The Lords of The Earth Flame is a text-based choice and consequence adventure game, similar to the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books. Not only does it play like a book, it also looks like one: we read on and turn the pages as we progress. Set in a unique, eerie and cruel fantasy world, it provides roughly an hour (for me it was 2, since I like to explore and immerse myself in a game) long entertainment.
Is it worth taking a look despite its shortness? I'd say yes: although it has some bugs, for an interactive short story, it is quite interesting.
We play as a mercenary who's been hired by a merchant, to get a caravan through the Ruby Mountains to the city of Norstein. The task seems simple enough, but complications arise and we have to make tough decisions in order to survive. There are many ways we can reach our goal through multiple endings (or die horribly) and I'd suggest to try almost each one of them out, since - as the developer states - that is how we can enjoy the full game experience.
The game usually offers us 2-4 choices after every 3-4 pages and each of our decisions will result in good or bad consequences. At these choices the plot will branch, but at different points they can also merge, bringing us to a (sometimes only seemingly) familiar location. So it's better to be careful, some of these consequences won't be noticeable straight away. Minor differences, such as not doing certain things in a consecutive order, may result in a character's death and lead us to a different ending.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=879962554
So the game is promising, but it does have some disturbing flaws, the most problematic is probably its shortness. If someone isn't interested in all the endings, it can be finished rather quickly: one of them can be reached in 2-3 (!) minutes, while the longest one probably takes roughly 30 minutes. My gameplay time includes everything, I tried every possibilities. So yes, I agree with those who criticize the game for its length, it could indeed have been a bit longer.
Another problematic point is that we have to "click" our way through to the point where the story branches, if we'd like to discover another outcome. Backtracking is not allowed, we can go back to a previous page, but just for read-only purposes, so we can't go back to the branching point and pick another answer. I sort of understand this, since that would shorten gameplay time further, but it's not a very user friendly solution nevertheless. A bookmarking option would have been nice not for saving our progress but to save us time. Well, m,ostly because of the shortness of the game its absence is not that terrible.
There are quite a few bugs/glitches present. After launching the game, it can jump back to the menu screen or even worse, freeze. Strangely it only happens short after loading the game, never encountered it again afterwards. Another issue is the page recurrence: after clicking the next page button, a page similar to the previous one appeared with ~90% of the shown text matching. It only happened once though.
Also the game suffers from ungrammatical sentences and some grammatic errors. They aren't severe ones, but a game that builds so heavily on text, it could have been done better.
Where the game really shines at are the little details: as I mentioned before, it sometimes matters in which sequence we do certain tasks (we might not get the opportunity to do something later on again) and even though we have no visible inventory, the game keeps track of what we have in our possession, what we have done, are we alone or do we have others with us. Of course due to the modest length of the game, it never really gets too complicated, it's still a nice touch.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880008218
The graphics consists of crude drawings, but I found them adequate and fitting. Although a bit more detailed illustrations, like the ones in the old [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy]Fighting Fantasy[/url] books would have been pleasant, I'm not complaining.
The music is atmospheric and doesn't get boring throughout our adventure, doing a great job setting the general eeriness. The lack of sound effects did bother me at first, but on second thought, it's not that big of a problem.
After all these numerous problematic areas why do I still recommend the game? Well, because it's fun and enjoyable. Of course it's a shame that it's so short and for all the small little issues it has, which without the game could have been much better. And even though the story and its branches aren't that complex, but they are well written enough and keep us excited throughout (good luck for finding the hidden ending :)).
With everything considered, if you are looking for a quick short story for the evening, go ahead, you won't be disappointed.
PROS
+ good, exciting little story
+ quite a few possibilities
+ interesting fantasy world
+ atmospheric music
CONS
- very short
- several pesky bugs
- a few ungrammatical sentences
RATING
6.5/10
