Lair Land Story: first run thoughts

[stepnix]

Lair Land Story first run complete, our girl became a doctor

there's something really interesting about this version of the raising sim formula

Princess Maker 2 went all-in on emergent narrative. there's random events, some events in the "dungeons" to discover, but most of the endings are determined purely by the numbers. Long Live the Queen, by contrast, is basically navigating a very large dialogue tree with stat gates every so often (that kill you). There's different endings sure but they're slightly(?) less stat-dependent and more reliant on how you navigated the script

Lair Land has a script that forms the spine of the gameplay, but there's also like a million discoverable events. I did a whole sidequest about finding out who invented grape wine. Had to spend the daily time resources to follow that, would have been entirely possible to get through the game and miss it completely. It really made the game feel alive somehow.

I did this first run blind but now i definitely want to see a wiki to figure out what's going on under the hood but information in English is prohibitively rare so i'm going to have to heat up Google Translate for the Chinese guides

Comments

[tresfoyle]

have you played I Was a Teenage Exocolonist? This structure sounds shockingly teenexo-adjacent

[stepnix]

I have not but the name keeps showing up so I really should!

[tresfoyle]

For the sheer density and scope of the thing I think it's a pretty noteworthy piece of work, though I have some significant beef with a handful of creative decisions they made. For such a progressively-minded game it sure is Something that the one black person in the main cast starts off as the designated bully, even if her characterization does pick up some more nuance over the course of the game. Also I think the twee aesthetic veneer is briefly effective to help sell the angle it's working but overstays its welcome considerably.
Still, I wound up with a pretty impressive emotional stake in the dang thing once I was satisfied with my time milking it for replay value. I go berserk over the whole excruciating mess with Tang and Dys and their moms' rancid yuri backstory.

[snowynight]

I didn't know that Lair Land Story was remastered! The developer said they were trying to raise fund for a sequel, which sounds promising.

[stepnix]

The Steam page for the sequel is up! Signs of progress (probably)

[gullwingdoors]

... but who DID invent grape wine

[stepnix]

the great-grandfather of Unnamed Bathhouse Employee, apparently!