One Eyed Lee and the Dinner Party

[got_quiet]

Name: One Eyed Lee and the Dinner Party
Status: Complete
Site: https://darkchibishadow.itch.io/one-eyed-lee-and-the-dinner-party
Pairing: Background m/f and m/m
Description: Ruining some undead lives to escape a cult

This is a point and click adventure game in which you tumble into an underground cult bunker populated by a family of skeletons that give out strong WASP energy, and you need to find your way out. You can move around the many rooms in the bunker, clicking on everything, and trying to figure out the puzzle of getting out, in typical point and click adventure style. I found out the hard way that there are also death fail states, and didn't realize that the game let you just rewind to right before you did this, because the option could not be reached via controller, so I restarted completely when it happened. But since everything is in renpy there is the option to fast forward text you've already seen and it wasn't too bad a hiccup.

 

I didn't have a great time with this game. I got stuck early on at one of the puzzles, because it required you to click on one of the very many curtains all throughout the house, and I was not systematic enough and didn't click on the single curtain that was the correct one. After spending about 40 minutes trying to figure out how to move forward, I gave up and sought out a walkthrough, which revealed to me my folly. I got stuck again at a password, though I guess in hindsight I should have known to try it. Because the game is set up in a constrained space, it derives some of its complexity from repetition. You have to stubbornly click on things multiple times even when maybe they don't have anything to say the first time. Talking to people after clicking on things opens new dialogs, and in the end it appears you literally have to keep losing and be too stubborn to close the game (or in my case just not know what else to do) and just keep trying to reset and figure out the rather opaque turn based combat gimmick that you're simply not expected to beat until you lose a bunch. So I have some complaints about the puzzles, but I think I'm a minority here. When I was poking around looking for a walkthrough, I found most of the reviews and comments were pleased with the game and didn't seem to have so much trouble, and it was kind of my dumb mistake that lost me 40 minutes of my time and doubled the length of the game, so I think that's just my fault.


 

Writing wise the story is interesting and basically in line with the rest of the stuff made by this dev, who is prolific in indy VN terms. The story is semi contained in the sense that the mystery you fall into goes from beginning to end, but the relationship of the protagonists seems to be already midway through, and doesn't resolve by the end. There's a sense that the story is episodic, but I didn't have too much of a problem with that since the main plot is still decent and complete. I think people that like this dev tend to buy everything they produce, which all seems to be set in the same general world and has recurring characters.


 

Path wise, there are 8 advertised endings. I think most of them are just getting a character killed and restarting, but a few appear to depend on choices you make regarding the relationship between the two protagonists. Because I felt the puzzles demanded that I go through every option with a fine tooth comb, I can't say I had much a sense of choice, and felt that mostly what outcome I got was a consequence of luck.

 

For a point and click adventure game, this isn't the worst. It's actually very simple and hides that fact in a lot of noise. And the writing is a little better than a lot of adventure games. I'm willing to think that my experience is a bit of an outlier and say if you like these sorts of games it might be worth playing.