The Novelist

Leave it to the indie community to come up with different ways to play games, like the amalgamation of different styles that is The Novelist. This PC journey through the life of a small family unfolds with simple yet careful design, piecing scraps of thoughts together as an outside source, to form the decisions that affect the household. If only it were also doable to perform actions, this one solitary adventure would be as splendid as it deserves to be.

Sounds like the premise to The Shining.

A game is set across randomly selected chapters in the life of the Kaplan family, which features writing husband Dan, painting wife Linda and troubled child Tommy. Together, their triangle of interests is set in a beautiful coastal home, with sleek brown tones and spacious layout. Visuals apply a mixture of thick outlines for textures and illuminating touches for interactive objects. With the clean presentation comes a soft soundtrack of key instruments, ringing their few notes through the atmosphere of this silently immersive title.

Taking the house as its central and only location, everything revolves around relationship building through familiarity. Through the chapters of the game, all three characters show their perspective of needs and wants, in turn reflected by the house’s room positioning, indicating the territory for each person.  Linda has an open veranda drowning her into the ocean view with attached forest, while Dan is huddled in a corner office with just a chair and Tommy spends time in his own room.

Someone's feeling especially entitled today.

Progress is made by finding tidbits around the house narrating characters’ feelings, like a point and click title. Letters from friends, family and outsiders talk about the life outside the walls, while journal entries reflect inner ponderings of mostly Dan and Linda’s struggles. Tommy likes to draw his aspirations, but can also depict jarring images when he’s unwell. Reading into these notes and various stationary creates a bond that grows ever stronger with each detail revealed. It’s by presenting a quiet, empty world with nothing but a focus on the Kaplan family that the game expresses an evocative adventure that is lived vicariously, instead of actively. Fulfillment comes from watching these people grow, instead of actively dictating their path. It’s like playing a passive version of The Sims.

Still, it is possible to nudge events into the right direction, by complementing visible clues with ethereal inspection. It’s possible to climb into the minds of each being and explore their memory. Uncovering all cues leads to the final thought that could break a certain conflict crisis. For instance, Tommy may want to go to camp or Dan would want to concentrate time on writing his novel. Each choice comes with a consequence at the expense of another person, leading to a dynamic flow in this family’s dealings. For each time someone thrives, the other individual drops in priority, which has an adverse effect on these constantly needy personalities and the way they see the situation.

A psyoho-killer in the making. Soon, there will be blood.

By switching chapters at whim, there’s an ever so subtle, intricate randomness factor that creeps into The Novelist. Events always unfold fully with all the chapters staying what they are, but not their arrangement. This means that a cataclysmic event may happen soon in the playthrough for some, but become a detail in the final bend for others. This could skew the viewpoint of how someone looks at a certain character, as each member has their upsides and downsides in episodes. Linda can be a nag a few times, Tommy can have unreasonable expectations and Dan can become dismissively obsessed with the writing process. Depending on which chapter is served up, first impressions that stick with characters may wildly differ. This may lead to some interesting discussions.

Perv...

Still, this minimalist experience does have a certain amount of repetition that can feel routine, just like mundane life. Since the open house setting is laid out the same each time, chapters can grow into a checklist, more than an exploration. Every round starts at the same point, so from there it’s easy to slip into going across the different rooms in a fixed pattern of living room, kitchen, veranda, upstairs and so on. With only a few visual prompts altering the scene, some repetition does get hammered in, unfortunately.

This is slightly offset in the game’s Stealth mode, where it’s necessary to stay out of a character’s view, lest they are spooked and their mind becomes too jarred follow up on conflict resolution later. Possessing nearby lights can make it possible to remain undetected, but only when they’re illuminated. Later chapters will close certain spots, making it harder to navigate the terrain.

Good thing these thoughts are silent.

Navigation is, woefully, The Novelist’s biggest downfall, much more so than any forming rut. Its titular screen shows an old QWERTY typewriter, which notes its focus on that particular layout. With movement being one of the only requirements, progression should be handled smoothly, but alas this game lacks the means to do so for everyone.

An absence of custom controls, with only one rigid configuration and no controller support make this game painful and awkward to go through for anyone not privileged enough to share the right requisites. This mechanical oversight is inexcusable, since people might be excluded from this trip, not because of an eventual taste in subject matter, but for merely not being included in its technical execution. Such audiences are forced to stick to an alternate Story mode, where detection is obsolete, but this breaks the sense of tension and outsider image, since characters don’t ever get spooked. More so, not having to watch out can let a playthrough get completed in little over an hour, destroying the subtle magic of the game.

If?

As an introspective adventure, The Novelist is truly extraordinary in its setup of roaming through the lives of a digital family of three and getting involved in their minds. Sadly, it can not be allotted top marks for its deplorably restrictive design mechanisms, outside of the evocative realm. Those that are blessed with the right means won’t need to fear any interjection. Those can enjoy this one-of-a-kind simulation thoroughly, but that’s not a privilege everyone shares. It is, still, the cutest, faulty little story about making a house a home.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed (@Daavpuke)