‘ The men and women merely players’
Shakespeare has even influenced card, board and video games.
TO play or not to play, that is the question? The influence of the Bard has certainly spread far and wide: video games such as Halo and Final Fantasy use names borrowed from his characters, while tabletop games like Forsooth! allow w you to improvise your own Shakespearian play.
Here we take a look how Shakespeare has shaped the worlds of gaming. Shakespeare in video games Caster Of Red In Fate Grand/
Order – Anime fans may recall the Fate Zero and Fate Stay Night series that features famous characters from myth and history battling in a war to win the Holy Grail. ( It’s Japanese, what can we say?) In Fate Grand/ Order, the latest in the role- playing games those shows were based on, Shakespeare himself joins the battle!
Shakespeare ( or Caster of Red as he is known in this series) is a Caster, although he has basically no magecraft. What he does have is the ability to power his Master, and he is gifted in a skill called “Literary Masterpiece Endowment”: here, Shakespeare writes a passionate poem about an item, adding powerful functions to it.
Elsinore – It’s Shakespeare mixed with Groundhog Day in this upcoming game from Golden Glitch Studios. Estimated to be out in the third quarter of 2016, Elsinore is a time- looping adventure game set in the world of Hamlet.
In the game, Ophelia awakens from a terrible vision. In four days, everyone in Elsinore Castle will be dead. Even worse, she’s been thrown into a time loop from which she cannot escape. Forced to re- live the same four days over and over again, Ophelia determines to do everything in her power to change the future.
Hamlet Or The Last Game Without MMORPG Features, Shaders And Product Placement – No, you don’t get to play as Hamlet in this game, more’s the pity. How awesome would it be to have “Press X” for “soliloquy”, or Yorick powerups? Instead, you play a scientist who travels back in time and gets mixed up with characters from Shakespeare’s play. Guide the man from the future as he embarks on a mission to save Hamlet’s girlfriend, Ophelia, from the clutches of the evil Claudius. Solve a variety of point- and- click puzzles and advance from one scene to the next as you defeat bosses and overcome mental obstacles.
This award- winning game was developed and published by indie game developer MIF2000. Romeo Wherefore Art Thou? –
This viral game was created by Koko Digital for Warwickshire tourism body Shakespeare Country. The game proved to be a hit, at one point attracting 16 million hits from all around the world.
In this game, you control a bright and chipper Romeo, on his quest for fair Juliet through historic Warwickshire. Use the keyboard arrow keys to make Romeo leap onto moving platforms, avoid spiked traps, and jump on top of marauding wild boars to destroy them. I don’t remember any of this being in the original play, but the game is bright and colourful, and a fun way to kill an hour or so.
The Shakespeare Puzzle In Silent Hill 3 – During the Shopping Centre stage of this popular horror game, Heather Mason ( the player character) comes across a book store called My Bestsellers. To open a door there, she has to input a four digit code into a keypad. Getting the code on the game’s Hard Mode requires Heather to decipher a memo, which has references to five of Shakespeare’s tragedies: Macbeth, Romeo And Juliet, King Lear, Othello and Hamlet. The player must decipher this memo to determine the order of stacking these books on a shelf, which, after a convoluted technique, finally gives you the code.
This is considered one of the most infamously complicated puzzles in gaming history, and for good reason: the last thing you would expect in a horror game with cults and monsters, is a literary puzzle! Shakespeare in card and board games
Bill Shakespeare Is Dead – Imagine the highbrow sophistication of Shakespeare combined with the lowbrow hilarity of the party game Cards Against Humanity. This strange lovechild is Bill Shakespeare Must Die, a game released in 2015 by Brikenbrak Games.
In this game, one of Shakespeare’s famous plays is split into five acts. In each Act, one player is Stage Manager, while two others act out a scene. As they go through the script, the other players fill in missing verbs and nouns, with answers ranging from “Rabid Squirrels” and “Stolen Sex Tape” to
“Vigorously Pound”! Points are awarded for great performances ( who knows, you may accidentally invent a hit new play in the process!). Council Of
Verona – In this 2013 game by Crash Games, the citizens of Verona have grown tired of the constant quarrelling between the houses of Capulet and Montague. As ruler, Prince Escalus has formed a council to help mediate the conflict.
Players take on the role of influential citizens of Verona and act to use their influence to either add characters to the council or cast them into exile. All the characters from Romeo and Juliet appear ( from the Apothecary to Sampson and Balthasar), some with special abilities, and all with their own agendas. Players gain victory points based on the number of agendas completed: with careful planning, Romeo and Juliet don’t have to die in the end!
Kill Shakespeare – Based on the Kill Shakespeare comic book series from writers Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery ( see page 10 for more on the comics), this 2014 IDW Games product transports players to the magical land of Ilyria ( the setting of the play Twelfth Night).
Players play one of five famous Shakespeare characters ( Hamlet, Viola, Falstaff, Othello or Juliet) and must protect the realm from the evil plots of King Richard III and Lady Macbeth. The game is semi- cooperative, so players must work together to defeat a common foe, and also manage enough resources to ensure they succeed at their individual quests.
Othello – When it comes to board games with a Shakespeare influence, where else to start than
with an all- timeime classic? Two play players controlli ing opposite- coloured pieces ( one w white, the other black) try to conver rt each other’s pieces to their colours s.
Othello ha as an international history: it was inventedi in England in 1883, wheree it was known as Reversi. In th he 1970s, however, it was modern nised and marketed as Othello by GoroG Hasegawa. The name was se elected by his father, Shiro Haseg awa, a Shakespeare scholar: the constant interplay between bla ack and white pieces reference bo oth the play’s conflict between Oth hello and Iago and the inter- rac cial relationship betw ween Othello and Desdemona.. Shakespeeare: The
Bard Gamee – In this 2004 gam me by Sophisticate d Games, each h player is a th heatre manager r who must put on n a show. To put on a play y, you must buy a script from m Shakespeare and collect t the correct number of p props, actors, and patrons s for that script.
In this gam me, as in real life, everything comesc with a cost, and players must constantly collect shillings s to buy their theatre items. M ore vocal players can recite a speech to gain payment – b but the audience decides s how much you gain! Al ternately, you can answ wer Easy, Medium or H Hard questions ab bout Shakespeare e. Don’t you wish you pa aid more attenti ion in Literature cl lass now? Shakespeare, , or ‘ Caster of red’, as h appears in th e Fate/ Grand Order game. — photos: re ecopies