I think about adaptations a lot in this current media environment, because many of them try to transcribe a property into a new medium without translating it. The other cross I bear is that I spend a lot of time chewing on works that I only kind-of liked, because the things I find compelling in them overpower whatever I disagree with in execution.
Robert Jackson Bennet’s “The Tainted Cup” is a fantasy whodunnit written from the perspective of assistant investigator Dinios Kol (Din), who finds himself apprenticed to the eccentric and often-blindfolded Ana Dolabra and then submerged in a web of murders and conspiracy. Also, there are giant monsters coming to wreck everything, as they do annually. It is the kind of story that dogs me because, again, it’s almost written for me in a lab, but it just didn’t click.
Normally I’d keep this kind of thing to group chats or the book club I read this novel for, but all of my friends are asleep or busy and book club isn’t for another month.
So, here we go. Let’s talk about our source material.
Things I Liked:
- The world! The concept of giant monsters seasonally wrecking a populace seasonally is neat. Especially when that populace has to deal with it by building a government out of augmented (and therefore sterile and short-lived) superhumans.
- The setup! The chain of murders Din and Ana must investigate involves people growing trees out of their chests and being torn apart. I love a little body horror.
- The little gay romance. It was sweet. I’m a sap. Let me live.
Things I Did Not Like:
- Din wasn’t enough of a freak to keep me interested in his point-of-view. This is a young man who willingly augmented himself to have permanently-photographic memory so detailed and so precise, that it can function as legal record. He’s set up to be extra freaky because his muscles independetly remember actions. And yet, his narration is just kind of … dry.
- The structure. I think Ana falls into the trap that BBC’s Sherlock did, which is that she kind of … puts things together based on what feels like conjecture, mostly off-screen. I just felt like I was along for the ride, and somehow without Din losing agency in an interesting way.
- Everything was just kind of a little too… easy. There was a lot of physical danger but despite this being Din’s first string of murders, there were few moments of genuine pressure. The best-executed, in my opinion, was when he was investigating a rookery under the watchful eye of an impatient rich woman and her goons. He knew he was looking at critical evidence but could not read it due to an impairment, and had to chance relying on his strange physical ability to remember movements in order to relay what he was looking at back to his boss. It was neat!
With those bones out of the way, let’s talk about adapting this material to a fun little point-and-click. The thing that made me think game rather than movie as an alternate medium for this story is that Ana, due to her own eccentricties, does not like to leave whatever “home base” the group is closest to at the time. Going back to a set location for some sort of debrief with NPCs feels very game to me. Not to mention, being able to review case information in the UI rather than recalling it from a linear story (or forcing our POV character to repeat it).
All of my ideas for mechanics stem from my biggest complaint about this novel, which is the missed opportunity of writing from the perspective of a hilarious little freak. So, I would like to play in the sandbox Robert Jackson Bennett graciously left untouched.
Generally, I think it’d be interesting to play with what the player does and does not need to retain when playing a character like this. How do you allow the recall of settings that the player has interacted with and been allowed to visit, and then things that Din has in his memory from before we join him (namely, his dense policy books and the way he was tormented during his training)? This is the type of thing that needs to be prototyped out, but since I’m kind of word-vomiting this blog out before I inevitably conk out, let’s explore some slightly more granular mechanics I think would work.
- Smell-o-Vision: Din retains his most important memory-records by sniffing a scented vial as he’s taking in information. I love this, because it relies on the fact that the olfactory senses are most closely connected to memory. I think it’d be neat for the player to be able to choose different vials for different pieces of evidence as they see fit. Choosing a lavender vial in comparison to say, mint, could change the color scheme or the UI elements in a fun way so that the player feels a difference in the experience. The key here is not assigning the “correct” evidence to the “correct” scent, but in how pieces of evidence are grouped.
- Debrief Trance: When Din is asked for a debrief in the novel, he can sniff the corresponding vial to go into a word-vomit state in which he recounts all he’s seen. I think this is a prime opportunity to introduce risk and stakes. As above: the player should be able to choose which evidence corresponds to each vial, because then they can selectively hide or reveal his findings to members of the investigation team, many of whom are persons of interest and potential collaborators in this string of murders.
- New Perspectives: With Din’s memory trap, the debriefs can also involve “revisiting” certain set pieces under Ana and the investigation team’s guidance. This introduces yet more opportunity for risk: when is it worth putting himself in a vulnerable state in front of someone in order to potentially extract better conclusions from the information he was able to gather?
- Motor Overrides: Din’s muscles have a kind of independent motion-memory that allows him to recall anything he’s physically done, and repeat it. When he is in physical danger, this manifests in him being able to perfectly copy his combat instructor’s teachings to save his own life. I’ve had full-body panic attacks about less concerning physical phenomena, so I’d like to lean on some type of choice mechanics here to drive the point home. What happens when Din and his powers of observation are physically threatened, and options suddenly become greyed out for the player? Maybe they desperately click on some kind of delay as the threat approaches, and then suddenly, the character they’ve been tightly-controlling this whole time acts independently.
- Rules Lawyering: Again, given Din’s memory and proclivity for the rules of his profession, there’s some opportunity for immersion with the way conversations with other characters play out. In my mind this game is fairly linear, so the conversation trees likely don’t have plot consequence but I do like the idea of choosing lines to lean into different facets of Din’s personality (wry, repressed, pedantic, etc.). I also like the idea of his interactions with Captain Strovi (his romantic interest) having some sort of [???] dialogue or clue tags, because Din does not know when he’s being flirted with. And Strovi lays it on pretty thick.
Normally I try to polish these blogs a little but this truly was just a product of my restlessness, and now I am satisfied and a little sleepy, so it is time to wrap it up. Hopefully you all have understood my vision, and my desire to really pump up the freak factor for a protagonist who willingly changed his brain chemistry for a job.
Also, if you end up getting the rights to this book and make this game, cut me 5% please.