very little characterization other than missing the Imaginator. At the end, he gets angry at me for killing the monster, when the story previously implied that letting him help against the monster might get him killed. That's it. This compounds the lack of player agency, as I have no investment in helping him even out of character.
• There's not much characterization of the Imaginator either, which makes sense when we meet them in the present, but we know little about their past self either. They were very creative and that's it, apparently?
• Really, the Ratling is the only character I found at all interesting, and she isn't significant enough to carry the story on her own. Not surprising, given you can leave her out entirely, but disappointing.
• While exploring Daylight, there's little sense of progress. We have to obtain three qualities to reach the Imaginator, but there's no reason given for this. As such, we just wander aimlessly around the island until we stumble across what's needed to progress. We also randomly acquire and use other qualities, but these are often confusing. I haven't heard of anyone finding the rat key, nor was it ever clear what inspiration did, and we pick up items like Mr Sock just because. There's very little story impact in this section, and we do nothing to change the island's environment.
• Wandering the island is an action sink. We have to spend an action every time we visit a new location, and without a clear sense of where to go, it adds up fast. Those travel options really need to be free. This is especially egregious when:
• After fighting the Stalker, we can revisit areas freely, but there's nothing to do there. In fact, there's so little to do that all of the earlier options are gone! We just spend an action to see text we've already seen and get redirected back to the main island storylet. Absolutely nothing has changed, but we neither get to keep exploring in detail nor for our characters to examine old areas with fresh eyes and knowledge.
• The Stalker is just... there. It's taken for granted. We learn from the rats that a monster exists, then it's ignored until it potentially attacks, at which point we just run away. After meeting the Imaginator, it attacks again and we destroy it, then its gone. Any learning about it is incidental—we destroy it without needing to figure out weaknesses, then never wonder about it again. Apparently it's an ushabti controlled by a Fingerking: although we have no idea where it came from, why an ushabti looks like that, or how on earth this can happen when we're not in Parabola. Our characters simply do not care.
• Likewise, not only do we never find out how Daylight is illuminated, but we are never even invited to consider it. We get there, the island is bright, that's it. The writing never questions it.
• There just weren't any narratively significant choices. We decide whether to bring the Ratling along, but her presence changes little. We wander an island, meet the Imaginator, then destroy a monster. We decide whether the reunited Zailor and Imaginator should return home, but there's no conflict between the two. We're given no reason to think the outcome will be any different. The player character exists to facilitate the plot, not to have any say in events.

silurica wrote:

On the topic of queer romance, off the top of my head we have...

Much obliged, friend, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for these people. <3