The dating sim-slash-murder mystery of the Rose is an interesting setup – but its experimental nature conflicts with its own structure.In a setting familiar to some in Fallen London, developer Failbetter’s gothic world has grown to accommodate Sunless Seas and Sunless Skies – as well as the original browser game of the same name – Victorian London. depraved. Its actors have all had to adapt to new ways of relating to their society, their community, their belief system and, potentially, love. When their first murder in the new world turns out to be an impermanent affair, foundations are broken — not least the meaning of life and death.
While the systems are intertwined, it’s hard not to see murder mysteries and dating sims as separate concepts within Mask of the Rose. The game’s bookends, character creator, and epilogue all say “dating sim,” but it’s the mysteries of London that lead you through. There’s a lot more to non-romantic than romantic – but the complex relationship dynamics underpin it all. When the murder victim’s sister refuses to discuss the horrific details, it’s not about our relationship, it’s about siblings. If he hadn’t decided to give these details to me, then she wouldn’t have leaked them behind his back.
Aside from appearing in chat, the main way you interact with Mask of the Rose is through its story crafting system, where you’re introduced as a way to unravel the mysterious Bazaar Master’s rewards. It’s a notecard and redline plot board in spirit, a place where unknown motives – or unknown reactions – populate the world with questions until you get answers.
The same system is built into the more complex structure of the “whodunnit” at the heart of the game – not just “what” and “why”, but “who” and “how”, allowing you to walk around London asking who the hell would have A motive for doing such a thing (certainly not prime suspect and roommate Archie? somehow always
Storytelling is fun, but finicky, especially when it comes to murder mysteries. Because that’s how you add new interactions with the world — interrogating motives, suspects, or means — and you have to stop as soon as someone suggests you want to explore further. Create a new theory, or put a new suspect on the board, and the world will be filled with different interview questions that you can’t switch back and forth. It’s a pity because it’s a fun tool to move an idea around and play with its logic, but if you experiment too much you can sabotage your own investigations.
However, Storycrafting isn’t just for puzzles, as there’s also templates for writing romance novels, anti-rat propaganda, and stuff I know I haven’t even discovered in a couple of playthroughs. There’s a lot to do in Mask of the Rose, and it’s not just because you can’t do it all in one run–it’s hard to do one thing in one run. There were several times when I thought I had solved the murder case “perfectly”, with all the loose leads going the way I wanted it to, and not only did I not manage to date anyone, but I didn’t even make any friends.
Rose Mask shapes its relationships in a specific way, where you can befriend, seduce or romance. I appreciate this in theory—friendship has its own fragility and intimacy, and not everyone agrees that sex and romance are intertwined—but in practice, it feels a bit clumsy. I can choose to be interested in sex, romance, or both at the start of the game, but can also negotiate these things individually when personal relationships run into trouble. If I want to have a passionate romance with someone in the game’s own language, I have to choose one option and then move on to another.
All that said, it’s hard to confidently deduce something about how The Rose Mask intends to shape its relationship. It’s subtle, and when I run into friction, I often wonder if it’s expected behavior, or a bug. If I told Archie I just wanted to be friends, and he later confessed his feelings to me in prison, was it wrong, or was it a result of my continued belief in his innocence and my apparent efforts to help him? Characters have what they want, qualities they’ll trust, and situations that affect their behavior — including your choice of hat — and those aren’t all signposts.
This complicates most of my time, as the game came out before a patch that seemed to make relationships progress more positively – possibly towards romance and animosity within the same person. Despite playing it a few times, it turns out I may not have watched the full romance line at all. I’d say both sex and romance feel like they “belong” to their characters. Whether sweet or suggestive, they never stray from the sense of real people negotiating their desires—connecting with another human being is simply one who must balance its place among others.
The crux of my difficulty with Rose Mask—between the plethora of choices, the elusiveness of character desires, and the game’s simplicity—was that I didn’t know what it wanted from me. I’ve found that if I treat it like a traditional dating sim and try to follow a particular character’s route, sometimes it won’t progress for days, or they’ll insist on only seeing me as a friend. (Post-patch, it seems to be actively prodding my chosen love interest.) If I treat it like an RPG and go around doing quests – can I meet everyone to fill the census? What’s up with the tentacles in the basement? who killed david – I don’t have time to follow any of these threads to come to a conclusion.
I regret this, because this friction has overshadowed some very good work. Neath has long been a Victorian setting – but it’s wrong to play with familiarity rather than the space between tension and horror. In many ways, the horror is much lighter than other Fallen London’verse games, but placing more people with historical backgrounds in its setting – making them struggle in familiar and unfamiliar spaces, rather than players – it pains And moments of revelation take on new depths. When it’s fully unraveled, the motives behind the murders are both well known and ruthlessly Neath-y, just as depraved London was destined to be.
Even that comes with a caveat, though, because writing more history-based is risky. One of the character arcs revolves around Rachel, a Jewish woman, given her fondness for Milton the Devil. If you propose a fictional Milton as the love object in Rachel’s novel, then this anti-Semitic trope can actually be shadowed in the game.
There are multiple ways to read this scene—as a gesture of differing ideologies between modern and Victorian audiences, as the optics of Rachel acknowledging her own longing for Milton, as Failbetter expressing her metaphorical self The desire to write it consciously and sensitively – ultimately I can’t say if it “works”. While I believe Failbetter works with advisors, this arc leaves me with questions.
When “The Mask of the Rose” was announced, I don’t think anyone expected to use the words “adventurous” and “ambitious” to describe it. If it was an easier game, it might be easier to like it straight away. In fact, it feels like it’s bursting at the seams – the lengthy questlines don’t leave enough time to pursue them, the characters’ desires are so subtle that donning a flirty hat can be condescending if you have too many of them , a plot board will break the mystery and have fun. Its writing brings the familiar and well-developed Nith back to its roots in an evocative, thoughtful and flawed exploration. However, it’s this version of the game that keeps me from stopping to think – flawed for all the same reasons it’s fascinating.
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