Fallen London

[clyde]

Fallen London is a browser game that seems to rely heavily on a particular writing style.

Some things said about it in the Other Podcasts thread:

It runs on an action pool system, although actions will refill after about 2 hours. There will be frequent points where the only thing to do is repeat the same action over and over again in order to build up a quality. It has improved some from the early days, where there were also big content gaps and they didn't have the technology to expose different choices in a cycle like they do now, but there's still a big hump around level 60-100 where it's particularly rough. There are ways to essentially skip the grind, by equipping items that improve your qualities, but that requires earning in-game currency and items get increasingly pricey.

On the other hand, it is an excellent setting and the writing is exquisite.

I made an account to check it out. I dig the world and writing. It's got a very similar vibe to it that the board game Arkham Horror has, with a mix of noir and the strange. Not sure I can handle the action point system though. I get that it's a good monetization model for a world like this, but I really just want to be able to click around for an hour or so if I want to. It will definitely get me to check out their new game when it's finished though.

I find the grinding mechanic really strange. I ended up just asking a rich widow if she would put me up over and over again until my persuasion was high enough to succeed. While that narrative is interesting in this specific instance (and possibly the one where I just continually write articles about mushrooms for cash), the mechanical necessity of clicking on a choice box with a known outcome repeatitively is boring.

I do enjoy the writing though. I also think the choose-your-own-adventure format with chances of success showing on mouse-over is interesting. I'd prefer that the player internalize their skills with something like symbolic, visible pieces of a costume or party members providing their assurance or doubts; but still, it was interesting in that it both created motive to gain skills and a little bit of gambling to the choices.

The writing is really fun isn't it? The tone kinda reminds me of the one episode of Welcome to Night Vale I listened to.

Both Fallen London and Welcome to Night Vale are "weird fiction", though Fallen London does veer a bit more toward the Victorian era whereas Night Vale is set in a modern world.

Fallen London is fantastic to play because you just check in every now and then and make some decisions. Don't treat it like a game you play all day every day. Treat it like a game you check in on once a day. It's so good.

The nice thing about Fallen London compared to Night Vale is that you don't really get the sense that they're forcing the weirdness. A lot of the Night Vale stuff I've heard is of the form 'take something normal and insert something creepy into it, wooo' but Fallen London is much more cohesive, and all that weirdness is all going in the same direction.

It's structured around storylines, and there's a definite progression from nibbling around the edges of mysteries, to plunging right into the heart of them. It takes a while to get to the point where you start getting more than the hints of answers, though.

I just came across a parody via Warpdoor.

[Bjorn]

I'm still futzing around with it, usually just waiting until I've got full action points, so once in the morning and once in the evening.  I find trying to do anything with less than 10 points is just frustrating.  I'm not sure how much longer I'll go with it though.  As good as the world is, the dual gating through action points and ability thresholds just brings some of the joy to a dead stop.  It's hard to keep track and remember all the different active story threads you can have at once when there's constantly something stopping you from continuing. 

[Jutranjo]

It's a good game with an ending. Sadly the ending is shit, you reach it when you're had enough of grinding clicks on a website. At that point you don't even look at the text. The first few hours are great but it just goes downhill from there, not from the quality of the writing but from the system it uses.

[Merus]

There are also the Destinies, which are flashforwards available during particular holidays that describe the eventual fate of your character as they leave Fallen London for where they need to be. They're the actual endings of the game. (And knowing what counts as the game's endings crystallises what's important about some of the ongoing plot threads - I didn't work out what the deal with the Mountain was beforehand.)

 

I do not begrudge anyone for finding Fallen London too tedious - as I think I mentioned, Sunless Sea has all the things that are great about Fallen London but is also a game that is fun to play. I think Fallen London is structurally very interesting, but Sunless Sea uses the same system.

 

If you intended to play Fallen London, I would suggest avoiding Persuasive as a core stat; Watchful and Shadowy both have interesting stories and gameplay, but Watchful gets all the really juicy storylines. I used to strongly suggest you avoid Persuasive, but Persuasive has an early espionage storyline that's half-decent now. Of the Ambitions, Bag a Legend is probably the weakest, followed by Heart's Desire (although neither is bad, exactly); Light Fingers is seen as the strongest right now, and Nemesis is also a strong choice. All of the Ambitions show their age - the later material is more structurally interesting and better written than the early stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised, when the Ambition storylines are finished, that part of it is making the early steps much stronger and rooted in the setting that's developed.

 

I am playing as Merus and am happy to assist with actions that require other humans, although I'd ask that if you have any pass-the-cat parcels you send them instead to Mister Merus, who is the alt I have to make unwise decisions. Some people put entirely the wrong sort of cat in those parcels.

[Twig]

Haha, I don't know why I got the impression that you were sort of down on Fallen London overall Merus, because you're clearly way more into it than I ever was! I only played for a few months (almost every day for a few months though!), but I've always wanted to go back and continue where I left off. I guess I should do that.

[Merus]

I have a very informed mildly negative perception of Fallen London - I have a lot more tolerance for interesting games that aren't always fun to play than very polished games that don't do anything surprising. I don't know if I would have finished Assassin's Creed: Now With Boats! if I didn't have it for a brief amount of time.

[Merus]

Apparently Sunless Sea's Steam release has gone very well - they've been on the top 10 list since going on sale. It's an all-too-rare example of a developer coming up with a great concept, then combining it with gameplay that respects the player, then finding success.

 

(Also of note: Failbetter have been consistently good about gender identity, which started off as an opportunity for a throwaway joke which they kept up when they saw how it affected players. Sunless Sea allows you to pick a title of address, but points out that your own gender is up to you.)

[clyde]

Are you playing Sunless Sea Merus? What is it like? I'm concerned that I'll be driving a boat around aimlessly trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go.