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Haven reviewStoning the romance
Stoning the romance
Developer:The Game BakersPublisher:The Game BakersRelease:December 3rdOn:WindowsFrom:Steam,GOGPrice:TBA
You’re supposed to put the genre in the introduction, but then you’re also supposed to write an introduction in the first place, and not a load of delaying tactics where you bang on about the vagueness of genres and howHavenis a hybrid of at least two of them anyway. You spend most of it skate-gliding around a 3D world, some of it fighting corrupted animals, and some of it in visual novel type sections that bring me to the plot and this paragraph to a merciful end.
Kay and Yu, a couple destined for a lifetime of Abbott and Costello routines, have fled a society that does not approve of their relationship, and hidden themselves away on Source, a floating archipelago that vaguely forms a planet. The End.
Oh no!
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
It’s nice. It’s lowercase nice. I hesitate to reduce it to ‘cute couples being cute’, but the fact is if you find that idea repulsive, nothing else this game does will outweigh that for you. It is very much about a lovey couple. But right away, I appreciated that when they’re sickly sweet with each other, they do it in that self-aware way just about every intimately involved couple do. You know that tone, where you’re expressing a sentiment that’s so hackneyed you can’t possibly just say it, even though it’s entirely true. No, you have to say it in that voice that adds “I know what a cheesy, clichéd thing I am saying but I am both bold enough to say it anyway and cowardly enough to wrap it in a joke”. Pop culture has made everything an echo and sincere expression has become intolerable. The true haven is not this island but this language we share.
But anyway.
The exposition was pretty smoothly worked in too, outlining loosely at first, and gradually filling in the details of their back story, and the context of their exile, through their mundane chats rather than having them manufacture drama out of it. A lesser game would have them sit around talking about nothing else but when the plot’s going to come and find them. Of course we know it will, but their focus on making a life together and trying not to think about it makes them feel authentic.
I’m sure there’s a specific game universally recognised as the standard reference point for this kind of combat, but I haven’t played it, so you’ll have to make do. Fights happen in real time, but enemies attack on an unseen timer, while you hold keyboard buttons or (very much recommended) controller thumbsticks to charge up your own attacks. It’s… okay. I prefer it to faffing around in the usual godawful turn-based JRPG menus, and the animations and variety of enemies are solid enough. I liked teaming up for power attacks, but the unusual controls never quite etched into my muscle memory. Most of all though, it plain gets old.
It’s natural to assume from the opening that the two are fleeing a monstrous totalitarian state (their early references to ‘the Matchmaker’ even reminded me of the Party’s deliberately ghastly arranged couplings from Nineteen Eighty-Four), but it seems the reality is somewhat less stark. The society they left might not exactly be right, but nor is it particularly persecuting them. Their situation in fact places them more in classic “fleeing the unwanted suitor” romance novel territory rather than “heroes overthrow the empire”, and I can respect that.
