Idle Thoughts

Card skill checks have never been this sexy or exotic (★★★☆☆)

What a difference a game’s theme can make.

One day, a strange magician shows up on the doorstep of a decadent sultan with a set of cards. To play the game, the sultan has to do whatever act the card requires, whether Conquest, Extravagance, Bloodshed or Carnality, and has to do it on a target of the appropriate social standing of Stone, Bronze, Silver or Gold.

At first, you play as the sultan and this is child’s play. All bend before your might. But that’s just the tutorial. Oh no, you’re then forced into the shoes of a noble who has the brilliantly suicidal idea of telling the sultan to stop playing his stupid, cruel game. The sultan’s response is that you should play the game instead of him. If you don’t fulfill the requirements of at least one card every week, you are executed. So your young noble goes from critic to active, albeit unwilling, participant in the sultan’s game. That’s the kind of amusing cruelty I respect from a decadent sultan. To top it all off, you’re not all-powerful like the sultan so you also have to manage court, your finances, your enemies, etc.

What a difference a good tutorial can make.

At its core, Sultan’s Game is a narrative card game, very reminiscent of Cultist Simulator. You put various cards into slots and see what happens. It’s basically a narrative adventure with light strategy and RPG elements.

The setting is unashamedly One Thousand and One Nights, especially the lurid bits. You know the drill: the aforementioned decadent sultan presiding over a scheming court, harem intrigues between languorous odalisques and an underworld of cut-throats and charming rogues. According to my introduction of The Arabian Nights, Sir Richard Burton actually added lots of extra lurid details to his version of the story. It’s a sexier version of the Orient that’s basically a Western creation. This is what’s called “Orientalism”. Therein lies the rub: Sultan’s Game was made in China. But, but, China is even more oriental than the Arabian Peninsula. Now what? Is the West now off the hook for its clichés? Is this Occidentalism? So many questions…

The game having been made in China, the main menu explains that the English version is a “work in progress”. That’s a bit of a culture shock right there. English is usually the “official” version of a game, isn’t it? Even if it’s not, this kind of nonchalant, “please pardon our dust” message is a bit odd in and of itself.

So this being a translation, you can’t expect the prose to be on the level of something written by a developer like Failbetter. Not that it’s bad or anything, but the bar has been set pretty high by other games in the genre. That being said, at least they nailed the tone. The stories of the game are full of violent and scandalous events, but nothing is described in a way that is too gratuitous or explicit. At most, it’s a bit risqué. It’s on the same level as the dirty paperback novels my grandma used to read, but your grandmas may vary.

Interestingly, your character is less of a blank slate than usual for those kinds of games. You are that young noble that got himself into trouble with his big mouth. On the upside, the game states that “as a noble, you only need pay the slightest attention to domestic matters to reap rich rewards.” Then again, even those at the top of the pecking order are at the mercy of the sultan’s whims. You also start with the unwavering support of your long-suffering wife, but you can go so far as to have her turn against you. I love the missus; she’s great. The sheer absurdity of the situation is kind of a punch line in and of itself: “Haha, you wouldn’t believe the day I had at court today, honey. So, good news, the sultan stopped his game! By the way, I have to go to the brothel now and I’ll probably be killing someone on the street tomorrow. Love you!”

Finally, it’s also kind of a roguelite, because of course it is. Specifically, it’s something I think of as a Chinese kind of roguelite: you gain currency by completing micro-achievements which lets you buy upgrades from a “metagame” store. Other games that do this are Sailing Era and Hero’s Adventure. The nature of the game makes some of these unlocks fascinating. One of them is a cat. It’s just a stupid cat, but for some nebulous reason, it’s a Silver tier card, i.e. it has a higher standing than most humans in the kingdom. In the world of Sultan’s Game, something or someone’s tier is a big deal.

Okay, so what do you do in Sultan’s Game? Unlike some other games of this type, the stakes here a crystal clear: saving your own neck. This means finding ways of using the Sultan cards.

Bloodshed cards are self-explanatory. The target of the card ends up dead. More often than not, this will piss off someone.

Carnality is a bit more ambiguous. Sex is non-lethal, well, hm… usually, but some people really don’t appreciate being screwed against their will. Affirmative consent, you know?

Extravagance usually has no drawbacks except the monetary cost and if it’s targeted at someone, they’re bound to like it. Splurge away!

In other words, it’s like playing marry, fuck, kill with the entire cast. Most NPCs are fair game.

Finally, Conquest cards. They don’t really obey the same logic. Conquest is the odd one out. It’s supposed to represent various acts of derring-do and war. Many Conquest opportunities require you to have an “army” card in your hand, but those are ridiculously hard to come by. More on this later.

Apropos of nothing, the game isn’t shy about telling you there are ways to “win” the game other than using all the Sultan Cards… but whatever those are, you still have to deal with the cards enough to meet your deadlines.

At first, Sultan’s Game is much more engaging than most games of this type. The goal is clear, new events and opportunities present themselves constantly, more than you can handle at first. Most characters in the game can become one of your followers. Each has a distinct personality and is tied to specific events. More importantly, they all contribute an extra pair of hands to meet all the deadlines for events ticking away each day, like attending court on your behalf. The game is also somewhat dynamic in that it often hands you opportunities to resolve the Sultan card that’s currently in your hand. In other words, there’s a lot going on at all times.

The dilemma at the heart of Sultan’s Game is also a powerful driving force to keep playing the game: despite the situation you’re in, will you try to minimize the harm you cause? Will you try to remain a decent (enough) husband? Or will you just give into the game and treat everyone as a means to an end? Most RPGs let you choose to be good or evil at your leisure. Here, the deadlines and the random nature of the acts you’re expected to commit constantly keep you on your toes.

However, after a while, Sultan’s Game hits the wall of most games of its type: how can you reconcile a narrative-heavy game with a game about accruing resources through constant repetition? Sadly, Sultan’s Game doesn’t really have an answer to this.

Many events occur constantly, some even every single day. There’s no real reason to read those 5-6 paragraphs more than once. Even clicking through them can become a chore. Despite the metaprogression unlocks, starting from scratch doesn’t feel that great either, since every quest line has to be restarted from the beginning.

What’s even worse is that the further you progress into the game, the more opaque it becomes. Now, I’m not against the concept of the result of using a card in a specific circumstance being a bit ambiguous. It’s when you seem to lose all avenues for progression that’s the issue.

For example, the simplest “alternative” way to win the game is simply to run away. To do this, the game states that you need two cards:

A) a destination beyond the reach of the sultan, which is pretty self-explanatory.

B) “a way to get past the city gates”. Other events make it clear that your character is allowed to leave the city for days at a time, so what the game is asking for here isn’t obvious. Even the wording is unclear. What does that even mean? To bribe some guards? To obtain a permit? To physically climb the walls? You are not told where to look for a solution either and it turns out the answer barely makes sense. You’ll probably stumble upon it blindly or have to look up a wiki. Even the “destination” part is tied to specific quest lines you might have screwed up or don’t know about.

Even playing the game “straight” by using all the cards is not so simple. There is a limited number of opportunities to use up the higher tier of cards, Silver and Gold in particular. It’s entirely possible to back yourself into a corner despite having a wealth of means at your disposal. Some of the descriptions don’t help either. The game tells you that using a Sultan Card at court is « a madness idea ». This is a lie, since it’s one of the few ways to get rid of Gold cards.

Conquest cards are the worst in that regard. In my first run, I was one Silver Conquest card away from victory; I just couldn’t find a damn army card to trigger the perfect opportunity that was right in front of me. This is deeply frustrating mechanically and from a theming perspective. I’m a fabulously wealthy noble, an accomplished swordsman, the sultan’s most amusing subject and someone with contacts in the underworld. You’re telling me I can’t round up a bunch of ruffians with a few gold coins to go kick someone’s ass? Can’t the sultan spare me some men? Where are those damned troops? It’s even more galling that the protagonist could single-handedly win the skill check in question without support.

Accepting loss is one thing. Accepting loss at the cusp of victory because of some poorly defined hurdle is something else. What ensued was a frantic use of the wiki and the rewind function in order to “save” the run. The solutions were frankly arbitrary, but I ended up getting my victory. It was not fun.

I had a good time with Sultan’s Game, but the end of that first run killed my motivation to keep playing. It’s a shame, because it turns out there’s a lot hiding under the surface, entire aspects that only reveal themselves under the right conditions. Then again, click-clicking through the text of every quest line in order to go back to the spot where something new happens isn’t an interesting proposition. That’s why narrative and repetition are such mortal enemies. Once inertia sets in, it’s hard to feel involved again, no matter how salacious the next story beat is.