Review: The Novelist

Making decisions is tough. Well, at least it is for me. Should I work on this article tonight or eat pie? Is it possible to have both? What will be the consequences of my actions? Who might suffer? Why should I care? And can these decisions be just as difficult if you’re playing a game? Enter Orthogonal Games’ “The Novelist” or as I like to call it, “Gaming’s Greatest Guilt Trip”.

The Novelist is about…well…a novelist who has decided to move himself, his wife and his son to a secluded house by the sea in an attempt to both finish his novel and repair the frayed relationship with his family. Little do they know, the house is actually haunted. And the ghost haunting that house is played by you. The premise…might sound a little familiar….

Honestly, his family should have seen it coming.

Unlike The Shining however, the ghost haunting this house is slightly more benevolent. More than benevolent, actually. Your job as a ghost is to discover the secrets and thoughts of each family member and attempt to help them through their various problems that plague them through the summer. In order to do this, you must sneak your way around the house and avoid being seen by hiding in light fixtures and creeping up behind the unsuspecting family members in order to see into their memories and then implant your own suggestion on what decision they should make.

That premise…might also sound a little familiar…

But again, unlike Inception, you are using your mind control powers for the good of a family instead of…um…okay, I forget what Inception was about. To The Novelist’s credit there are two ways you can play this game: in Stealth Mode or in Story Mode. Stealth mode means that, as described above, you will be sneaking around the house attempting not to be seen by the family. It’s not terribly difficult, but there are consequences if the family spots you which blocks you from revealing their secrets for each chapter.

If you’re like me though and stealth tends to make you curl up into a fetal position, there is Story Mode in which you have free reign of the house. This doesn’t make the choices you have to make any easier though, and that’s where we come to the strength of the Novelist. This has got to be one of the most guilt inducing games I have ever played. The game is split up into three parts, and within each of those sections are “Chapters” in which you’re given a problem that the family is facing that needs to be solved. Sometimes it’s something as mundane as “Where should they take their vacation?”. Sometimes it’s “How do we get daddy to stop drinking?”

Maybe he would feel better if he had a laptop.

Whatever the problem is, it’s up to you to choose which family member will get their way. And they are not easy choices. Do you choose to make the novelist work on his novel, but isolate and ignore his family in the process? Or do you have him spend a night with his wife to help repair their frayed marriage? Or do you get him to pay some much needed attention to his bullied son and spend an evening playing, but then have to deal with an impatient agent looking for progress on the novel?

If you manage to discover all of the clues for each family member, there is the option to have a primary choice and then also have a compromise for another family member (for instance, you might spend the evening playing with your son, but then work late into the night on the novel with slightly rushed results) but that still means no matter what choice you make there is still someone who is going to be disappointed. And then you have to deal with that disappointment whether it’s a journal entry about feeling lonely or a child’s picture of him standing sadly next to his workaholic father.

People do more thinking in this family than actual talking.

The Novelist isn’t new to the world of moral choices in games. The idea that what you say or do could have far reaching consequences has been explored in many titles with varying degrees of success (The Walking Dead, Mass Effect and Beyond Two Souls to name a few). What makes The Novelist unique though is the message it sends: there really is no way you can have everything you want. No matter what you choose, someone will suffer and more often than not that person doesn’t actually deserve it.

In the case of the game, all this results in becoming more invested in the story and the choices you make. You not only feel responsible for this random family who has come barging into your house, you also learn about the person you are. Do you value family? Career? Romance? These are very simple concepts but it makes them all the more accessible and I found myself pausing more than once after making a decision wondering if I had made the right one. The kid wandering around wondering “Why didn’t daddy build my toy car?” while the melancholic music played did NOT help my guilt complex one bit.

Unfortunately, despite being invested in their journeys, the characters of the Novelist still feel somewhat incomplete. Within the game they act more like Sims than like people, randomly wandering from room to room with prerecorded sounds bites such as “Hey, sport” or “Hi honey” as they pass each other by. It would have been nice to see their day pass a la The Last Express or Gabriel Knight 3 just to give it a bit more depth. I chalk this up to the limited budget and technology though and it was only a minor griping point. That and some additional history you find out about the house doesn’t seem to serve much purpose.

It was worth it though to go all inception on these people.

Even with those minor gripes though, “The Novelist” is still a game to check out. Not only is it a story that you largely build yourself, but the replay value is huge considering the number of outcomes you could experiment with. As for myself, I was quite satisfied with my ending despite the extreme guilt trips I was suffering and found my heartstrings being tugged more than a little bit (heck if you need proof, check out the Let’s Play I have going right now). If that’s what a developer can do on almost no budget, I’d love to see what Kent Hudson comes up with next.