Tales of the Black Death
Doubleton Game Studio · 2021 · Adventure, Choices Matter, Interactive Fiction, Story Rich, Hand-drawn
PC
7 user reviews43% · 7
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About Tales of the Black Death
Tales of the Black Death is choice driven interactive fiction plague survival adventure.The game is a three-part series set in the Middle Ages during the plague that spread from Italy to France and finally reached England.
In Tales of the Black Death, you play as Baldasar, a young Italian boy.
Part 1 : Tales of the Black Death – Italy
Hunted by the death of his parents from an unknown illness, Baldasar becomes an outcast and finds solace in the companionship of a traveling thief.
Together, they try to survive the unforgiving land populated with disease, bandits and death.
Part 2 : Tales of the Black Death – France
As the Black Death rages in Italy, Baldasar flees to France where a voice from the past warns him of the apocalyptic state of the known world. In his journey he will become the protector of a young French girl in search of her missing mother as they try to survive the unforgiving land and cross paths with desperate townsfolk, man-at-arms and death.
Part 3 : Tales of the Black Death - England
Having befriended two army deserters, Baldasar joins them in their journey until fate decides otherwise. Through cruel and unknown land, he reaches London at the height of the pandemic where he discovers a town ravaged by death and despair.
Will he choose a path paved with goodness or turn his blade into a weapon of vengeance?
A game of survival.
While it’s important to eat from now and then, the game primarily tracks your health which is represented by infections, sickness and injury inflicting your characters.
In the Middle Ages, it was common to die as a result of neglected an illness for too long. This is also the case in Tales of the Black Death.
A game of morality.
In addition to managing your health, injuries, malaise and infections, the game establishes its own morality landscape where the player has to make difficult choices.
Many of the choices you make will impact the story or the characters around you. Lie, cheat, betray others or follow the path of righteousness...it’s all up to you.
Beware how you play: Indulging in iniquities will diminish your morality and could lead to the loss of your soul.
Features
• Hundreds of player choices.
• Visit over 90 finely detailed locations.
• Encounter many unique characters throughout your journey.
• Keep track of what you are carrying in your satchel. (Inventory)
• Timed responses will keep you on your toes!
• Rat-battle system to practice your rat-stabbing skills!
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
On the one hand I think it's certainly deserving of more than 6 reviews compared to some of the garbage that is popular. On the other, it just wasn't for me. Having the text move all around the screen like that is a drag having to track with your eyes one sentence at a time like that. I also think it's too focused on plot rather than characters/dialogue, from what little I played, which I admit is very little. The art is very nice, and the raven and the aunt were the right idea (raven is funny/engaging, aunt seems like a genuine character, little mystery there, wish I got to spend more time with her) but it kind of lost me as it went on with random encounters, seemed like a "and then this happened, and then this happened" way too early on and I got bored. If I had one bit of advice it would be this, if you make another one I'd focus on a much longer intro before things get going so we can get invested/set into the world. But that's for my personal taste. Some people might enjoy getting right into the action. Also the writing isn't obviously bad from the get go so that puts it above 95% of games. It just isn't stand out great enough to put up with the random deaths like a sir …5 found this helpful
I genuinely enjoyed my time with Tales of the Black Death, not only for its compelling story and fun gameplay but also for the real and raw choices that were presented to Baldasar throughout his journey and how it made him believably grow as a person. He goes from questioning whether or not he could kill a person to being presented with the option to do so several times over, and choices made either freely or under duress haunt him even years later. It feels very realistic to go from an otherwise average kid to someone who is up all night tormented by invasive thoughts of people who died either directly or indirectly from his actions. Above all else, Tales of the Black Death has piqued my curiosity on parallels between Baldasar’s pandemic and ours; I know I’ll be reading about the Black Death for days because of this game.2 found this helpful
i do not recommend this game to anyone, as after four hours of gameplay, it has become clear to me that the creator does not know anything about a good gameplay experience at all. you are forced to repeat entire sections of the game (the chase scenes are especially awful) and there is no fast forward button and it causes the game to bug out. this game is stupid. however, i will be playing the rest of it because the story is quite good, although unrealistic and outlandish, and i've become invested by means of sunk cost fallacy. i hope that you will save yourself this time and ten dollars.1 found this helpful
Dark, wonderful visual novel. The atmospheric artwork and music really transport you to this historical period, the story is engaging, and balancing morality with survival led to lots of interesting choices. I also loved that you get three different settings, each with different vibes and storylines (although how does this peasant kid who's probably never been to school learn languages so fast? Lol). Frequent decision points mean you're never reading endless lines of text without getting to do anything, one of my pet peeves in visual novels. This studio is located in Quebec, and a minor issue is that the devs didn't translate the QTE chase scenes into English. Only important thing to know is that you'll have different running speeds on different terrains; none of the other dialogue in those parts is essential. My only major gripe with this game is that the checkpoints are too far apart. Especially if you're playing on hard mode, it's easy to get stuck in death loops that will require you to start the entire chapter over, spending ages clicking through content you've already seen. There are so many ways to die in this game that this happened to me regularly even on easy mode, an…1 found this helpful
As of writing this, I have played through the first episode. I enjoy this game quite a bit. The choices are interesting and the story is already VERY good. Its hard to play it safe and survive. There is some reward with the risk, but the risks are truly risky. Absolutely recommend. The voice acting is excellent and the art and sound track are beautiful. Also, the Raven/Crow is quite funny. I'll be interested in what this dev comes up with in the future!
No big deal but I simply didn't enjoy it and that pretty much never happens to me. edit: spelling
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