Ferryman's Gate

Number of Reviews: 5
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Your English teacher would like this, May 16, 2024

(I posted this review years ago in a non-public message board, but I feel enough water has gone down the river to post it here, now)

Having inherited a small property from their eccentric uncle, our young protagonist stumbles upon some strange notes he left. Will they be able to uncover the secrets of the house and become their uncle’s true heir? Or will they find an early grave instead? It all depends on their grasp of the rules of punctuation.

What I liked:

• The blurb illustration is pleasant to look at and goes well with the title.


• The blurb is up-front about the didactic intention.


• It was possible for me to engage with Ferryman’s Gate without running into any bug worth mentioning.


• There is exploration, mystery and danger. There is something at stake. One can fail, though really only when trying to do so. All of this works in favour of my inner nine-year-old’s aesthetic predilections.


• Failure is, in fact, possible in several different ways and these felt like the best-written parts of the game to me. It was well worth exploring them.


• Also, the author seems adapt at writing verse, something I am incapable of but which I like to read and miss in many pieces of interactive fiction.
  
• Ferryman’s Gate is actually a pretty well done didactic game, as far as these go.

What I think could be improved:

• There is nothing wrong with a thorough depiction of the game world, and having some elements that are unnecessary to completing the game is a valid stylistic choice. I would, nonetheless, expect some readers to get the impression that this game has too many locations and scenery objects that do not add anything to the narrative. A bit more abstraction would, in their opinion, be prudent to fence off the important parts from the decoration.


• While the implementation is functional and – as far as I could see - bug-free, it provides for few synonyms. Some readers might think that it is perhaps unfortunate, but ultimately permissable, when an English teacher forgoes the correct usage in favour of some transatlantic manerism in their own writing. Actively denying the learner the use of the standard language - when there is no compelling reason to do so - could be interpreted by this audience as an attempt to monopolise cultural capital.


• Since English is not my native language, I’ve never had the benefit of having to learn the nomenclature that has developed for its grammatical phenomena. I have to go with my gut feeling when it comes to punctuation. I hasten to add that it is easily possible to beat this game without knowledge of such explicit details. However, it is possible that some readers perceive the intention here as, in fact, surreptitiously trying to effect the teaching of said nomenclature to innocent boys and girls. In the minds of these people, this, in itself, already constitutes the willful colonisation of the said childrens’ world of play.


• (Spoiler - click to show)The transposition of the everychild protagonist without attributes of their own into a world of privilege and adventure could come across as an attempt to solicit identification with the story from the audience. Some readers might, however, find it difficult to fulfill this expectation if the story involves a scavenger hunt for twelve randomly hidden, generic “plates”, and a descent into the magical netherworld. Such people might argue that a dramatic (or comedic) situation arising naturally from the tension between the characters and/or their surroundings might make for a more compelling narrative.


• None withstanding all of the above, my overall impression was that Ferryman’s Gate succeeds in pulling the reader into its world through its title, cover illustration and first half hour or so of play, but isn’t quite as successful at maintaining its narrative momentum. In my experience, such is usually the effect when a game tries to teach knowledge or skills to the player that are extraneous to the game-play. It’s debatable whether there is any way around this.