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About the StoryHoping to avoid further loss of life, an admiral asks the sins of the past to deliver her a swift victory. Things do not go how anyone expects. Game Details |
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Entrant, Main Festival - Spring Thing 2024
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Teenage Horny Space Marine... Somethings, May 10, 2024Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review
Played: 4/4/24
Playtime: 30 min
Up front, the game told me this was part of an ongoing series to which I had no prior exposure. These disclaimers immediately prompt the question, ‘Am I too background disadvantaged to appreciate this?’ My success rate with these kinds of things is pretty high - Series like Little Match Girl and Lady Thalia notably ease new players in without friction and quickly get us in the swim.
Beseech didn’t quite achieve those heights. Interestingly though, for a while, it used that opacity to its advantage, creating an interesting frisson between a world that of course knew who our Power Throuple was, and me who was desperately trying to catch up. If I’m honest though, that frisson was kind of an artificial boost. There were some narrative choices and gameplay choices that didn’t play for me, and absent that ‘gotta figure out what’s going on here!’ charge, would have tired of it much sooner than I did.
The first narrative sin, for me, was the Power Throuple themselves. Cast as uber-Space-Marines who were so valuable that military structure bent over backwards to accommodate their flagrant insubordination. You know what that kind of double standard does to unit discipline? No, the work does not know. And worse, the Throuple were so, so, so smug about it. About the only time I can tolerate this kind of archetype is either when they subvert their competence somehow, or when we fast forward into outlandish pulp adventure. Beseech did neither.
The second narrative sin, though perhaps specific to new readers, was that their identity was revealed so offhandedly, so late in the story, that it was very much a ‘burying the lead’ moment. They are (Spoiler - click to show)Horny Space Demons! Maybe I could have learned that a lot earlier, certainly before they go on a mission? The reveal was so vastly underplayed as to effectively be anti-climax.
The last narrative sin was lack of interesting conflict. They were presented at the jump as final-resort weapons of irresistible effectiveness. They were employed as such. Sure enough, they lived up to that reputation. There were no reversals, no intricate plans, not even any portrayal of HOW irresistible they were. Hell, there wasn’t even any conflict - (Spoiler - click to show)the antagonist surrendered without protest, and in fact went out of his way to say how awesome they were. Uncharitably, the arc of the piece was ‘We are awesome. The enemy agrees. Now reward us!’
Now, as part of an ongoing series of games, maybe this isn’t so terrible? Maybe this is just a low-stakes interlude (as suggested by introduction) between high stakes adventures. It’s not unreasonable to see it that way. For me though, as a standalone story without background literacy, it did not work.
The narrative was not my only friction with this piece. The Twine link-select UI also chafed at me. Visually, it was attractive. A futuristic font with unique highlighting on choice links. The problem was, there were two types of links. The first was an aside - some comment on things going on. These were actually the best part of the piece. The wry aside observations from the protagonist were funny in their often blatant horniness. The second kind of link was the ‘proceed with story’ link. I did not detect any links of the ‘affect the narrative’ variety. The problem was that the words chosen as links gave no clue which type they were- not in phrasing or position. An example (choices bolded):
"There was no hail of gunfire, no clouds of smoke and war. Instead we were greeted with something shocking. Something none of us thought we would ever see in our life times."
You might expect from that construct that the first link would provide some additional detail, while the second would naturally push the scene forward. No, it was the opposite. The work did this ALL THE TIME. This example is somewhat atypical anyway, in that more often, the highlighted words seemed arbitrary. Like if they were ‘There was no’ and ‘thought we would’ in the above sentence. Even worse, many times there were multiple paragraphs, where the natural thing to do would be select links as you read them, except the first link might move the story forward and expect you to have read the whole page! Independent of any narrative quibbles, this link confusion drove me to distraction.
Between the character, plot and UI choices, this was not for me. I could certainly see this playing better in context of a larger series, and hope longtime fans appreciate this more.
Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Horny Space Demons
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, the UI is where I would put my energy. It is a linear novel of sorts. I would give a lot more thought to the link architecture and its impact on how the piece is read. I would especially make sure those nifty asides are consumed in a natural way.
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Left me a bit lost, May 16, 2024I was drawn into this one by the stylish UI and the character-focused setup, immediately interested in our three MCs’ circumstances and their relationship. Their teasing, comfortable dynamic was fun to read about, especially with the sense that these were some precious, stolen moments in an otherwise strictly regimented life. However, the introduction to these characters’ lives doesn’t match up with what actually plays out in the story; the setup gets quickly got thrown out the window, especially when the cozy domestic moment we start out witnessing becomes an urgent mission.
As other reviews have mentioned, I think the confusion definitely comes in part from this being the third in a series. Not having played the preceding games, I couldn’t follow what was going on with the mission, completely lacking a frame of reference for it. This ended up creating a major disconnect between me and the characters, which was the opposite of my experience at the beginning, when I thought I understood what they might be thinking and feeling.
A final issue is that most of the game’s passages contain two types of links—ones that lead to brief asides and return you to the passage you came from when you're done, and ones that advance to the next main-text passage. However, both types of links are colored and styled exactly the same, and the game has no “back” button, meaning that if you inadvertently miss an aside, there’s no way to rewind and see it. While I was able to crack the code as to which type of link is which—single-word links are asides, multi-word links advance—signaling the difference in a more obvious way would have been a better design choice.
Anti-clamatic Guess the Link, May 15, 2024
To Beseech Old Sins is a linear sci-fi Twine story, part of a larger series, where you play as Epsilon, a superpowered (if you will) golem, part of a Throuple/Trio SpecOp team. Though your behaviour goes against every directive ever, you and your team are barely reprimanded because you are the best of the best. And this is why *you* get to go on a daring mission to win the war (or at least the battle). All the odds are against you, but luck is weirdly always on your side.
Yay, I thought after reading the long introduction to get here, some action, I get to do something! Let's take over the ship and... oh... they immediately waved the white flag. Ah... ok, then. Let's just read about how great we are, I guess.
While I do not have gripes with the kinetic type (having made and played plenty), I was sorely disappointed to see that I would not have any input in the story. The blurb talks about an admiral (your boss) wanting a swift victory but nothing goes as plan, and I sort of expected we would have to get down and dirty and fight (of some sort) or be forced to escape some sort of prison. But no, you just read about how you strut around with desire in your eyes (which is fine, just not what I expected).
I think my biggest issue with the piece was how I kept playing Guess What the Link Will Do throughout the whole game. Was I going to read a snarky observation or continue with the story? I could never tell, as all the links looked the same, and the one to move forward with the story never had the same position between passages (it was only obvious when only one link was on the screen). So, every time I moved to a next passage on the first link, I kept wondering what I had missed (was it important for me to understand? would it have helped provide more context?). It really made the experience frustrating.