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alexissara · 10 months

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Upcoming Sapphic Games Goddess List

Hey, well to my check in with upcoming sapphic games, this list cover every single game I saw in my research that is in active development that showed signs of sapphic content. This list because of time of writing potentially may contain a game or two that was released or just by the time of you reading this later but I am doing my best while looking at everything I can to figure out where gay may be. Games on this list are filled with my opinions and don't represent the companies opinions and I wasn't paid or anything to put any games on this list. This post is split into 5 categories Non Visual Novel, Narrative Games, Make Your Own Gay, A Gay Exists and Potentially Gay. So feel free to skim across sections.

Non VN

These are games that are not visual novels that are centered on an explicitly sapphic character. This character's sole romantic interest does not need to be sapphic but the sapphic desires have to be seen as a core part of the character or game.

Cycle

All Lana wants is to figure out the mystery behind her mother’s death. She embarks in a Megaman Zero inspired journey into a strange tower to get her answers. Lana has a girlfriend who is a core part of the story and is prominently shown in the trailers, art and stuff. I believe I even saw her fighting side by side with her girlfriend in a boss battle in the latest trailer.

Contains: Sapphic Lead, Her Girlfriend

Thirsty Suitors

Enter the world of a Southeast Asian bisexual disatar Jala in one of the most stylish games I’ve ever played [the demo of]. It blends some fun skateboarding, with a really neat turned based RPG, and apparently even a cooking mini game into one complete package. The RPG combat is fun, funny and delightful. The story hinges on two romantic relationships that have broken down for Jala, both of whom are women, one she recently broke up with that leads her to go back to her home town and the relationship she fucked up big time in her home down with her former best friend. She battles against her not so evil exes in these RPG style mind palace fights where they resolve their feelings current and former and come to some kind of resolution.

Contains: Bisexual Lead, at least two ex girlfriends

Boss Game [PC Release]

This game is already out but it has a PC release coming up and that’s amazing and great and opens the game up to more people. A pair of Girlfriends need cash and so they take gig work hunting demons but as they take the jobs they start to figure out what’s really going on and to do the right thing.

Contains: Cis Lesbian [lead], Trans Lesbian [lead], A non binary character, a bisexual character

Kitsune Tail

A mario inspired adventure about a little gay fox girl trying to save her crush from also a cute villain she might be into. It’s a super adorable platformer with a very light hearted tone invoking classic games with a modern queer twist.

Contains: Sapphic Lead, Sapphic VIllain, Sapphic Damsel

Love’s Crescendo

This is a Rhythm game visual novel hybrid about a couple of lesbians who are both doing music in their lives at this pivotal point. Valerie and Cadence complete each other, musically. This romantic musical adventure gives a lot of sweet and cute moment for these two and nice musical gameplay.

Contains: Two Lesbian of color Leads

Narrative Games

These are Visual Novels and similar games where the gameplay is mostly reading a story, maybe making choices along the way or playing a few mini games but the mini games do not comprise the core gameplay loop of the story.

Love In A Bottle

Ankora is a lesbian love demon looking for love, in a visual novel point in click adventure she can choose to go after four different ladies. This game boasts a bit of dress up on on Ankora you can unlock while playing the game. It’s a rare dating sim where everyone is a clear adult and everyone is another kind of fantastic creature.

Contains: Let’s Go Lesbians, Let’s Go

Pen Pal Princess: A Queer Romcom Visual Novel

You play as a queer princess looking to make her own love story. This is a game about online dating in a modern fantasy setting, it’s a cute and sweet concept and feels so relevant in a world where so many queer people date long distance.

Contains: Sapphic Lead, some amount of sapphic romance options

Flower Knight Hú Dié

A solar punk RPG with a lesbian main character, Hú Dié. After the Flower Knights failed her most important friend she wanted nothing to do with them but she finds herself thrown into a situation dealing with the monsters and more that infest the world.

Contains: Lesbian Lead, Sapphic Romantic Interest

High Elo GIrls

You play as a black college dropout who gets drafted into an all women esports team. You can choose if she is Top, Jungle, Mid, DPS, or Support and the kind of relationship she has with each woman. I am not currently aware if polyamory is an option but there is some degree of customization to the relationships.

Contains: Sapphic Lead, 5 women to romance including at least 1 trans woman.

Hardcoded

You're a sexy trans girl android and you are gonna have sex with some people. There is mysterious in this cyberpunk world you gotta solve and the best solution for a service android like you is fucking your way to the top. You explore, make out with hot women, and do your thing.

Contains: Lesbian lead, Big old lesbian cast [maybe they have some other sexualities and genders]

Make Your Own Gay

This category goes over games that queerness is an option but I believe it is possible for a heterosexual who doesn’t like gay people to play the game and just kinda, miss the queerness. This is typically games where you choose to ship characters together, normally your avatar character. This places games under a pretty high bar because straight people are not very smart on the whole and are really bad at reading media critically or engaging it. For me a lot of these games are obviously queer in some way and also these games are not out, so I have no way of knowing for sure. This placement is not an insult and I actually expect several of the games in this part of the list to be some of my favorite games.

Fields Of Mistria

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, and more. Customize your character with a selection of appearances and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own.

The games special thing is an amazing 90s anime aesthetic. It’s magic for farming system also seems particularly streamlined.

Contains: Women, Men and Non Binary characters you can romance. Customizable character.

Moonstone Island

This games special thing that it has monster tamer with a really fun deck building element for your attacks.

Contains: Women, Men and Non Binary characters you can romance. Character who you can just assume is whatever gender, they are never gendered.

OVA Magica

This games special thing is that it’s kinda like pokemon and has cute little slimes.

Contains: Some women you can romance Customizable characters.

Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Customize your character with a selection of pronouns and appearances [She/He/They] and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own.

This games special thing is that you grow old and die and get to see your kid grow up.

Contains: Women and men you can romance. Customizable character including three sets of pronouns.

Fae Farm

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, and more. Customize your character with a selection of pronouns and appearances [She/He/They] and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own.

This games special thing is that is has online multiplayer and fairy shit.

Contains: Some Women you can romance. Customizable character including three sets of pronouns.

Lakeburg Legacies

A city, kingdom, town, world building type game where the game centers around pairing the people you put into your town, having them work jobs and create resources and them creating babies. You can decide what characters you want to move into your town and pair them with your gender of choice so you can filter out men totally if you don’t wanna see them [except you can’t pick babies genders]. It doesn't’ appear to have any trans stuff going on and the characters are like randomly generated silly things with a few traits. Still it’s a fun type of this game and I could see myself enjoying a few loops of it.

Contains: The ability to pair people up with the gender of your choice. You can’t control the gender of their babies.

Our Life: Now and Forever

This is a truly deeply in depth life sim that trades the depth of romantic options opting for two to give you a truly ridiculous amount of customization about yourself from growing up and transitioning changing your pronouns to altering all sorts of things about yourself and relationships. This is a game about living your life from childhood to adulthood together with someone.

Contains: Genderfluid and Lady Romantic lead, your able to pick your characters pronouns, transition them during the course of the story, and more. Customizable kind of relationship dynamic from love at first sight to slow burn.

The Office Type

What if office stuff was hot, you can date that hot office stuff. It’s a dating sim where you can pick your pronouns and stuff and date all sorts of office themed hotties.

Contains: Choose your own romances and choose the genders of all the options in the game between Lady, Guy and non binary.

Imperial Grace

A diplomacy and romance visual novel where you make choices for your kingdom and choose who you would like to smooch.

Contains: Contains Customizable Queen, 1 lady you can romance, has a detailed list of triggers for players to be aware of what their getting into.

Solace State

A cyberpunk story about building a revolutionary movement as Chole. YOu build relationships with people and communities. Chole can hack people’s brains and get information on their thoughts. A moral system that seems to be based around your choices in not a binary way but a, how do you evaluate the ethics of doing the actions your doing to make the world better. You can make the world worse or better in the game.

Contains: 1 Lady you can romance

Call Me Under

An Eldritch Horror romance where you can pick between three sets of pronouns He/She/They and romance a collection of hotties in this 50s inspired horror world while trying to figure out about the missing people in town and the other horrors brimming of late. You can be half siren or a human depending on that things in the story will change.

Contains: Several Women and Non Binary romantic options, a Sapphic Polyamarous route, character who can pick between human and half siren and She/he/they pronouns.

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

A muse has died and your character got her power, now the worlds a musical and you gotta solve her murder otherwise you're gonna be the one who pays for her getting killed. It’s a unique musical visual novel with a big cast of big names.

Contains: Woman Lead, two romacable women [? not confirmed], main character is probably canon bisexual but couldn't confirm in demo so here for now [but probably actually a narrative game].

Spirit Swap

Spirits are all around us and matching 3 pops them. In this match three game you play as Samara and look for love while trying to fix the issue with the spirits in town to utterly amazing low-fi tracks. For people looking to take a break from the story of the game you can also enjoy several other mods including playing against other players.

Contains: Multiple Romantic options of varying gender including sapphic ones. Main character is probably canon bisexual but in the demo her attraction to men was a lot clearer to me then her attraction to women and I think a straight person might not catch she is gay.

Love Shore

A true cyberpunk adventure where you pick between one of two protagonists. For our purposes your Farah. This game is probably not properly a make your own gay but your not gonna get any sapphic content in one route and I think you can technically avoid it. Regardless, this game boasts a really awesome weaving plot and some sexy horric monsters you might be able to kiss too. There is some hidden stat elements which is a neat part of the game and it overall seems really cool.

Contains: Your selection of one of two protagonists, one of whom is a woman and queer. You got to choose her to get to the sapphic stuff with at least three romance options that are ladies.

Gales of Nayeli

This game is still really early in development as far as I know so it’s hard to say how much will remain consistent but I was told directly that Nayeli and Keri could have a romance and Nayeli is the title character of the game so the main character of the story is sapphic to some extent [they also assured me it wouldn’t be the only sapphic pairing in the game]. I simply cannot judge if that is something we see in the story because we’ve not got that kind of trailer yet. There is also an avatar, one we can assume can have romances, you can pick their pronouns but not edit their appearance. This looks like a really fun strategy RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem, with grid based tactics and if your into that and want some sapphic stuff, this is one to keep an eye on.

Contains: Sapphic pairings between party members, self insert character who you can choose the pronouns of but not edit the appearances.

A Gay Exists

This Category is for games with ensemble casts, in which a sapphic character might exist in the game, be playable, be unavoidable but they are also not the focal point of the story but instead just a small part of the story. A gay does exist in this game they in theory could even be in the lead but you might not know it like a game starring Wonder Woman or Harley Quinn where in canon they might be bisexual but the game simply might avoid ever stating it.

Granblue Fantasy Relink

Set sails through the sky in a high flying action RPG with a wide cast of characters from the popular gacha series Granblue Fantasy. It features the canon bisexual icon Rossetta as a playable party member seemingly from the start of the game.

Contains: At least one playable canon bisexual. Player insert who can change genders on the fly. One playable subtextual sapphic knight.

Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising

Bullshit could or could not be blazing in this Arcsystem Works fighting game follow up expanding the cast of Granblue Fantasy Versus and the general contents of the game. We don’t know the full roster but the roster of all the last game is included giving us for sure several pieces of representation.

Contains: Two Trans women, one canon lesbian, several more subtext sapphics.

Potentially Gay

These are upcoming games I think probably will be sapphic to at least some extent in any of the above categories. Simply put, unlike the one’s above, I Am not confident enough to include them in the lists above because we simply haven’t seen any evidence to show that sapphic stuff exists. At least not in any trailer, demo, interview, or whatever that I researched when putting together this already very long list, so please be easy on me.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a card creating, fortune telling, narrative game about revenge, isolation, and more. You play as Fortuna, a witch who has been put into isolation without her magic or the ability to see anyone else by her Coven’s leader. She calls on a mystical being and makes a pact so she can get her revenge. During the game you can express romantic, sexual, etc desires and it seems like you’ll be able to craft some relationships as well as the cards.

Rune Factory 6 and Rune Factory Dragon

In these games you’ll probably be able to pick your pronouns, romance people regardless of gender, and use magic to enhance your farming. Both will likely contain dungeons with simple combat and a light action RPG story to play. You probably can get married and have kids, you maybe won’t be able to customize your character beyond picking gender but you probably will be able to customize your house.

Fantasy Life I: The Girl Who Steals Time

The first fantasy life made it where you could only be straight but at this point, Fantasy Life would be the last remaining life sim series to not let you be gay unless they totally cut out romance. I think literally the last life sim with romance to not let you be gay was like Rune Factory 4, a 3DS game. This game isn’t a farming game but it stands out next to the sims and other similar games as well.

Hades 2

The first one had a bi guy lead, I assume this time you’ll be a bi girl.

Dark Deity 2

The first one had an gays, I assume this one will have an gays as well, hopefully more, I wasn’t totally in love with how they did supports in Dark Deity 1.

Beastieball

Really this one is just vibes based, the art style says “queer” to me. Also your little beasties can start romances with each other and tehy don’t have genders but I bet you could do some making your own gay shipping with your little pokemon.

En Garde!

The vibe of the main protagonist is serving lesbian. Please Devs at Fireplace games, tell me she kisses a woman, even in private, I won’t tell anyone if I am not allowed too, the game looks fun and I just want her to kiss a girl.

--- That is all for now but if you enjoyed me doing all this research and putting it together in a really nice place for y’all then consider backing me on Patreon or Ko-fi or recommending me for work,I got my card on my page with professional contact info. Other than that you can always just follow me, reblog, share on whatever other social media sites are your poison. If you know any other sapphic games that are not yet released PLEASE let me know, want to know them all and I’m going to keep a new list after this article goes up for a few months from now when a lot more of these games are out or maybe next year around not E3 time again.

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cringegobrrr · 6 months

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Boyfriend spa treatment cuz Damon gave her a rug burn🐱🧔

#digital drawing #fanart #digital art #visual novel #my ocs #procreate #broken colors game #brokencolors #br0ken colors damon #br<3ken colors fanart #br<3ken colors oc #br0ken colors #br<3ken colors #ynsona

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restlesscrybaby · 1 year

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》 JACK HORNER GAMING HEADCANONS. 《

☆ CONTENT WARNING: None. ☆

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

He's not a huge gamer, to be completely honest, and it's not easy to learn.

Let alone hold the controllers.

Well, you seen how gentle he picked up the cookies, with ease and precision, so we do know he can be careful. Of course, when he wishes to be, I mean. We did see him smash a pumpkin with only his force and a magic wand.

But he's got big hands, it's not easy to play these games with those controllers.

Switches are his worst enemy. Especially when playing multiplayer.

He prefers the big controllers, such as for Xbox or Playstation, since it's easier and he thinks it helps him win better.

What games does he play?

I don't know!

Let's be honest, he doesn't care. He would probably prefer fighting games, none with some big sappy story, some heart-gushing tale of life and death, no romance, none of it.

He hates visual novels, let's be honest.

He says that if he wanted to read and have a story, he would just read. Oldbastard.

Super Smash Bros is always a fun game with him.

He mains Bowser, he will get very infuriated if someone else picked Bowser. Sorry Bowser mains.

He doesn't button mash. Well, he tries not too. He tries to use his intelligence and use the moves according to what's going on to win.

And if he doesn't win, he's a sourpuss.

If he wins, he's a smug, rub-it-in-your-face, asshole.

Oh, he definitely rages at games, don't even doubt that. He has broken multiple controllers, throwing them, crushing them beneath his hands, whatever his anger caused that day.

He doesn't even just break controllers during rage from losing or messing up.

He breaks them on accident.

If he isn't too careful, he'll clench it too hard, the remote cracking and crumbling beneath his hands, the sounds of the plastic crumbling within eachother with sad pops and squeaks.

Horror games?

Of course!

He doesn't get scared as easy, he doesn't care for your silly scares.

But it is funny when he does get jumpscared by a game.

He breaks controllers like that too.

Five Nights At Freddy's? Nice! He hates your stupid jumpscares.

He got used to it eventually, only pursing his lips and letting in an agitated inhale, his face boiling with red, his eye twitching.

But, when he first got jumpscared, he flinched and let out a small shriek, his eyes had widened and his lips pursed into a shock. But, it fell quickly.

He would not admit he had gotten frightened by it. Do not test him, he hates it.

Tries to find new games, but he despises it. He could make a better game, duh! None of this boring stuff thst they put out now!

He doesn't play often, but when he does, he's very serious about it.

If he loses and he rages, sometimes he'll stand up and angrily storm out the room while cursing loudly for all to hear.

It's kinda funny.

He does enjoy Sly Cooper, I mean, he gets to steal and thief around, who wouldn't like that game? Don't worry, I like it too, Jack.

( projecting here with the fav game teehee ) He loves 'Alice: Madness Returns'. He doesn't care for the story. He really likes the combat. Unlike me, fool.

He is a bit stubborn about playing with people, but he does it with a smug smile, because he knows he'll win.

He won't play by himself often, but sometimes he might try too. But, only for some time, before it completely bores him out of his mind.

Gaming isn't his full thing.

Oh.

And jokingly, when you told him to play 'Cooking Mama' and said it reminded you of him, he got very sourpuss when playing it. Psh. This game? This silly, bright-coloref, cavity filled game? Ah! Too simple, makes cooking look simple, what fool would ever MAKE this!

However, he held a high head, it reminded you of him. And it makes him smug, that he still stays on your mind without even trying to!

He kinda grew to like it.

Don't pick on him.

He finds the restaurant and cooking portions interesting. But, he finds it humiliating that he plays this bright-colored, cavity-filled, high-pitched mess of what you could call a game.

In all reason, he doesn't prefer VIDEO games.

Gaming isn't all video games, it's of all kinds of games, from video to board, etc.

He likes board games quite a bit.

Monopoly is something he demolishes in.

He is a king of Monopoly.

He smirks when you land on his property and he shrieks to quickly buy a new property so you have to pay it. He's a huge asshole about it.

He wins quite a bit.

I mean, he does know things about this, I suppose we csnt be surprised.

Clue makes him angry.

Thats it.

He doesn't like just that tho.

He also adores gambling.

That counts as gaming.

Even if it's not with actual money, he dominates in that even more. He'll always win by the end, with a smug smile and counting what he had just won.

In the end,

He's always going to be a confident, smug, man about everything.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

WOO HERE YA GO TO MAKE UP!!

#big jack horner #jack horner #puss in boots the last wish #puss in boots #jack horner is so bbg #jack horner x reader #big jack horner x reader

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thatonetrans-binarydude · 5 months

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Rating visual novel yanderes ✨

(Swwsdj, ftdwy, John doe, broken colors, ddlc, yb, error 404, mdhm, mushroom oasis)

10: peter (ok first of all he looks like a rat- second of all he's just a dick to us after mid game)

9: delivery guy (ok he's just an asshole, not even a lovable one in my opinion)

8: Ren (idk why but I don't really like him that much sorry)

7: mica (bros a discord mod what can I say 💀)

6: jack (despite popular Tumblr polls belief I do not think he's sexy)

5: Monika (I like her she's cool, a little crazy but who isn't 🤷)

4: Alan (he stole shit for us 😍)

3: John doe (ok all those endings where he stabbed us didn't happen-)

2: Damon (bbg 😩)

1: Mycheal (tbh if you don't like him your lying he's litterly so sweet how can you not?)

#thank you for coming to my ted talk #yandere x reader #shitpost #i rate shit

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autolenaphilia · 3 months

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Broken Sword: the Shadow of the Templars

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is a point-and-click adventure game by Revolution Software from 1996.

Broken Sword is an attempt to tell a serious conspiracy thriller/mystery story, with a complex plot and intelligent writing. Yet one that isn’t too serious and has plenty of humor and told with colorful visuals reminiscent of 2D animated movies.

It starts with a murder and bombing in Paris that our player character, the american tourist George Stobbart witnesses and narrowly avoids being killed by. And he decides to investigate the mysterious killing. He teams up with french photojournalist Nico Collard, and they soon discover a complex conspiracy involving the Knights Templar and their lost treasure.

Broken Sword is very much an amalgamation of its various influences, with there being clear influences by Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,various stories and myths regarding the Knights Templar, and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Gabriel Knight overall is the most obvious influence, which is not surprising, because it was one of the few prior attempts to create this kind of serious mystery adventure game. The protagonists are even a comedic blonde-haired american man and a dark-haired intelligent woman. Yet it does synthesize its various influences into something that feels fresh.

The story and writing is excellent. It is a story that treats its audience like adults and respects their intelligence. So it isn’t afraid to drop in references to things like Alfred Jarry’s play King Ubu. And the writing carries this learning lightly, with a genuinely witty sense of humor. It’s one of the funniest games I ever played.

And you need the humor, because this kind of conspiracy thriller stuff needs a certain tone to work well. It needs to take itself and its characters seriously enough that there is some genuine tension, yet not take the conspiracy theories too seriously. And Broken Sword manages this balancing act well. The conspiracy theory about the knights templar is used to provide the story with a dramatic weight drawn from history, and combines that with modern paranoia about the chaos caused by global neoliberal capitalism, yet it never takes that stuff too seriously. I like the Eco-inspired reveal that the modern evil conspiracy isn’t actually ancient, it just pretends to be and wants to appropriate the power and prestige of the templars. And the game knows how to keep the conspiracy stuff just fantastical enough to remind us that this is a fantasy, without being too over-the-top for the game’s serious tone.

It’s not the same as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, where both the author and his most ardent fans took The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail conspiracy theory underlying the novel’s plot as fact. Broken Sword is often suspected of being an influence on The Da Vinci Code, which might be true, but might be a case of similar influences on both works. Broken Sword does reference The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail several times, characters are named Plantard and Lobineau, although the Jesus bloodline idea isn’t part of the actual plot, like it is in Gabriel Knight 3. What I would argue however is that Broken Sword is the kind of intelligently written conspiracy thriller that Dan Brown wants to write, but isn’t capable of writing.

The game is not perfect. The characters in the Syria sections rely on ethnic stereotyping that hasn’t aged well, even if I like the boy who learned english from Jeeves and Wooster tapes. And while George is far more likeable in this regard than Gabriel Knight, his closest predecessor, his infatuation with Nico does go into creep territory at one point very late in the game. These are both things that director Charles Cecil himself regrets. Still, I very much enjoy the writing in this game.

The fairly grounded if humorous tone of the game is reflected in the gameplay too. The game is very standard point-and-click adventure, no surprises here. But the game’s puzzles are largely devoid of the moon logic that could sometimes be a problem for contemporary adventure games, a design decision that reflects Broken Sword’s tone. The puzzle design is fairly simple, but therefore fairly intuitive. And that makes for a rather fun game to play. There are a few dodgy puzzles, but overall this game feels fair.

This is an adventure game where you can die, at multiple points in the story. And this does work to make the gameplay reflect the tension of the game’s thriller plot, by having actual stakes, game-overs, that George can actually die. And true to the game’s tone, they can be funny too. And while your progress can be set back quite a bit by a game-over if your last save was a long time ago, that’s perfectly fine. It has a point in creating tension. And there are no Sierra-esque “dead ends” or unwinnable situations that I could find, of the type “the player missed an item they need to progress, but can’t go back for it, so they are stuck,” so the game doesn’t become too hard. Those are not fine, and they are thankfully not in Broken Sword.

Finally the game’s presentation is top-notch all around. The graphics on a technical level is nothing spectacular by today’s standards, it’s fairly low-res 2D graphics. But by 1996 computer technology had progressed to the point that Revolution could use more detailed and slicker-looking 2D art than the pixelart of many previous point-and-click adventure games, and they took full advantage of that. The art design of this game is excellent. This game looks gorgeous, especially the lovingly-detailed backgrounds. Broken Sword has this warm and colorful cartoon-like look to it, reminding me of traditional 2d animated movies and the Tintin comic books. And the game’s animated cutscenes fit fairly seamlessly with the rest of the game, due to artstyle consistency (not always the case with video games), and help with the animated movie feel.The animated movie feeling is so convincing because Revolution Software hired people with that kind of experience to do the game’s art and animation, such as Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen who worked for Don Bluth, or Roslind Allen who had actually worked for Disney on the Ducktales movie.

They similarly looked outside the video game industry when it came to the game’s music. The game’s composer Barrington Pheloung had composed music for various theatrical films and television shows, most notably Inspector Morse. And Pheloung composed an excellent soundtrack, that helps with the game’s epic feel, and the music is actually performed by an actual orchestra, instead of just using MIDI as many game soundtracks did at the time.

The game is fully voice-acted, which was becoming standard at the time, but the high quality of the voice acting is anything but common, not even today. The accents are often dodgy, but in a fun way. The standout actor is of course Rolf Saxon as George Stobbart, which would turn into the role of a lifetime for him. He would reprise in all future Broken Sword games and he feels irreplaceable as George.

Broken Sword: the Shadow of the Templars was a huge success, and remains popular and beloved to this day. It spawned a franchise that is still on-going. It feels like a point-and-click adventure game milestone. And this is despite it not being a very innovative game, there is little in the gameplay, story or presentation that we haven’t seen before. As a game, it really doesn’t do much that we haven’t seen in its predecessors in the genre by Lucasarts or Sierra or even Revolution Software’s own previous games, like the excellent Beneath a Steel Sky.

Broken Sword is still an adventure game classic that deserves its accolades. That’s because it does what it does very well, with a minimum of flaws. The game is not all that original in concept, but the execution is of the highest quality. It manages to become a classic milestone game by that alone.

Broken Sword is such an enjoyable experience to play that it feels like a benchmark of quality for point-and-click adventure games, one that is rarely met. In fact, Revolution Software’s Broken Sword sequels haven’t really reached the heights of the original, as much as I like the second and even the third game in the series.

Revolution haven’t even been able to fully recapture the magic in the game’s remaster from 2009, the Director’s Cut, which is overall a weaker version than the 1996 original. It adds puzzles and entire sections of the game where you play as Nico, but they don’t add much to the story. These additions are artificially grafted onto the original and feel like it, as they detract from the pacing. It reveals how tight the original game design and pacing is. The new art is by the great Dave Gibbons, but similarly it clashes with the original art. The new animations are worse too, often looking like a cheaply made motion comic compared to the movie-like original animations. The remaster also removes things, including bizarrely censoring the blood and violence in cutscenes. It’s a weird decision that maybe has to do with the fact that the remaster was created for the DS and Wii consoles, made by the sometimes aggressively family-friendly Nintendo. This also included removing the ability for George to die and get a game-over, removing the tension that created.

However, if you buy the Director’s Cut on GOG, it includes the original MS-DOS version of the game as an extra. And that version is easy to get running on non-dos systems with Scummvm. And this is something I recommend you do, it’s a great game.

#my writings #game review #broken sword #broken sword: the shadow of the templars #point and click adventure games

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