If you are into social management or dig Lovecraft (or both), you might be interested in [i]Marry a Deep One[/i]. Based on the short story "The Shadow over Innsmouth", the game is all about building and maintaining relationships with and between the inhabitants of a small seaside village, ensuring partnerships and offspring between humans and the aquatic Deep Ones, and recruiting new members for our cult. Before you buy, be aware that there are still some serious bugs at the moment.
When we look back at the short story, we remember the lonely bus ride of the main character along the shores of New England to the shunned coastal town Innsmouth, after he first hears about it at a ticket office. A journey into a nightmare, as we soon learn, for upon arrival he makes disturbing observations. It seems not too unusual that the Innsmouth folk don't talk much, given the remote location, but some of them display fish-like physical traits. The church in the center of the village is now a place of worship for the ominous Esoteric Order of Dagon, and in a dark alley, the local drunk Zadok Allen shares his gruesome memories of the takeover by the cult and the interbreeding of humans and sea creatures. The full horror breaks out during the unplanned overnight stay in the only inn, the Gilman House. If you haven't already, you should read it.
In the game adaptation presented to us here, we have the role of the cult leader in the village, and although there are some outsiders among the many local residents, they are not as curious as the one in the story. After we have decided on the appearance and name of our main character (and the cat), we have countless possibilities at our disposal. In fact, we can address any of the residents walking around to maintain our relationships with them or their social ties with others. The extensive filter menu is very helpful in finding people based on certain characteristics: The villagers have a multitude of specific relationship values to every single person in the town and to us, but also figures for their despair, for their vitality, for their social status and for their belief in our sea cult.
Via the contact menu of each individual we can throw ourselves at them with kindness, compliments, hugs and flirts to increase their love, lust and trust in us, or we can insult them, threaten them and beat them up to increase their fear and anger. We play 4D chess when we persuade people to praise us to others, to sow love or hate, to form friendships or to commit murders, or to have love affairs and intimacy with one or the other. Every action takes up precious time before we finally reach the end of the round and thus the beginning of the next year. By and large, we are always intent to ensure that the faith in our cult is high and that human-fish hybrids see the light of day.
As a model citizen, we take the first step at the beginning and marry and impregnate a Deep One, then we convince other locals to marry these gill-bearing beasts, which is the prerequisite for joining our cult. As cultists, they can take some work off our hands, provided we give them appropriate instructions, such as praising our faith or putting in a good word for us or others. It is also important to realize that there is a whole social fabric underlying this game: Even without our intervention, people, cultists and non-cultists alike, will interact with each other, as evidenced by the excessive activity journal of each individual villager. This means that the vibe in the community is constantly changing, often to our disadvantage. Along with the ever-spreading heresy, low faith and great despair can even lead to hostile or anti-social behavior that makes those affected almost impossible to approach.
The mood of both the Deep Ones and the outsiders deserves additional attention. If the outsiders become suspicious and fearful, they flee and offer the village neither alcohol nor building materials. The latter are important for building new houses to relieve the overcrowding in the households with ever-new and aging descendants. On the other hand, when the wrath of the Deep Ones reaches boiling point, they take several residents at the end of the year, without us having any say in the matter. Sacrificing people to the ocean helps to appease them, as does the birth of hybrid offspring here and there or new memberships in our cult. Incidentally, also the locals give us time-sensitive quests, such as increasing the faith of this or that heretic relative or marrying off this or that otherwise unmarriable village idiot.
Spells also play a role, after we get sigils by successfully completing quests for the Deep Ones. The more magical signs we have, the more absurdly constructed spells we can cast, such as beating someone up to boost their and their family's trust in us. The gifts of the sea beasts also include ability-enhancing artifacts from the deep that we pass on to our cult members. In addition, by changing values in the whole community, we can open the "seven eyes" year by year, which prolong our lives for a few more springs, since the death of our main character ends the game. After each round, we witness sinister dreams with prophetic monologues that sadly just seem to be fillers.
I had [i]Marry a Deep One[/i] on my radar for quite some time and bought it on the day of its release. It was plagued by numerous problems that even caused crashes, but the lone developer was always keen to fix the bugs and consider constructive suggestions. I hope it continues like this, because at the time of this review, there are still game-breaking issues that trap us in endless loops or cause successful quests to be counted as failures. That's a shame, because this game has the rare concept of stirring up a whole community through social interaction and relationship building. It is also a feast for genealogists, as the family trees continue to grow through marriage and offspring. We then see the next generation growing up, who in adulthood will continue the ancestral line.
