Not to sound too ‘hashtag: quirky’ here, but I like when entertainment does something silly every once in a while. It flips the script, throws you in an unexpected scenario or shines a light on something you’d not really expect. I also quite like me a soulsborne game from time to time, so The Dark Queen of Mortholme immediately piqued my interest with its premise.
The game, developed by Mosu over on Itch.io, won’t take you more than 40 minutes to ‘beat’, but the impact it has is undeniable. The entire premise of The Dark Queen is that you are playing as the Dark Souls boss. You are the big bad at the top of the castle, who’s ravenous being has consumed the lands around and plunged the world into darkness and chaos. Usually it’s the player who takes up arms against this evil, but now it’s your turn to squat the measly swordsman to a pulp.
Even the controls convey this feeling of mild clunkiness that you see during a boss fight where your opponent randomly picks out actions from its move set, which sometimes blend together surprisingly well. The kicker is that the constantly returning maggot learns your patterns, figures out how to dodge your attacks and starts finding items that make your life more difficult. You already know how this is going to end, but that is the point.
The gameplay isn’t as much the part that’s supposed to entertain you as it is a device used for the purpose of storytelling. During the process, your character – the so-called Dark Queen of Mortholme – faces a case of existential dread (mood), once she realizes that something “more” is going on. Her eternal reign might not be what she thought it to be, and the way this slow descent into denial – and possibly acceptance? – is executed in a way that is nothing short of stellar.
I beat the game a few days ago, and it hasn’t left my mind since. There are games like The Last of Us: Part 2 that tell huge sprawling stories and effectively use the medium of videogames to convey emotions and challenge your perception, and The Dark Queen of Mortholme accomplished exactly that in the span of less than an hour. Do yourself a favour: experience this.
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