Tragic

During each of the previous two IFComps Jared Jackson entered a game featuring a different custom interface. This year Jackson offers us Tragic, with yet a third distinct custom interface. Is this some kind of record for IFComp? It might be.

I start with the discussion of interfaces because I believe Jackson’s two previous IFComp games, Instruction Set and Language Arts, were underappreciated largely because of their interfaces. Instruction Set‘s is rather clunky. Language Arts‘s is better, but it still has some rough spots. With both games, though, persevering to the end rewards the player with some nice puzzles. Language Arts in particular has some of the most intricate systematic challenges I’ve ever encountered in an IF game. However, Tragic‘s interface is much easier to navigate. I think players will be able to enter into its gameplay more easily and thus appreciate better what the game has to offer us.

And what does Tragic have to offer us? Unlike Instruction Set or Language Arts, Tragic isn’t a puzzler. It’s mostly a role-playing game using a deck of cards to determine the abilities you can use during encounters. I think this is a game genre, but it’s not one I’m that familiar with. Tragic‘s mechanics for battling monsters remind me most of the tabletop RPG Gloomhaven, with a few Pokémon-style elements that Gloomhaven doesn’t have. I’m sure players with more familiarity with this genre could make better comparisons.

Well, this relative neophyte to deck-building RPGs enjoyed Tragic‘s gameplay. I beta- tested Tragic but didn’t get very far with it because I found it too difficult. However, Jackson subsequently added some features to make it easier, and yesterday I had a grand old time battling my way through a variety of monsters with different abilities until I ran into what I believe is the final boss bottle. Despite Tragic‘s quite forgiving gameplay (in which losing a battle results in a slight increase to your powers and the chance to try again), as well as multiple attempts to defeat this final boss, I couldn’t even come close. Nor can I see a way in which changing my strategies will help much. So that’s where I stopped, well after two hours of time with Tragic.

There’s more to Tragic than card-based monster battles, though. For one, the game has at least three layers of story. At the top level, in Tragic you play as a boy who is himself playing a tabletop RPG created and run by his sister. At the second level you’re playing as Derrigan the Bold, the warrior role-played by the boy in his sister’s RPG. But the storyline in the sister’s RPG is that Derrigan has been transported to our world, where Derrigan is entering a tabletop RPG tournament. So that’s the third level: the fighter, mage, or rogue character that Derrigan is playing in this tournament. And that third level is the one in which all the deck-based card encounters occur. But before and between his campaigns Derrigan gets to experience our world (including lunch, in which it must be explained to Derrigan that hot dogs are actually made from other animals), and from time-to-time the brother and sister break in with commentary about what’s actually going on in their world. All these layers add a great deal of backstory interest to the game. And, as is often the case when you have multiple story layers, a lot of the humor in Tragic arises from the interplay between those layers. (There’s even some fourth-wall-breaking in the game, which can arguably be viewed as a fourth layer!)

So, Tragic is an ambitious game, both in terms of its gameplay and its storyline. I enjoyed it, and I hope other players will, too. My main regret with the game is that I didn’t manage to defeat the final boss, which means I didn’t get to see the end of Derrigan’s storyline, his character’s storyline, or the boy and girl’s story.

And perhaps that leads into my primary critique: I expect a final boss battle to be hard, and I’ll likely lose the first time I try, but Tragic isn’t an RPG where I can go fight a bunch of other battles, get stronger, and then come back and try again. I also find this battle to be very much harder than any other battle in the game, and I cannot see any way to win. Perhaps one of Tragic‘s other story branches for Derrigan’s character would allow me to acquire some additional gear or powers, but I’d have to backtrack and replay much of the game. At this point I’m just not invested enough to do that. (I could also keep taking the small power boost each time I lose a battle, but I don’t think I have the patience for that, either.) It’s entirely possible that I’m just missing something, though, and so this critique may be unjustified, but there it is.

Still, you don’t have to experience the entire game to enjoy Tragic. The game is quite ambitious, offering both an interesting card-based RPG and multiple levels of story. If I were allowed to vote on Tragic for IFComp I would rate it quite highly. (I beta-tested it and so am ineligible to vote for it.)

(Disclaimer: Note only did I beta-test Tragic, we also played some of it at the Seattle IF meetup a few days ago. The author walked us through the first part of the game, giving commentary here and there. So my play yesterday was my third look at Tragic, although it was the only one in which I reached the final battle.)