Astrologaster
Developer/publisher Nyamnyam Format iOS, PC (tested) Release Out now
iOS, PC
Heavens above, not another Elizabethan astrological satire. Nyamnyam’s follow-up to 2014’s Tengami is based on the casebooks of real-life charlatan Simon Forman, who declared he would cure plagueridden Londoners by reading their stars and prescribing dubious homebrew remedies. As Forman, you follow star charts to advise a variety of patients – from hypochondriacs to professional widows – helping them with a range of maladies through to more personal issues and predictions via a combination of logic and guesswork. With medical authorities closing in, you need to earn eight letters of recommendation from your clients to become officially recognised as a physician.
These exchanges take the form of lightly animated but otherwise static conversations presented in the style of an artisanal pop-up book – to the point where you’re sporadically invited to ‘turn the page’ by clicking the mouse and dragging it to the left. That probably makes more sense on mobile, and certainly did in Tengami – and it’s curiously at odds with the game’s theatrical leanings, with each character introduced by a chorus and frequent references to the stage. It’s a pity, too, that clicking to skip through dialogue can result in the (fully voiced) lines playing over one another.
Not that you’ll want to hurry things. Astrologaster’s script is a treat, its combination of barbed wit and suggestive humour bearing comparison to Blackadder. It pokes fun at famous figures – Shakespeare is a target – but it’s never too clever-clever about its historical in-jokes. Nor is it afraid to pluck the low-hanging fruit, with an impressive commitment to single- and doubleentendres and plenty of amusing euphemisms for bodily excretions: one outbreak of “violent purging” after a dinner-party gaffe is a highlight. The performances are excellent, with special mention to David Jones as the mercurial Forman. And thanks to Nyamnyam, “clustershambles” has entered the Edge lexicon.
For all the gags, Astrologaster is a romp with no little substance. It downplays the notion that these dilemmas are puzzles to solve; that may sound unsatisfying, yet boiling down your role to a combination of guesswork and the equivalent of a coin toss is entirely in keeping with Forman’s quackery. There’s room for reflection, as you deliberate whether to tell a patient what they want to hear – thus putting you a step closer to one of those crucial letters – or to adopt a more progressive approach, such as encouraging a male actor cast in female roles to protest for equal pay. And in these credulous querents and their overlapping stories, it has something timely to say about prejudice and confirmation bias. It’s anything but a cluster-shambles.
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