So lately, a game called Long Live the Queen has appeared on Steam as sort of a politically-based RPG/Interactive Novel.
I watched both parts of the ‘TB Is the Prettiest Princess’ videos, because let’s face it: it’s fun to laugh at TB. But as I watched more and more of the video, and saw more and more of the gameplay, there were some serious design concerns raised that are worth talking about.
1 - The GUI is not helpful. It regularly conceals information from the player needed to make decisions over what moods are influencing the training of what skills.
2 - The game is a guessing game. You won’t know what kinds of skills you need, until the need for it bites you like a Milk Viper. Sometimes you will get warnings about events, like ‘the ball’, but usually it’s in too short of a time to allow you to adjust your mood and train up.
3 - The amount of pink/uber-feminine themes. I usually take a neutral tack when it comes to visual things like this due to the cosmetic nature, but given the above two problems it seems like the idea of ‘Princesses’ and ‘Trial and Error Gameplay’ combined in a horrible way, and the best way to ensure sales was to cover it with as much pink and ribbons as possible (thankfully, no unicorns…yet.)
While there are some very interesting narrative choices you can make - like how TB made his first princess a freakin’ warlord - let’s talk about this game, and what could be done to improve games like it.
Certainly there is something to be said for ease of production, but the mechanics underlying this are kind of gnarly…