Saturday Morning Gaming: The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

Back in 2022, James K mentioned that he had played The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante and said that it was really interesting.

It was on sale a few months back (and I’m sure it’ll be on sale again soon) and I picked it up and I’m glad I did.

The gameplay is more like “reading” than “playing” so if you’re more into the whole “action game” thing than the “reading thing”, you should probably pass this by. If you’re willing to check it out but don’t want to pay full price to buy a pig in a poke, you should know that the first couple of chapters are available FOR FREE. So you can check it out, figure out if this sort of thing is for you, and make your decision then.

Here’s the basics of the story:

It begins with your birth and, soon thereafter, you are given the first of many choices.

As your first act, do you reach out to your mother’s hand, your father’s hand, or to the shadow?

And, if you pick the first, you get a point in perception. If you pick the second, you get a point in determination. If you pick the third… well.

Later on in the chapter, you’re offered more choices and more options and some of these choices require that you have a certain amount of perception or a certain amount of determination.

The later chapters build on the earlier chapters. Were you a kind child? Well, you’ll have stats that reflect that. Were you a harsh child? Well, you’ll have stats that reflect *THAT*.

The story itself is an interesting one. You’re in a strange and alien world that kind of reminds me of pre-Revolutionary France. You’re a commoner on the bubble of becoming an aristocrat. How are you going to grow as a child? When you go off to school, what kind of student will you be? When you go off to get a job, what kind of job will you get? As the Revolution nears, how will you steer your corner of it? Will you do what you can to help the Revolution along? Will you help to squash it? What will happen to your family?

How will you die?

I found the story fairly engrossing because the world-building is pretty good. The metaphysics of the world you’re in allow for up to four deaths (so you’ve got some wiggle room) and the path to greatness is not going to be particularly compatible with the path to a healthy relationship with all of your family members and your job (whichever one you take) is going to ask you to choose between unpleasant options and you are going to have to make unpleasant tradeoffs.

And then there’s going to be a Revolution. A big one.

Are you going to make the world better? Worse? How, exactly, are you going to screw up everything?

And then you can go back and fix this or fix that and see how this one little choice here, as a student, changed your relationship to this Daughter of the Revolution.

I’d say that if I have any advice, it’s that it’s better to be Hot or Cold than to be Lukewarm.

It’s a really *INTERESTING* game. I don’t know that it’s particularly fun… but it’s got a lot to chew on and I was late to bed because I wanted to see what happened next.

At the very least, I think you should check out the first couple of chapters for free. Even if you’re not into video games, this is an interesting story to read.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is the timeline of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante. All screenshots taken by the author.)