The Red Pearls Of Borneo

This game is free and fairly interesting so there is not really a reason to not recommend it if you like detective/puzzle games. But I think I would be very much on the fence were it not free. It is somewhat of a nice blend between Obra Dinn and Type Help, albeit the gameplay was slightly confusing to me at first. There are a ton of positive reviews so you can read the pros of the game there. Solving the puzzle was interesting enough for the first third to half of the game, and right until when you figure out mostly what happened at the plantation is where I stopped liking the game. It's truly all downhill from here for me. There are mainly three things I did not enjoy or like about the game. Slight story wise spoilers ahead so proceed at your own discretion. First of all, the endings. The endings truly left a sour taste in my mouth after finishing the game. At first I thought I was choosing between blunt truth and a white lie; but after going through both choices, it seems to me that whatever we choose can be canon, even though the endings are completely different realities. Neither of them is great either. I don't understand why the writer decided these were the two ending options for a complete fictional work. Plus, it seems that we can fabricate reality and pick whichever one we prefer, there is no ground truth to what really happened in this fictional world. This greatly diminished the impact of our action throughout the entire playthrough. The entire reason I play a detective puzzle game is to figure out what really happened, to solve the mystery. If reality can be whatever I fancy more and there is no ground truth to this universe, then the what really happened doesn't matter and why I am even playing a mystery solving detective game. Even in Obra Dinn where things could be a bit more open-ended, there is still a more canon consensus on what happened. This game's ending makes me feel like "Okay, I guess I don't really know what happened and I can choose whichever one makes me happier?". Except neither choice are satisfying?? This completely broke the immersion for me, it was so jarring that I was suddenly presented with a choice as well, so abruptly at the very last scene. All this time I was figuring out what really happened, now you are putting me on the spot and telling me I get to choose what really happened? Secondly, I understand this is a puzzle detective game but also an interactive fiction, but I was truly not expecting the entire second half of the game to have no puzzle solving at all. When I finished most of the plantation puzzles I thought I had a bit of work left to solve the lady solicitor part, which I thought would take maybe an hour or so. Instead I am presented with the account of the great exodus, which honestly involve 0 puzzle solving and hours of novel reading (I am a slow reader, sorry). At that point I just realized I am reading a novel to figure out what happened in the end (which the game doesn't actually tell you), and was no longer playing a puzzle solving game because there was no "solving" involved. Thirdly, this may be a minor thing for most people but I don't really like the overall narrative of the game. The narrative stands in the shoes of plantation owners, the colonizers, and their lovers and families. Most of them finished their "arc of growth and redemption" in the end through courage or love. But it's hard to truly empathize with the characters when in real life I am more often the exploited, the downtrodden, the ostracized, and my ancestors colonized and enslaved. Oh no the mem and miss of slave owning plantation owners dirtied their starch whites when fleeing from the Japanese invasion, whatever will they do to survive that. All the colonization and slave exploitation and resource pillaging don't matter because our characters found love in the end! And the opium smoking plantation owner was truly the man of mettle because he faced enemies with courage, powered by love and vengeance, and he died together with his lover in the end so that's what we will remember them by. Even during the trio's escape back to London you can feel the privilege above other refugees. They were guaranteed entry clearances because one was a government agent holding important wartime info, he fought with his life for that, so good for him. Still, later they were provided with ample supplies while the rest of the scoundrels slept in the mucks and our brave trio had to defend themselves from these scoundrels. Once they were in Gibraltar they get to sleep in requisitioned houses while the rest of the plebs slept on racecourses. Our mem and miss also helped injured fellow Englishmen during the German bombing attack, we should be so proud to completely neglect how much exploitation they directly exerted or benefited from during the colonization, but are the indigenous people truly as important as the colonizers so don't worry about it. There were plenty of local workers on the plantation, we never even get to acknowledge what happened to them. We never reflected on the destruction and exploitation of colonialism, just the glamours part of being a colonizer, and a bit of "being a plantation owner is hard". I am not implying that portraying privileged colonizers is automatically objectionable, but I truly don't feel like the game meaningfully interrogate colonialism and privileges.

The game is somewhat esoteric and seems to encourage brute force at times

比较复杂，因为线索原因，时间在我们看来比较乱，梳理的话需要一个超强大脑

非常不错的一款文字推理游戏，根据笔记推定人物关系及情节发展的玩法让我找回了一丝当年游玩奥伯拉丁的感觉。整个庄园中也能见到震撼人心的贪婪、误解、勇气、爱，更有在战争来临下小人物们以各种动机做出的行为，群像刻画很不错，也有反直觉却合理的桥段，让人欲罢不能。 但作为一款文字类型的游戏，还是稍有缺点，例如人物地点的标记比较麻烦，不能同时标记地点、人物和时间，此外由于剧情按玩家的顺序推进，地点又比较繁多，会显得有点混乱。但总体上来说瑕不掩瑜，并且还是免费的，就不要自行车了，总体流程也不长，非常适合闲暇时间一口气推完，推荐游玩。

情节蛮有意思的

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