Knee Deep Act 1: Wonderland
Prologue
Games
With a focus on the narrative to
which everything else comes a distance third, Wonderland won’t be for
every gamer, but it does what it does with a flourish and some panache,
and delivers it via one of the more intriguing game presentations I have
seen.
We start with a suicide in a
small middle of nowhere town. A “once was” Hollywood bigshot, now a “has
been” dangling from a tower, the death attracts all those sorts who are
drawn to the light of such things. This includes the three playable
characters, an on-line celebrity blogger, an old school timeworn
journalist, and a gumshoe private detective. What unfolds over the next
two hours or so, does so from their different perspectives, and through
their different and shifting motivations.
And it does so as a play. A
curtain goes up at the stage (the world’s biggest stage it seems), the
applause dies down, and we are off.
Wonderland does a rather good
job of maintaining the feeling of a stage play, with locations
constructed as sets, rotating stages, and the occasional whisking of the
character between the different “locations”. The focus on dialogue
assists, almost giving you the feeling of a director. Add the vibrancy
of the colours, a predominantly nighttime environment, and a noir-ish
overtone, and Wonderland is rather engaging.
There are more and more products
where the main focus is the narrative choice, and in Wonderland that is
pretty much it. You don’t explore your environment, there aren’t things
to look at or find, no inventory whatsoever. You don’t have to solve
conundrums, and save for the very occasional self-contained puzzle (eg
power up the tower by placing the pieces of circuitry in the right
place), its choosing who to talk to and what to say. No “game over”
because of a bad choice, no keyboard pecking, no near death experiences.
Near as I can recall, you don’t really choose who to talk to either,
because talking to all three available characters will be necessary to
progress, and talking to the first two automatically triggers a
conversation with the third. I don’t even recall walking my character
around a location; rather, my character went where it needed to, and I
clicked on the available character to have a chat.
I have to confess that the lack
of almost anything else made the play persona seem a little gimmicky as
Wonderland went on. While the look and the style remained appealing, it
did feel like I was very much turning the pages in a “choose your own
adventure” novel. Not that that is a bad thing, just be aware of what
Wonderland offers.
Having three playable characters
(you don’t choose then either – when it’s their turn that is who you
play) involved in the same story adds to the narrative opportunities,
and the choices involved. Conversations are the stock in trade of all
three, and there are many to be had. Sometimes you simply “continue”
the conversation, but most often you will have two or three ways the
conversation can go. You might for instance have a choice to respond
aggressively, co-operatively or deflectingly, and whichever you choose
may have consequences later – a lack of co-operation with someone may
mean he or she is not inclined to help you later on. Alternatively you
may have a choice of subject matter to pursue, and what you learn will
depend on what you ask about. Not everything is available more than
once.
A choice you don’t get is when
to save. Wonderland will do it for you periodically.
Each of the playable characters
also gets to file reports or stories, and again you have choices.
Periodically a pop up window will show you the facts or plot lines you
have uncovered, and ask you to submit one. You then report your chosen
bit of information with an appropriate “spin” – cautious, edgy, or
inflammatory. Not surprisingly, how you report will affect the
disposition of others, both immediately and down the track - make the
locals out to be a bunch of yokels, and don’t expect a lot of gratitude
or co-operation.
You can decide for yourself
about the feedback you get about the impacts of those decisions. Apart
from perhaps a gruff (or otherwise) response from the primary recipient
(which you may in fact be able to ignore by not answering the phone) the
only other feedback I can recall is a little pop up from time to time
which might say something like “reflects an earlier conversation”. Is it
enough, is it too little, does it take away from the organic nature of
things or is it to opaque. Would more “real world” feedback (eg comments
from people about my blog) have been preferred, a nice addition or not
necessary.
A character observes at one
point that you can drown in knee deep water if you are standing on your
head, and I felt a bit like that plot-wise. There is a lot of plot, or
pieces of plot, crammed into Act 1, and trying to keep on top of it,
even with the plethora of information that regularly slides into view on
the left of screen and acts much like a notebook, was too much. So I
stopped struggling, got to my feet, let it play out and just “watched”.
Which helped. The water subsided, and it started to come together
towards the end. Coupled with a twist, things seem nicely set up for Act
2.
Which is available, so after intermission,
onwards we go.
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
January 2016
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