Jo the Plunderer

First, some notes

This is a game about teenagers wrapped up in a life of crime and gang wars…expect crude language, sexual content, gruesome violence, drugs, booze, horrible human beings, and the like

This is the first in a series and as such is not totally complete…there will be major mysteries and family issues left unresolved by the end.

Now for the good

+ High-stakes tension: there were quite a few “edge of my seat” moments which was great fun…it’s been a while since I felt genuinely scared while reading but I felt a little of that in this game. Part of this tension is because stakes are real. In my playthrough, multiple characters died, including my MC (we’ll get to that later), so there’s a bit of a thrill making certain choices, deciding just how far to live on the edge to achieve your goals. I also enjoyed how totally chaotic the plot got towards the end…I love stories that just get wilder and wilder as they progress.

+ Family themes: the MC comes from a broken family; your father cheats on your mother, the divorce leads her to alcoholism, and your older brother runs away and becomes a wanted street racer. I liked that we get to choose how the MC responds to all this: do we try to forgive everyone and move on, or become bitter and resentful? Do you encourage your mother to find a new romance or try to thwart her how you can? While you don’t get to see your father and brother all too much in this game, it sounds like you will in the sequel, and I look forward to seeing how these themes pan out.

+ Gender choice seems to matter a little: this is a bit of a personal preference, I know there are a lot of different takes on how to do gender for IFs, but I found it refreshing to play a game that came with subtle changes depending on what gender I chose for my MC. It’s a small thing but it suited the 1980s high school setting to have characters, for example, flirt a bit differently with a male vs female MC, and it made the world feel a bit more real.

+ The author is openly addressing feedback already: I’m about to get into the things that aren’t working so well for the game, but what I appreciate is that the author is already working on the biggest issues. My hope is that with a bit more fine tuning, this game will end up reaching a much wider audience. It’s also a good reminder to report your bugs!!! There’s no way for the author to catch all of them on his own…if you want these stories to be great, they rely on players like you catching what was missed in the beta phase.

The less good

- The instant deaths: right now there are SO MANY ways your game can just end out of the blue, sometimes by pure chance. People are even reporting this with cheat mode turned on and stats maxed out. I get what the author is trying to do and I already mentioned this does increase stakes and tension and adds an element of realism, but as is I don’t think I would have made it through the game without using the Firefox ChoiceScript extension that comes with a back button. Otherwise I would have had to replay the game like ten times just to make it to the end. The author is currently working on a checkpoint system though so I think this will get way, way better in the near future, so don’t let it scare you too much.

- Unbalanced stats: I’m not sure where to begin with how stats are handled. The game breaks almost every CoG standard for handling stats, and not in the fun way. The end result was extremely frustrating. I found myself frequently unclear which stats would be tested or gained given a choice, which stats I should strive for, and ended up being gated out of a lot of choices and successes as a result (even with frequent code diving). I felt a few of the stats could be removed, the rest clarified and rebalanced, and I would have had a much better time. As one example: some dude came up to me saying that I should really have a gun if I was going to be a street racer, so I started upping my arms stat, only to find that I had no way to get a gun because I didn’t ask for a fake ID earlier on in the game (I only realised this by code diving too). Now I have this useless stat (along with my useless grades stat) while the rest of my stats are now too low to pass the very high success thresholds late game.

- Unappealing and difficult romance: I thought I heard somewhere there are 6 ROs but I’m seeing mixed information on just who those are and how to romance them. I do know they are all straight in the current game. My female MC was able to flirt with Jason, Matthias, and Lakeem, though none of these paths appealed to me. Jason is such a sleazy womanizer and I just didn’t find Matthias or Lakeem to be developed well enough to interest me. Flirting felt really forward too, like I’m not sure if you could romance anyone while playing a shier type MC (one scene I found, you’re just full on making out with Lakeem in a public setting as your first kiss). As for female ROs…Amaya seems like she’d be really fun to romance, but Britney is a jerk and also hard to land scenes with and while I assume Angela is also an option she was really hard to befriend. That leaves one RO that I think might be decent if you’re playing a male MC. Perhaps people can comment on their experiences though.

- Distracting slang: the story employs heavy use of slang to reflect different subcultures and dialects. I can appreciate what the author is trying to do here, especially since dialects can be really hard to do well, but sometimes it’s distracting, hard to understand, and can come across as exaggerated or unrealistic. There have even been accusations of racist stereotyping with the slang, though the author has responded to this, noting that he himself is a black male. The author also talked about drawing from personal experience engaging with a wide range of people so it might be more realistic than I know and just not something I’ve come across where I live.

- Long childhood prologue: I like the MC’s backstory and it’s important for the main narrative, but I think there could have been a better, more efficient way of delivering the backstory without starting the narrative at conception and keeping players in childhood for most of the demo. The first possible race only happens after the demo, and you could easily go five chapters (half the game) without racing at all. This means that the demo doesn’t really give a good sense of the game, and that players are expected to stick around for almost half the game before really getting a feel for what the game is all about.

- Unpolished prose and other minor issues: there’s just a lot of little things throughout that are mostly forgivable on their own, especially since this game wouldn’t have gone through copy editing as it’s not a Steam release (so far as I understand), but it does all add up to an unpolished feel. Things like typos throughout,using hyphens instead of em dashes, incorrect ellipses (. . . instead of …), and multiple exclamation marks (which worked well here and there, but I found was overdone and cheapened the prose). There are also plenty of bugs still but this is a new release and the author is already working on correcting them.

- Unbelievable narrative elements: to a degree it’s forgivable, desirable even, to have an over the top element in this genre, but sometimes I felt things were just a bit too unbelievable. My #1 beef is that my MC, so far as I understood, hadn’t driven a car in her life and yet was able to basically beat the #3 champion in the area her first time behind the wheel. I don’t care how many family members are pro drivers, you can’t just do that without experience. In general, things felt a bit too convenient at times and stretched the ol’ suspended disbelief.

Conclusion

Velocity isn’t without its flaws. Major ones at that. It’s not an artistic masterpiece, but despite all that it’s still a fun ride (hehe), which end of the day is the main thing. If the premise seems at all interesting to you and you can get past the issues, or don’t mind waiting a bit for the author to iron out some of the kinks, I think it might be worth a try. I for one will be keeping my eye out for the sequel and am interested in seeing how the author grows after this first release.

Upgrades

+ Added audiovisual elements: the author moved from Twine to Ren’Py for this one giving it a more visual novel sort of feel. While by no means essential, the background images were a nice touch, and though I personally turned off the music I can see it adding a bit of ambience for other players. ROs now have character portraits, though you’ll have to navigate to the codex to find them. All of this is just a little bonus though and I think most players would be happy without.

+ The codex: it was nice having a handy reference for key characters, nations, and other plot elements. Entries were short but informative, though the game could’ve used some more.

+ Additional lore: the world really expands in Cold Lands, where you encounter more of the surrounding nations and learn more about your ancient enemies and ancestors.

+ One new romance option: remember that guy who slaughtered your entire family in the first game, tried to kill his own adopted brother/best friend, and then tried to assassinate you as well even if you were playing a character who openly sympathised with his cause? Yeah, that guy, Stanislas. Well you can romance him in Cold Lands. I normally love enemies to lovers but I have to admit, this one feels a little bit of a stretch for me (especially since my MC loved the family that he murdered), but if you’re into bittersweet angst, word is the new romance route is actually not too bad. Maybe someone can comment. Either way, it’s 100% avoidable, in fact you can leave Stan dead for the whole playthrough if you want, so I’m counting it as an “upgrade.”

+ More player agency, far less railroading: one of my biggest frustrations with the first game was how it kept offering me choices and then not letting my character actually follow through with her decisions. But in Cold Lands you actually make a fair number of pretty big political decisions that seem to genuinely affect your kingdom. Some of the stunts you can pull are kinda hilarious too, or shockingly aggressive. My playthrough was pretty tame but I appreciated having some of these options anyway to give my decisions a bit more weight.

+ Super powerful MC: your magic abilities get a huge boost in this game, especially if you make certain controversial choices. People fear you, and they should. Some of the stunts you can pull are really quite satisfying, and I imagine moreso if you play a particularly violent MC (I did not, maybe someone can comment).

+ Writing style: I thought the prose in the first game was decent to begin with, and I think the author continued to grow as a writer for the second. The story is pretty visual with just the words alone, even before adding the images.

Downgrades

- No stats: if I understand right, the lack of stats is meant to empower the player to focus solely on role playing and decision making, without getting gated out of certain choices because they didn’t up their sword stat enough or what have you. I can respect this, and I did find it nice being able to play someone who is both politically savvy and fearsome on the battlefield. But it felt off having no indicator (beyond some scattered achievements) of just how my game was progressing, or how people saw my MC. I missed having some kind of personality element at least (which in the first game didn’t gate you out of choices to begin with, it was jut a nice flavor). I’m not sure if stats are harder in Ren’Py than Twine (almost for sure harder than in ChoiceScript anyway) but I think a lot of players, myself included, would trade the images for a nice stat system in a heartbeat.

- Weaker, rushed plotline: there’s no clear overarching plot for the second game from what I’ve seen. It felt more like a series of somewhat disconnected political events that you have to resolve one by one. I was expecting, based on the title, to focus mostly on dealing with the enemies to the north, only to find that a very small part of the game, with my MC hopping around from location to location dealing with other disconnected happenings. I actually kind of liked these individual plot points and found the politics somewhat interesting, but I would’ve preferred a bit more focus, or a sense of connection between all these events. The ending too is quite abrupt. It’s definitely meant to be continued and I can only hope a Game 3 comes out down the road (I know the author wants to keep going, but it depends on how well Game 2 does).

- Weaker romance: a lot of people really like the romance in Cold Lands so maybe I had a uniquely bad experience here. I did choose what seems to be the least popular RO (Will) and did so with a fairly incompatible, peace-loving MC, so I wouldn’t be surprised if others have a better experience. I really enjoyed romancing Will in the first game and thought the romance was the strongest quality of the game, so I was disappointed to find that I just didn’t much care for the Will scenes in Cold Lands. A lot of them seemed to revolve around him being mad at everyone and me being like, “Okay Will but I’m still trying to not cause more wars here.” It was fun breaking down Will’s hard exterior in the first game, but once that was broken down, I just didn’t find much about him compelling. I’m sympathetic here because romance is often more fun in the early stages, and it’s to be expected that a lot of the romantic tension will decrease as the relationship deepens and stabilizes, but I still was hoping for a bit more nuance to him. Maybe a character arc or something. Maybe some angst because of our opposing political views. But nope, by the end of the game I kind of regretted choosing him. Maybe someone can comment on the other romance paths because I feel I missed out a lot.

- The best romance endings seem hard to get: judging by what other players are reporting, it seems a bit too hard to get the achievements for the “good” romance endings for each of the ROs (though I think I saw the author mention she might make it easier). I was a very successful ruler and tried my hardest to be nice to Will while also sticking true to my values as a peace-loving monarch, but I think just the fact that I disagreed with him at all, or showed anyone any mercy, was enough to prevent me from getting the achievement. I still had a nice ending with him, it’s not like he hated me, but it’s hard for me to role play the way I want knowing that I’m barring myself from the “good” ending. I tend to be an achievement hound so I probably had a more negative experience than some though.

- Everything else is kinda easy: combined with an easy back button (which I loved, don’t get me wrong) the lack of stats made everything feel a little too easy for my liking, especially without a strong overarching plot. I just didn’t feel the stakes in this game, especially compared to the first where everyone’s dying around you. I rarely felt like I was asked to make a hard trade off which hurt the emotional impact of the game.

- No Nathaniel: Nathaniel was perhaps the most intriguing character to me from Second-Born, and I found the decision to give him my blood one of the most interesting decisions in the game. I was really looking forward to seeing some consequences for that. But there was basically no mention of this at all, apart from a moment where you decide whether or not you made that deal with him. I get it: this is just supposed to be Game 2, I’m sure he’s supposed to show up in Game 3, but I wish we at least got some kind of hint that something weird was going on with him, something to make us anticipate his coming again in the future, or a consequence or two for having given him my blood in Book 1.

- Enemies still make no sense: without giving away spoilers, some of the stunts your enemies pull are just…really weird. Their actions and motivations sometimes felt a bit contrived to suit the plot. I personally didn’t mind too much if a plot point didn’t make sense as long as it was interesting, but I can see this frustrating other players.

- Continuity issues: you can’t truly import your Second-Born playthrough to Cold Lands. My guess is this would have been hard to do with the move from Twine to Ren’Py. Instead, you choose how you reacted to some very key moments. For my playthrough, this wasn’t too bothersome, I think I probably had a fairly expected Game 1 playthrough, but I have read others complain of more jarring experiences. For example, in Cold Lands, both Will and Cyril are totally devoted to you, but I guess that might not have been the case for some players at the end of Game 1.

- Locked choices: instead of just greying out choices that you can’t select, this game just leaves a little [Locked choice] note: no indication of what said choice might be or how to unlock it. This frustrated me instead of intriguing me. If I had more of a hint of how to unlock these choices, I’m more likely to replay the game to see if I can.

- No mobile version (yet): though it sounds like an Android version is coming in a few months.

Neutral-grades

Changed from second to first person tense: I personally didn’t find the switch affected my experience much, but I mention it here in case someone else minds.

Conclusion