'Folklore Reclaimed' is a delightful little game experiment about reconstructing a story when all the tidbits are from so many different perspectives. The main game play loop is taking the two folklore stories, and comparing the different versions of them to point out contradictions, to hopefully come out with the 'correct' one. It's a neat concept that takes inspiration from games like Ace Attorney, and there's a surprising amount of breadth to the stories and how the reader can interchange the details of the text.
The story framing is that we're a college student doing research on old country folklore, and we are going to talk to an old man in a remote village. What little time we spend in this set up is just really well detailed and gives so much personality to Chayon, the elder, and just how much backstory the old man has and how much it shapes the way he speaks and responds to the suggestions from the 'official' stories. The stories themselves are this one about an inventor the mechanical body he builds for his late lover's soul, and the tale of two witches who need to be made to work together to solve an illness coursing through the village. What I appreciate is how Chayon's got a particular bias to the way he tells his stories, as they're full of progressive ideals such as same sex lovers, explicit depictions of sex, and happy endings, while official stories tended to lean towards erasing some of the mystical parts of the lore, like making the witches charlatans and instead relying on medicine and doctors, and then the archival texted which heavily referenced a lot of divine intervention from the gods themselves. Eventually, you either change too much and the old man kicks you out in anger, you change too little and he sends you off, or push back just the right amount to run into a hot wolf guy before going to the lounge.
I've used the word delightful, and I think that encapsulates how I felt playing this game. The bright music, the pleasant setting and the low stakes just make this a cozy game to see how much you can play around with the story structure. It's kinda crazy coding all the replacement story stuff as well as making the whole "replace text scene" work, so I was surprised at how well it ran. The writing, with it's surprising depth, was particularly simple in the end. I did get a few good chuckles from how horny you can make the stories, but once you get beyond the initial amusement, there's not much more to explore with the story, as it ends after two folktales.
The folklore element is front and center, as it grapples with the whole concept of passing down stories from your old country, and how sometimes those stories can get twisted by cultural shifts, or can be lost to time or bad memory. Still, it's worth preserving and remembering those as best as possible. The creativity is always fun to see with actually getting custom folk lore tales, with different details coming in and out, and letting the reader pick them out, looking for those contradictions.
It's always fun looking forward to an FdRstar production, cause they always remember the 'interactive game play' element of a visual novel, either devising a maze game, mini puzzle games, or in this case, a contradiction finder game. As a result, the amount of enjoyment you derive is based on how good you are at grasping what you're supposed to do, and the reward at the end. There's no crazy secret ending, just a couple of cute endings, which I appreciate not trying to figure out what the 'right' solutions are. It would go against the theme of the game if the was a 'right answer'. Plus, the narratives for his games are always interesting, since there's so much thought and world building put into them. I love the proof of concept approach to the game jam, and it's always neat to see what kind of stories can be told interspersed with game play. Part of me wants to see what kind of experience could be carried with more focus the narrative, but also, I wouldn't want to take the love for putting in game play elements away from them. It really is such a difficult balance.