Duskwood

[DomaDoma]

"The perfect mobile game doesn't exi--"

Heck, a GOOD one didn't exist, to my knowledge. Until, that is, some mad Francophone geniuses hit on the idea of putting you into a mystery-thriller plot entirely by means of text conversations and other things that could happen on your smartphone.

This game is so riveting, I'm not even waiting to be done with the current content before raving about it. I chose the name of Ivy for a protagonist, and the thing is actually... very well-suited toward playing as a modernized Ivy Douglas. The exact opposite of the cursed alchemy that resulted when I decided my Dragonborn was going to be Bruman. I wouldn't recommend choosing a protagonist who isn't basically ordinary, but.

I'm currently toward the beginning of episode 8 and

Spoiler: Early Episode 8 Spoilers

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but good grief, Jake does NOT know how to look good in a desperate situation. He just shut down Allan's call the instant it was clear I was a Person of Interest. Serious dilemma, anyway. Ivy is VERY cognizant of the importance of proper communication with the legal authorities, but on the other hand there is a very real possibility that this police chief is in fact the (a?) perpetrator, and she knows it. Ugh. I think I'll have her operate under the assumption that Jake is going to shut it down again anyway (come on, the game mechanics dictate he will), and it's marginally better in either case to take the heat personally.

Boy, but Ivy is really beginning to hate this. Half episode six, the entire latter half of episode seven, and this one isn't looking too auspicious.

[DomaDoma]

German, not French. I am pants at accents.

Anyway. Bit further into episode eight and it is going... much better than I had hoped. And yet that only makes me more anxious. Here's a conversation that depends on premium access and also specific routes (say, I wonder if there's a Maximum Drama Route? I've gone consistently for the opposite and it does appear to matter.) The conversation has disappeared off the top of my screen into the bargain, so it'll be a close paraphrase only, but this is a crystallization of what I'm talking about re: my well-chosen persona:

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Jake has just asked me if I ever think about meeting him.

I say yes, but it's always tinged with sadness. He asks me to describe it. I say:

Ivy: We're together in Duskwood
Ivy: I see your face
Ivy: Your eyes are somehow so familiar to me
Ivy: Everything, all of it, has been worth it

Jake: Ivy...
Jake: I want to make that a reality

Oof enough on its own terms, but... it's also a virtual guarantee that this story is not going to end so well as that. Combined with

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Jake's mysterious plan for dealing with the police, it might as well be a lector getting up and declaiming "May the Fourth be with you" and the congregation singing back "and with your spirit", and that's just where my spirit is now.

This game, I swear.

[DomaDoma]

Have run up against game constraints in early chapter nine. I was trying to be vocally skeptical of

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Michael Lewis as the culprit, seeing as everyone he would be taking "revenge" on was a literal child at the time of his daughter's death and if he's going to be taking revenge on anyone we know of, it's Alan Bloomgate

, but apparently the game took that as failure to assume the premise and thereby debunk it and I fear I have spoiled all chance of discussing it. Please, please let me have another chance to suss this out.


Meantime, The Threat.

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He just forgot about Jake and Dan? Sure, maybe one's in Unknown Motel Who Knows Where and the other's in hospital, neither of which is particularly accessible to him, but if he's going to kill Hannah no matter what we do but not bothering to make a clean sweep of it? Either he's not one of us and doesn't even know how badly a threat to Jake would rattle Ivy, or he's sowing division. Which would make it Thomas or Richy (having faked his death by the same methods the actor presumably used in real life), and my money's on the latter. Actually, if it's Alan, he is presumably a superhacker in his own right, probably connected to the Ski Mask Brigade, and he is still doing it to sow division.

Whatever the case, Jake is rattled, and my best efforts to assuage him are falling on deaf ears. Do you know Ivy didn't even mention the threat to her life in the group chat in the vain hope that he wasn't listening in? And now he appears to have this overwhelming desire to be able to protect her, physically.

Augh.

Erm. At the very least, thinking about this game too much has yielded something halfway constructive. Consider:

2003: The hacker group Anonymous is born.
2005: V for Vendetta comes out, and everyone with a vigilante streak, Anonymous included, starts buying the mask. Though the comic version of V is much more consonant with the general spirit of Anonymous, no one is particularly worked up about who has and hasn't read the comic.
2006: Anonymous home base 4chan is, however, terrifically obnoxious about who has and hasn't read a comic which came out in 2003 and features a pointedly anonymous vigilante hacker.

Not saying it's in any way airtight. Just saying.

[DomaDoma]

OK, all caught up. Don't worry, the sheer tinfoil wrong-headedness I tend to have in the middle of the best games is always part of the charm.

Dealing with Thomas... seriously, can I have picked a better persona?

Obvious immediate-term prediction:

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Dan will be the one who thinks to use the gun/probably brought it in the first place, and he is going to be insufferable. Ivy will not mind in the slightest.

[DomaDoma]

A tally of the outstanding questions in Duskwood that the next and final episode must answer:

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1. Why was it a kidnapping and not a murder to begin with?
2. Why did Phil have the bracelet?
3. When and why did the man without a face become a reality?
4. Why did Hannah call Alan?
5. Where did the gun come from?
6. What actually happened to Hannah?
7. What happened to Richy? (...not that we don’t already know, but the game and the fandom have both still made it an outstanding question)
8. Why was the dungeon empty?
9. What’s with the prison visit to Ted?
10. Who is the man without a face, and who are his accomplices (if any)?
11. What becomes of everyone?

Given that list - which doesn’t count technically optional things like the Ski Mask Brigade and Jake’s face and any other surprises they would decide to throw our way along the way - I just can’t see the latest cliffhanger taking very long to resolve.

And here's an idea that would resolve one and a half of these points right off the bat, with a load of other ones in the wings:

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What was the definitely-not-a-rat in the barn?

Could be the Man Without A Face, I guess, but consider the length of time between that moment and uncovering all that evidence. If it is him, then it’s one of those tiresome scenarios where the villain basically goes out of his way to pull out the Jenga blocks out from under his own feet just to tell everyone he planned it all along. (Which inherent badness goes quintuply for it being Jake, of course.)

No, I think that was Hannah, making her escape. And that would help answer our many, many outstanding questions. I can't honestly put together a scenario where she is the home invader in our cliffhanger, but I did entertain it for the sheer drama factor. (For one thing, Dan would still shoot. "Look before you leap" is just what Dan says as a substitute for "cowabunga.")

Okay, I'll shut up now. The floor is yours. We now await the final episode, and the only unacceptable dates are never and Guy Fawkes Day. As I say, I kind of expect a seven-day notice to crop up on April 27...

Sigh. The wait begins.

[Jermit]

It's a text-based game! Oh my god, I'm already running to play this!