A Simple Happening

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

A samurai parser game is bound to raise some questions for me: will it be authentic to the historical figures, or will it play on the popular image of honorable brutes serving lords they dislike? The answer is clearly the latter, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Orientalist premise makes it a foregone conclusion.

The protagonist is a samurai who has offended his lord and is sentenced to seppuku, the ritual act of honorable suicide. His lord is watching and Koji is waiting to behead him as soon as the ritual blade touches his flesh. This is all very stereotypical: after eating the mackerel and drinking sake, the player can compose random haiku as his last words. I found all of this a bit silly.

But the game gets interesting when the presentation breaks down. (Spoiler - click to show)The player character realizes he wants to live and the game finally starts as an action-packed title. There are no puzzles, but there are intense descriptions that disorient the player as they try to find a way out of the section. There are fights in the game that remind me, for better or for worse, of the combat in Zork 1, but they are there to enhance the hectic nature of the game.

As for the ending, the game jokes that it's a play on another work, but I'm reminded of the movie The Green Knight: (Spoiler - click to show)both works are set in medieval times, deal with dream sequences of a dishonorable life, and inextricably link duty with figuring out a good death. Compared to the movie, this game falls short in fleshing out that connection, and that was something I was looking forward to.

The game also doesn't question the roles of samurais and lords. The characters seem to behave more like concepts and archetypes than actual people within a system. For a game that revolves around the samurai code, it doesn't seem interested in exploring the theme, and the ending feels rather abrupt due to this approach.

Still, I found this game exciting and enjoyable to play past the seppuku scene. I've always found parser games interesting when they delve into the language of action movies. The intensity of the prose there, the claustrophobia the player feels as he guides the samurai, and the sequence of events are all impeccable, and it's something I wish the game did more of.

A Simple Happening is a short, tight game with a good mix of set pieces and decent writing. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the standard samurai movie setting, but everything else is pretty neat. I thought the core mechanics were pretty solid, and I wished there was a deeper interrogation of how honor and samurais work because I think the subject is actually more fascinating than the game lets on.

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Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/1/24
Playtime: 30 min, two playthroughs

I don’t get the sense that Frank Miller particularly cares what you think about his legacy, which is his prerogative as an artist. 80s/90s US comics fascination with Western-idealized Japanese culture can sure use some re-evaluation though, and his name will loom large over it all. I raise this spectre because despite being a reasonably well-read, well-traveled adult, nevertheless that is the main touchstone I have to bring to bear to this piece. (Well, along with dim memories of the miniseries SHOGUN, no the earlier one, that my parents looooved.)

This is relevant to my review because leaving aside any specific cultural details, the overwhelming VIBE of Miller’s works’ was amped-up, self-serious melodrama, preoccupied with a vaguely defined but super urgent all-caps HONOR. It is kind of hard to tell where Chris Claremont stops and he begins. What was expressly missing was any sense of humor. Given the works he now says should be read as comedies, this is probably a good thing.

A Simple Happening drives unknowingly into that cultural baggage with a parser game of samurai committing seppuku (ritual suicide). There is every probability Miller’s corpus is an unfair backdrop to this work, that the resonances are unintended and purely my own invention. I accept this. Certainly, the work attempts to cue its mischievous heart early, in describing the offense that brought the player to the solemn ritual.

Even without Miller though, between the relatively spare descriptions of place and setup, and the charged ritual hanging over everything, its tone cannot help but be somber and suffocating. The early game observance of ritual, again described in tight, almost journalistic sparity, reinforce the solemnity of the proceedings. In particular, the cheeky ‘death poem generator’ is a subversive bit of humor, except that the straight-laced randomized phrases themselves don’t play along with the joke. A bit of compounding wry humor there could have done worlds to try and blend the tones. When the game shifts to an escape, and one filled with clear slapstick moments, the effect is jarring. Not unpleasant, mind, but decidedly dissonant.

The game presents as a dire melodrama, but anytime the player goofs, the game goofs right back, then quickly re-establishes its somber mood. In many cases it REQUIRES the player to goof to make progress. It makes for a very conflicted tone to the work - clearly intended comedy threaded through Miller-esque all-caps HONOR. And some not-for-laughs murder. All reinforced by the abrupt end to the journey.

As a comedy it is often funny. It just doesn’t try to reconcile its two tones into anything larger: not ironic contrast or pathos or even subversion. I played it twice to see if it was me. (Which is a wild claim. I mean, it was clearly ALWAYS ME.) The second time, I deliberately goofed early and often and was surprised that many of the gags themselves were terse and truncated, like the jokes themselves thought they were intruding. Even when I leaned hard into the comedy, I felt like the game was holding itself back. In the end I didn’t have a bad time - just one that couldn’t reconcile its two tones in a satisfying way.

Fair’s fair though, SO much funnier than Dark Knight Strikes Again.

Mystery, Inc: A somewhat muted Scooby
Vibe: Conflicted
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : For sure, if it were my project, I think I would thread the playfulness more clearly into the early going, both with the poem generator and certainly the (Spoiler - click to show)attack to escape. Some slapstick in the latter would go a long way to a more coherent mood. Maybe also some words from (Spoiler - click to show)the wife to segue tones into pathos.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

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