Four Horsemen

Entrant 2018


CREATOR
Nuclear Fishin' Software

Description

Four Horsemen is a deeply narrative life sim, similar in form but not style to Japanese visual novels like Fate/stay Night and the non-dungeoneering sections of the Persona series. You control a party of four immigrant teenagers who find a derelict, abandoned Second World War era machinegun bunker at the edge of town, and turn it into a secret clubhouse, buying, crafting, and scavenging items to make it feel more like home. In a microcosm of the building of a real immigrant community, the fate of the clubhouse, and the purpose it serves, is up to you. No matter what you choose, cultural differences, xenophobia, historical trauma, and the natural rhythms of your adoptive country will hinder you at every turn.

The central mechanic is that the game's protagonists hail from one of twelve different fictional homelands, each of which has its own history, cultural values, and loanword vocabulary. At the start of the game, you pick a homeland, and the game matches you with an adoptive country in a historical relationship that echoes the lived experience of an immigrant crisis from real-life history. Like a real immigrant, you'll have to figure out the cultural values and expectations of your new home to produce the best possible outcomes, and navigate the personal consequences of your homeland's fraught relationship with your adoptive country. No two countries play alike, and the optimal set of choices in one country may lead to tragic, catastrophic failure in another.


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