TLDR: [b]NOT A GAME ALARM BLARING![/b]
[b][u]General Thoughts/Overview:[/u][/b]
The Novelist (TN) is a decision sim disguised as a walking sim which also offers you optional additional game mechanics. I’m not entirely sure why you would [i]want[/i] to slow down this already snail paced choose your own adventure novel… but it’s nice to be given the option to.
You are the poltergeist. An evil entity haunting an isolated cliff top house. Your quest? To destroy the lives of the people who spend their time there. Drive them to drink, to adultery, and even to the brink of suicide. Crush their pathetic lives beneath your heel, and send them forth into the world, broken and dejected. Or, ya know, help them out… I’m not the spirit police, I’m not going to tell you how to haunt. The current target in your malevolent sights is one Dan Kaplan, and his family. Their story is one you’ve seen a thousand times before. A strained relationship between a selfish she-demon and a tortured writer, only held together by the glue that is the love for their bullied child that was probably an accident. They’ve fled to the isolated cabin on the cliffs to try and patch things up, get Dan’s second book finished, rekindle the demon’s desire to paint, and isolate the child from his schoolyard tormenters.
This is where you come in. Sneak about, read their diaries, pry into their private thoughts and memories, and find the way you can destroy their lives most effectively… or try and help them out, balancing their relationships between the need for work and the time spent together, I’m still not your boss.
[b][u]Pros:[/u][/b]
[list][*] TN would do an excellent job of capturing the complexities of a relationship on the rocks. Balancing work, with time together, with time with the child, with time for yourself, and sleeping is super hard… It WOULD do that excellent job, if the wife wasn’t such an unrelenting [i]♥♥♥♥♥[/i]. It still offers a fascinating balancing mechanic, where you can choose a primary and a secondary priority and mind control Dan into obeying your whims, then watch the outcomes. Someone is super happy, someone is super disappointed, and someone is only a little bit disappointed.
[*] The decisions put to you are actually difficult, if you treat them as a real life conundrum and engage with the characters and the story. I found myself genuinely pondering which route I should go, trying to balance how the relationships between each of the characters were panning out and Dan’s work needs was genuinely a puzzle. I’m sure if I had done a slightly better job, then I could have gotten a somewhat decent outcome for everyone. To double down on that, I would say that TN is genuinely a lesson in meaningful decision making while keeping the same super structure.
[*] I liked the way my choices had small but identifiable effects on the house itself. A bottle here, a drawing there… or not. It gave the house a lived in feeling which is often absent in these sort of choice driven games.
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[b][u]Cons:[/u][/b]
[list][*] WHY DOES EVERY WALKING SIM MAKE YOU MOVE UNBEARABLY SLOWLY?! Seriously. It’s practically a meme at this point. This is [i]especially[/i] true for the storymode version of this game. Where you don’t have to keep hidden. The whole moving like you’ve got broken legs is completely redundant here. This is, by far and away, the most frustrating part of this genre.
[*] The wife is an unrelatable, unrelenting, and utterly selfish ♥♥♥♥♥. This game would work [i]so much better[/i] if she wasn’t a completely toxic arsehole who literally demands [spoiler]you abandon the childhood dream you’ve been working towards, followed by a literal job at a university so she can pursue the hobby she picked back up [i]literally 2 months ago[/i]. [/spoiler]She must be an absolute freak in the sheets as nothing Dan ever does, and no compromise he tries to make, is ever good enough for her. I can see no reason beyond the accidental kid and the bedtime fun for him to endure it.
[*] Your decisions can have the most ridiculous unintended consequences. Picking where to go for a trip? You’d best pick well or you’ll literally [i]crash the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ car[/i]. TN does this a whole bunch, with reasonable compromises with the wife being thrown out, the kid throwing temper tantrums, and Dan being an unrelenting ass himself seemingly randomly. It’s like being given an option to pet a kitten yes/no, with yes being the kitten is petted but the puppy behind it blows up and no being you shoot the kitten – it just doesn’t track.
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[b][u]Suggested improvements:[/u][/b]
[list][*] A sprint button. This should be self-explanatory.
[*] A ‘replay from chapter x’ option once the game is complete. There were several decisions I made where I’d be half tempted to play out with different choices. I’m not replaying the entire thing though. By not having the option to save in multiple files (or if you can I managed to mess up somehow) you can’t set points for further replayability, unless you don’t mind repeating everything.
[*] I’d have liked to whisper thoughts to each of the family members. I feel like only whispering to one person made little sense.
[*] A version of the game where the wife isn’t toxic.
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[b][u]Overall Recommendation:[/u][/b]
You know what? Sure. This is no master piece, but if you go expecting an interactive novel and not a game, you might get something from it. TN goes on sale for less than a quid, and will take less than 2 hours to complete in storymode (depending on the amount you agonise over Dan’s choices). It has an interesting premise, offers a branching and more gameified take on the walking sim, and if you chose to let it in then the story may play out as meaningful for you.
TN is not for people who want an actual game; this is just a choose your own consequences story that wouldn’t sell as a book. It isn’t for people looking to master mechanics, though the brief look I took at the stealth version of the game does provide an additional layer of puzzle to the game. TN would probably not work for a child or teen. The type of drama involved is very adult, even if the content isn’t ‘adult’. Having navigated a relationship for many years and raising a litter of kids makes this relatable, I’m not sure how well it would translate if you haven’t lived at least part of it.
TN is for people looking for a meaty relationship drama, a story with meaningful and difficult choices, or a shorter experience on the cheap. It’s for people who might like to reflect on how sometimes seemingly small choices and situations can impact the bigger picture with time.
At the end of the day, TN walks a tightrope. If it were a game alone, it would fail. If it were a story alone it would fail. If it were a choices simulator alone, it would fail. But it isn’t any of these things alone… it is all of them and none of them, and it draws just enough together to provide a compelling experience for just long enough to have an impact without overstaying its welcome. As such, I give it a tentative thumbs up, assuming you buy it on sale. I don’t recommend this at full price unless you’re really into peeping into other people’s lives.
