The Lindenbaum Prize, a competition for short gamebooks, goes into its fourth year. This year’s contest has no less than seventeen entries from a variety of genres, with a wide range of creative approaches. It’s a great opportunity for experiments, and it’s always exciting to see what the authors come up with. If you’re interested in interactive storytelling, you should check it out!

The Last Song of the Homura is the fifth competition entry I’m covering. For an overview of what I’m especially looking for in gamebooks, please refer to my coverage of the first entry, The House on Happy Hill.

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Oh, wow. Elie Merle has made some bold choices for Homura. We have an unusual scenario, an unusual plot setup and a very unusual conflict resolution system. Now if there’s a place to try such innovations, it’s Windhammer Lindenbaum, that’s for sure; the question is, as always, is it worth it? I recommend that, if you have some time and are in the mood for something out of the box, you try it out and see for yourself, and that you do so before reading the rest of this review – because of the nature of the setup, I can’t completely examine Homura without at least some spoilers, and this is an adventure where spoilers will make a significant difference in enjoyment. Accordingly, while some of you will go and take a look at Homura, I’ll install an image of a few nice samurai swords to prevent accidental reveals.

Why samurai swords? Well, because Homura takes place in 17th century Japan, and we find ourselves in the role of Matsura Koretoki, a samurai well past his prime. Unfortunately, it is a time where blade-wielding warriors are not in high demand, and must now look for alternate ways to make a living. Matsura, though, is taking a somewhat different approach – namely, making his dying, so to speak. We have no choice in this: the story opens at the entrance of a lord’s castle, where Matsura applies for entrance, and an audience, “to end his days in honorable conditions.” In other words, a suitable environment for a seppuku ritual.

Well, that’s something. But we aren’t going to spend a hundred sections on the bloody details of such a ceremony, are we? Heavens, no. Merle uses a trick here that isn’t all that uncommon in literature and movies, but which I can’t remember having seen employed in gamebooks so far, and rarely in interactive storytelling at large: The grand flashback. While everyone is waiting for appropriate slicers and dicers, Matsura begins to tell his life’s tale, his hardships and victories, ultimately recounting the events that led him to this place specifically.

So much for the unusual scenario and story setup. However, anyone with experience in gamebook construction will probably notice that this particular plot structure has a significant disadvantage for interactive storytelling (which may be the reason it sees so little use): The story eventually has to lead to the point where the storyteller is telling it, obviously. This means that by definition, the range of outcomes for the decisions we make during the flashback is somewhat limited; most significantly, we simply cannot run into fatal dangers. It’s impossible. Neither can we really “lose” a fight, because who’s telling the story then? Once I had lost a supposedly lethal battle, only to rise again in the next section, and some time later wanted to walk down a specific route, only for the plot rails directing me onto the one path the story wants to tell, I found myself somewhat disappointed. What significance do my decisions have if nothing is at stake, if the destination is set in stone already?

Homura offers two answers to this. One is the third unusual element, the conflict resolution system. It uses a deck of cards, a standard 52-card poker deck, which begins with War (wait, isn’t that horrible?) and then adds a bunch of additional options (phew). I’m not sure if Merle devised this to have something more interesting and tactical than the venerable Fighting Fantasy dice rolls, in particular in a scenario that stands for dramatic, skill-intensive blade fights; or if the system was born out of the necessity to allow for granular rewards for successful manoeuvering, if storyline changes are off the table. Because the card deck system is very good at that: You start with an incomplete deck (the cards with the highest ranks are missing) and add cards, or even remove them, depending on the flow of the flashback story. That much freedom you have. And these rewards feel very tangible, unlike stocking up on random keywords. Of course, all this effort would be for nought if there wasn’t a big conflict at the end where every single improvement might make a difference…

The second answer: putting yourself in the shoes of Matsura Koretoki is still something different from just “passively” reading a story. It wouldn’t be if Merle’s writing was less gripping, but thankfully, it’s quite up to the task of creating an intensive atmosphere, more so than any other entry I’ve read so far. Which makes it doubly saddening that again, as in many of the other entries, there was apparently no time left for polishing in the end. Homura desperately wanted the present story, the flashback story, and game instructions clearly separated, maybe by formatting, maybe by using different fonts; the italics I didn’t find necessary in A Golden Opportunity, maybe they would have found a home here! Instead, the story doesn’t even know if it’s meant to have its text in ragged alignment or justified, which says enough about the lack of finishing care that plagues Homura. I regularly had to read sentences, sometimes sections multiple times to make sure where I was in the story and what was actually happening. Heartbreaking.

All this being said, what do we finally make of the unsusual, even innovative elements of Homura? Well, a fine guideline to measure the success and validity of innovations is to figure out whether you would want more of them, maybe even add them to the standard options every creator should think about for any new works. On this scale, I can definitely say that I would not want card deck-based resolution in my gamebooks – much too unwieldy for my taste. As for the plot with its “The Usual Suspects”-like construction, I think it works this one time because it hasn’t really been done before in gamebooks, but this novelty surprise effect can’t be repeated. You can’t do “The Usual Suspects” twice, either.

I’m generally not too fond of innovation for innovation’s sake, as you can probably tell by now. For my part, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel unless the new wheel indeed rolls smoother – or brings me to places actually worth the visit. Compared to Chirality, then, which also rests on its major innovation, its lack of polishment hurts Homura badly; on the other hand, I found Homura‘s dense plot and strong writing much more compelling than Chirality‘s emptiness. But if at gunpoint, I’d say I had more fun with A Golden Opportunity than with either of them.

Conclusion

• Writing: Top-notch.
• Plot: Also very good, just rather linear by definition.
• System: I understand its role; it just didn’t quite work for me. I also didn’t quite understand why it is so much in the player’s favour; this seems to detract a bit from the idea of a thrilling clash of blades.
• Structure: Again, rather linear by definition.
• Execution: In abstract terms, it’s better than, say, Scopes; however, the multi-layered story-telling really would have required better polishing.
• Overall: A great story that probably would rather like to be a normal book.