How do you balance the responsibilities of a family with your own, ultimately selfish ambitions? How does the balancing act at the centre of all families - the small decisions that we make to keep each other happy - ultimately affect the people involved? These are the questions that The Novelist poses, and though it doesn’t answer them brilliantly, the fact that it poses them at all makes this an interesting way to pass a few hours. Some shortcomings in its story and characterisation make it less sympathetic than I’d hoped, and as a result The Novelist not quite as impactful as it wishes to be.
The Novelist is superficially similar to Gone Home, in that you explore a family home and uncover their relationships and secrets, but here you play as a disembodied presence – a spirit that can inhabit light fittings and briefly possess the three members of the Kaplan family to hear brief snippets of their memories. By learning more about each of them, you find out what would make them happy, and whisper suggestions to them as they lie dreaming that determine the course of events. It’s about the difficulty of balancing work and family life, and the seeming impossibility of both realising your own selfish dreams and keeping the people that you love happy. It’s purposefully simplistic, working well within the design constraints implicit in a game made by one person; both you and the family are restricted to within the walls of the house, and apart from staying out of sight, all you really have to do is observe.
http://feeds.ign.com/~r/ign/all/~3/D4Dz5480Lso/the-novelist-review
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