In playing Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment, I found that the message the game tries to send is somewhat unclear, and makes the playing experience rather pointless. In the normal version, there are no win states – the player can only continue to fail until they get tired and move to the next punishment. While I love Ancient Greek mythology, this game just doesn’t hold my interest beyond the first run of each punishment. I loved reading the stories of why these figures were punished, and how they either got out of it or didn’t and just suffered eternally. However, the game doesn’t provide any context as to who is getting punished, why they are getting punished, and what the specific form of punishment represents. If this game had some sort of context to clear this up, it might make for a more engaging experience.
The question of ‘what do I get out of this?’ doesn’t seem have a clear answer. While the game may be trying to send a message about failure states, it does not do a great job of this due to the lack of any type of extra game mechanics or scores than what is given on screen. The only thing the player can do is fail and see how many times they have failed. Other than that, the game does not offer much else. Like I mentioned before, it might make the game more interesting to provide context in each case, or add some other mechanics.
Now, looking at the limited edition version of the game, we do have success states. That, then, makes you wonder about the accuracy of the game. It appears that the original version definitely was built around accuracy to the stories, in that there is no success state or way out of the punishment. However, in the limited edition version of the game, that assumption is broken. To me, it seems that in playing the game, you are being punished! (I’m not taking shots at Pippin Barr – I just don’t get the point of the game). I did like the fact that it was a game about Ancient Greek mythology, but I just don’t feel it does a good job of conveying its message.