Game Club: Cromwell

[elf]

Next game for the game club, inspired by Play Like a Feminist's gaming circles:
Cromwell: King In All But Name, which was included in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, but is free. (Not even "pay what you want." Actually free.)



On January 10 (...or so), I'll make the reactions post - before then, reactions here are okay, but please use spoiler formatting to hide details. And hopefully over the next month I'll participate more in the discussions; I've been caught up in NaNoWriMo and a few other projects and kind of swamped.

I picked Cromwell because (1) I didn't see any objections, and (2) several people mentioned it as interesting. Cromwell was inspired by Reigns, which has about the same mechanics but different topics.

Questions to consider before starting (these are going to apply to all the games; there'll be more specific questions for this one later):

1. What did you think this game was going to be, before you played it? What was surprising about it?

2. How far did you get in the game? Do you want to play more/again?

Comments

[elf]

This'll be interesting for me, because I have no idea what the actual historical details are. I vaguely recognized Cromwell as "some British royalty dude? Maybe?" (But I guess from the game description, not actually royalty? So, nobility that wound up in charge of a lot of stuff that's usually reserved for royalty?)

[packbat]

Warning to anyone who plays it: the way it handles Lady Cromwell in its swipe-left swipe-right mechanics is, ah, bad:

A recurring event in the game is...

...Lady Cromwell asking to spend time with you and your choice being to say either "of course, dearest" or "I'm busy, woman".

I'm not sure what it means for the club but it meant us Packbats are skipping this game; sharing this in case others want to bail on it as well.

[isis]

Can you explain your objection to this?

(I don't actually see the point of her involvement in this game, as it seems like neither choice has any effect on things.)

[packbat]

I'm not sure how to explain that both responses are patronizing to someone for whom that's not obvious.

[melannen]

Were we still planning to follow up on this? I did play it (a bit, at least, although I got the good ending - a successful Leveller revolt - on my first try, so I didn't go much past that!)