The player starts off as a guy sneaking into a mansion that's rumored to be haunted every blue moon with five of their best friends. They quickly find for themselves that the place does indeed lead Elsewhere when they are plunged head first into this new world and need to find a way out. However, before then, they need to fulfill their pledge to serve the Mistress of the mirror mansion they find themselves in for a year and a day, working as a... maid? Additionally, there may be a wrinkle in the whole thing as they find their dreams decidedly a bit more real than before.
The player breaks into a haunted mansion with five of their friends, a couple of shenanigans happen, and the player finds themselves in Arcadia, the land of the Fae. Mind you, that's the land of the Fae, not fairys. These are the ancient beings, personifications of concepts and thoughts, and riders of dreams, that play with people for their own amusement. The mirror mansion they end up in is ruled by the Mistress, who extracts from them a pledge to serve in Arcadia for a year and a day, or be faced with a world where accomplishing anything means making a faustian deal.
After accepting the deal the player finds that it included a clause they weren't aware of. The Mistress of the mansion is the feminine mirror of her brother, and so every servent of hers is feminine. That now includes the player. So the player, now stuck in this new world finds out just where they are, a mirror, half dreamed vision of the Victorian Era, well, except where it's not. Still, it's better than dying of the cold next to a fire that refuses to warm you unless you cut a deal with it, right?
The Mistress: The Fae lady of the mansion. You find yourself in your service upon arrival in Arcadia.
Ivory, Scarlett, Rose, Pastel, Aurora: You fellow servants of The Mistress.
Brice, Claire, Kathryn, Tim and Maxwell: The players friends from back home who they are tied to through their dreams.
This is quite the introduction - so much thought and care has gone into its construction. I think it's worth playing for that alone.
But with all this background, I honestly have no idea how it could fold out into a game - I have no idea which kind(s) of game(s) would fit the settings, let alone how they would play.
But I am curious...
Nicely written, but it's just an introduction. It ends as the "game" is about to begin.
You're introduced to a bunch of characters that are, sort of, left behind and irrelevant, and that in another sense are all you get because there's no game beyond the introduction.
I get the feeling the author had some grand ambitions, but they aren't realised.
There's really so little to play that it's not worth bothering. The content that does exist is mostly just establishing characters you'll never properly interact with beyond this intro.
its a dead game it has't been updated in forever
Game not longer 0/10
In all seriousness that was amazing. I was pretty optimistic thanks to some of the other reviews and it seems that my optimism has been rewarded. The game so far is pretty deep, characters are relatively interesting, the writing is pretty damn good. Most of the game so far is set up, introducing your real world friends and all the dynamics that go on there, exploring a bit along a mostly linear set up and eventually dropping you face first into the meat of the game. While I like the inclusion of the cypher as an "alien", very Fae like language, it does get a bit irritating and repetetive trying to figure it out and more or less requires that part to be played with a decoder handy. I don't think it needs to be changed however. It's meant to be different and alien, let it be that way.
Even though there is precisely zero sex and the game stops just after it gets to the REALLY interesting part, it is still probably the best single game I have played from this site so far.
Bravo to the author, hope to see more in the near future. If not, I can wait for this one forever.
It's fun! There's no sex at the moment. The writing brings a smile to my face. The later writing is better than the earlier writing. I'm glad to see a writer who improves at a noticeable rate.
I don't like all the extra names to memorize for weeks and days and hours, it's just extra pain for the user. They only appear at the very end, but I hope they go away.
The cipher is rot13. Having a lot of untranslated text that the reader isn't supposed to read, that's bad. And also annoying. Like a book that is written half in English and half in German. Even if the "unreadable" language is for story purposes, the author should take any excuse whatsoever to either make it understandable, or make it go away.
