If you’ve been reading Gamespace since we launched, you’ll notice that I play an absolute plethora of visual novels yet few allow me much control over my adventures. Now, The Ballad Singer aims to bring their very own take on choose your own adventure to players with The Ballad Singer, on 27 September.
Described as a narrated graphics experience, Curtel Game’s single player RPG is the result of a successful Kickstarter, raising over €33,000 back in November 2017. This adventure is an RPG/graphic adventure that embodies the spirit of choosing your own adventure novels. Like Fighting Fantasy, it takes inspiration from game books and paints a world that follows an authentic high fantasy aesthetic.
Where it differs from many adventure game, is its scale. The Ballad Singer has an incredible 40 hours of narration, 700 HD illustrations, 40 musical tracks and 400 deaths alone. As players enter the world of Hesperia, they are able to shape the everything around them with an equally expansive range of choices, to decide their fate. 1,700 distinct storylines are available with 40 unique endings, featuring 4 different heroes. This utilizes a unique Domino system that allows simple actions to change the world long after a hero’s death. Should you fail in your quest, The Ballad Singer allows another hero to enter the Hesperia that you have already built.
The Ballad Singer is certainly ambitious. If you want to check out this huge adventure, it strides into Steam Early Access on 27 September.