Noctis Labyrinth (Part 1)

Wait, can they critically analyze that? With that framework? At this time of year, at this time of day, at this latitude?

Noctis Labyrinth is a game published by MRDR HOBO. Financing of the game involved crowdfunding. Game material and content is reproduced here for review purposes and is owned by MRDR Hobo. We received a press kit for this game.

1. Every Individual Component Is The Best

In our analysis, we consider every individual artistic element of a game the best; we do nor find bad or good useful. So, the Split/Party framework assumes it is the best art, best layout, best writing, best design. This is an acknowledgement that nobody makes “bad” art on purpose; any given element is the best art that could have been produced at that point, restricted by its material conditions and constraints of time and effort. This is also because saying something is good/bad art is the most useless criticism that can be given. In practical term, this section is for things we will not touch on the critic but merit acknowledgement.

Ludo

Wait, can the framework be applied to Noctis Labyrinth? We are about to find out. I looked at it, and while some “proper” games do not have enough to apply the framework to, I kept going back to Noctis Labyrinth. Weird, right? It is not just some adventure? Again, stick with me, and you can tell me I was wrong in trying this at the end.

There is a design tradition about using the most from a limited palette, letting layout and composition shine on its own. Noctis Labyrinth makes a striking use of orange and black to create the space of its setting. I found the book could cause a bit of eye-strain, but most of the time this contrast works in the favor of the text, allowing to showcase, guide and highlight important information.

This project was also part of Kickstarter’s ill-fated Zinequest initiative, and it is impressive what managed to do with the format limitations imposed by this.

Brad

Noctis Labyrinth… The name itself is evocative, and the fact that the background of this book is a perfect orange with black text gives it a wonderful style while not sacrificing legibility, Noctis is well laid out and organized, and an easy thing to refer to.

I didn’t know anything about Noctis Labyrinth until we read it, and I am curious if it will work against the power of our critique.

2. Meet The Game At The Level It Is At

Each game comes with certain expectations and tone. To properly breakdown, we have to meet the game at the level it is: not lament its choice of premise and wish it was something else, nor resent for not conforming with our politics, not letting “missed opportunities” stand in our way of applying the critical framework relentlessly. It also includes not working with the game as marketed or how it exists in our desires, but as it is.

Lucrécia

Noctis Labyrinth presents itself as an adventure for World of Dungeons - a three pages ruleset.

Other than assuming you get a copy of World of Dungeons, Noctis Labyrinth has few assumptions from you — which are front-loaded. You are adventurers pushed into the desolate Red Desert by various circumstances; you must venture into the mazes-like formations of the Noctis Labyrinth for artifacts and secrets from those that once lived in this land. Of course, one expects to see some of the assumptions of frontier on this kind of genre; Noctis Labyrinth stands out on its care: not only may adventurers be from the colonial kingdom to which the Red Desert are a frontier driven by debt, they may also be indigenous and locals whose knowledge of the Red Desert is essential for their continued survival in such a harsh environment.

But that is a minor point; standing out is the language of the Red Desert, the Noctis Labyrinth and the people you will meet there: it is not with the way of seeing of the outsider — either the “tourist”, the “settler”, the “adventurer” or the State. It is kept at a direct, connected tone in conversation with other features, elements, locations and people, in the way that the people that live there may describe the beauty and danger of the home they steward over.

There are, of course, some institutions that are inherent imperialist and colonial, both as a legacy of the adventurer-explorer genre and reproduction of those. While they are critically handled, they may be something some people may not interact with at all.

Noctis Labyrinth contains three adventures, which let experience the setting at different modes, tones and pacing: an overland exploratory one, an exciting chase after a necromancer, and a ponderous investigation of the scientific secrets of a ruin complex.

Spirits and demons abound in the Labyrinth, but what may you find within can help people survive the wastes

When picking adventures, one may expect them to be designed for certain generic movements with shared assumptions. Again, Noctis Labyrinth assumes you will use its self-contained, customized interpretation of World of Dungeons.

Brad

How dare Noctis Labyrinth only give me a little taste of the Red Desert, I love desert settings to be honest, and the real sword and sorcery ones get me a hootin’. Noctis Labyrinth assumes you are desperate people in a meatgrinder of a civilization or people for whom the harshness of the desert is their only lifestyle.

The adventures are a perfect mix of dungeon-crawling adventures, a pursuit of a wicked necromancer does stand out as a personal favorite though.

3. Identify What The Game Says It Is About

Games are about things. Usually. Mostly. That is often the same thing they market themselves as. This often means to establish the relationship of the game with systems, mechanical frameworks, genre, etc. This is how games establish exceptions about the nature of play and creates a common space for creation.

Ludo

Three adventures, forming a setting, designed for World of Dungeons. The entire world is a wasteland; the last “proper civilization” a city-state held by tyrannical control. It is a dead world of the sorts so popular but also extremely alive, rather than giving in to cynicism and nihilism. Even in the city of Cardea people live by debts to each other and they have immediate and clear needs.

Brad

Lucrecia perfectly summarizes it above.

4. Uncover What The Game Is REALLY About

What the game says it is about is not always what the game is about. This is where we look at all the weird interactions, examining the system that game creates, how the way mechanics interact with the text and art, how it exists on a given context, how well parts flow together or get in the way. This creates a much richer environment that the original design could ever imagine once a game hits the table.

Lucrécia 

Noctis Labyrinth goes beyond adventure and dungeon delving to be about creating a world of ties, of life under nefarious conditions, but even through struggle, people are still people. Changing the ways of seeing and changing the relationships has changed the rules of the game. The survival of Cardea is tied to the Red Desert, the future of one connecting with the other, part of the same ecosystem. This is not acknowledge bluntly by the text — or characters — but is a fact that only becomes more obvious as you play through the adventures. This is not the frontier, these are both branches of the survivors; the tyrannical regime in Cardea is the invader, the parasite upon this feeble ecosystem, a threat to the Red Desert as it is to the urbe.

Quests ties you back to the world and keep you involved in debt, trust and support as survival in a dead world becomes a possibility for another day

Debt and reputation are essential to maintain this. Your main reward is being valued, appreciated, considered part of the group. You can never repay any of your debts. This is where you live, this is where you exist; there is no escaping this. You shit the bed, you have to sleep on it.

Speaking of systems, to create this inter-connectivity, Noctis Labyrinth goes way beyond its humble claims to be just a module for World of Dungeons. Each element that was considered worth of inclusion is given a why, how, and what it comes together with, systematized in many ways — some quite literal.

To say Noctis Labyrinth is just a module for World of Dungeons is like saying Scum and VIllany is just a setting for Blades in the Dark or Masks is a superhero adventure for Apocalypse World¹. Noctis Labyrinth is tempered into something unique. World of Dungeons assumes the frontier-adventurer package and provides you with two ways to interact with world: using your skills to address a challenge or check the fates with a fortune roll.

The world and the game become more complex as new ways to interact with it open as you explore the Red Desert

Noctis Labyrinth positions itself in a whole different approach. Rather than a generic “dungeon delving chic”, it goes for not only a specific, but a unique approach to the realities of the adventurer-thief genre. Every feature, every adventure, has its own ways to interact with them. In its interpretation of “Rulings not Rules”, Noctis Labyrinth trusts that its content is an opinion, that they present the best rules they can imagine to offer the best experience — relying on the simple solid base of Worlds of Dungeons to give something to start working for how people inevitable do other things with it.

Brad

Noctis Labyrinth sets out to become a genuinely unique setting from World of Dungeons, that is something that everyone who reads even just the first page can agree on. Noctis Labyrinth sets out to be a bitter desert, beautiful and full of a living breathing community, but a murderous desert nonetheless. Personally, I think that alone makes one of its themes about the connection between a land and its people, The Red Desert is brutal, unforgiving, but the people do survive and develop based in their environment.

1. Someone may really say that.