I’d like to talk to you about “Loren, the Amazon Princess.”
You may think I’m talking about a Xena Ripoff, and admittedly Loren the character has a bit of a Lawless appearance if you get my drift. But Loren herself is not a TV character or a movie character, or the titular heroine of an Asylum film. She’s a character in the indie game that bears her name and title.
Now admittedly a game called “Loren, The Amazon Princess” isn’t a game whose title inspires confidence as it seems generic to say the least, and at worst like a bad film title (possibly of an adult nature). As I played the game all the way through, I would like to report that it is A) good, B) Most other titles would have actually been inappropriate as it is about her, and C) it’s a game worth analyzing for it’s repercussions to gaming – and thus possibly your career.
At first the game seems to be a slightly mismathed fusion of Visual Novel games and classic party-of-characters RPG. One has both dialogue choices and character-based battles with assorted creatures in a somewhat familiar fantasy world. So you have the romance and choose-your-own path plots of a game, the point-and-click iconic battles that we’re familiar with from various RPGs, and a visual novel look.
However in playing it, it began getting me thinking. As I got into it (and past some admittedly purple dialogue into the meat of the game), I realized that this game, by taking so many elements and combining them was not quite a Chimera, but something almost . . . transitory. A step to somewhere else.