Two hours into 4×4 Archipelago, and my barbarian PC had only completed three of the five major tasks in his quest to gather an ancient queen’s relics and restore them to her hidden tomb. He had, however, tamed a wolf, traded with mermen, joined the Hunters’ Guild, mined for silver, fetched potion ingredients for a witch, and visited sixteen different islands. He’d also bested bandits, goblins, undead, harpies, a fire serpent, and a variety of other creatures. All in all, it took him about three and a half hours of my playing time to complete the tragic queen’s quest, thus winning the game for me.
And then I could start all over again with two different major quests, or tackle the queen’s quest again with one of nine other character classes. Or mix and match any of these. If I weren’t in the middle of playing games for IFComp, I’d definitely be tackling 4×4 Archipelago again. I did restart once to see the game’s procedural generation in action, and I’m pretty sure that none of the three islands I encountered on this restart had appeared in my original playthrough.
RPGs seem like a natural genre for interactive fiction, but when I first started playing hobbyist IF a few years ago I didn’t come across many that were all that good. If you don’t randomize a lot of the game events then you end up having to create a huge amount of content in order for the player to feel like they’re getting much game, yet it is very hard to do randomization well without unbalancing the game mechanics and character stats. (Even some commercial games have trouble with this!) However, over the past few years it looks like some folks have figured out a new way to create interactive fiction RPGs, by combining them with exploration and trading. For example, in 2016 there was Superluminal Vagrant Twin, which was very much focused on exploration and trading. Then in 2019 Skybreak! followed in SVT’s footsteps, but it added a mix of character stats, goals, and some RPG-style combat. 4×4 Archipelago switches to a traditional fantasy setting and contains even more combat, but it retains the character stats and goals, as well as the exploration and trading, of Skybreak!. The mix of all of these elements in 4×4 Archipelago seems just about right to me, resulting in a game that feels balanced and yet also contains a wide variety of things to do. I’m hooked, and despite three and a half hours of playtime already, I want to go back and try one of the other quests and character classes.
That’s not to say that I don’t have some critiques. My biggest one is that the prose often feels flat. It’s not bad, it’s just not evocative in the way that Skybreak!‘s or SVT‘s prose is. There are also a few bugs: Sometimes the game tells me I haven’t explored a dungeon when I know I have, and the Salty Storm Isle image in the otherwise beautiful map failed to load in my playthrough.
Overall, though, 4×4 Archipelago is a lot of fun. With tons of game content, not to mention three main quests and ten different starting classes, there’s enough to keep players engaged for hours. Surprisingly balanced for one that relies so heavily on procedural generation, 4×4 Archipelago is one of the best text-based RPGs I’ve ever played.
An Exercise for the Reader 