I never knew how easy it was to die in an orgy. But that’s just one of the many threats facing Geralt of Rivia in his latest adventure. The studio behind the Reigns series of Tinder-like choose-your-own-adventure games has now adapted The Witcher, following a handful of original titles and a take on Game of Thrones. And for Francois Alliot, creative director at Reigns studio Nerial, the series’ structure actually makes it an ideal way to ease players into sprawling fantasies like this. “There’s something about the way you can bring really complex universes, lore, and storylines to simple actions,” he says. “It can work in a lot of contexts.”
What makes Reigns so approachable is the way it distills every action into a binary choice. As you play, you’re presented with cards, and you progress by either swiping right or left. In the case of The Witcher, for instance, an elf might ask Geralt for protection, and your options are simply to say either yes or no and then deal with the consequences. Each run through the game involves making a number of these decisions to progress a storyline until, well, you die.
The idea was for Reigns: The Witcher to work on two levels. For existing fans, it’s a fun way to play around and experiment in the world. “It’s not a new Witcher,” Alliot notes. “It’s a meta game around this universe, a bit like a fanfiction simulator.” But for those who might be intimidated by the franchise, which spans multiple books, games, and TV shows, it’s also a good place to start. “It works nicely as an entry point because you can really get a feel for the tone and rules, or lack of rules, of the world,” says narrative designer Oscar Harrington-Shaw. “But you’re not having to commit to a complex RPG.”
There are several aspects of the Reigns formula that had to be tweaked to work with The Witcher. One of the key conceits in the games is that you can die; in the original Reigns you played as a king, and when that was over you picked up as their successor. But that doesn’t really work when you’re playing a character like Geralt who can’t die. So you aren’t actually playing as Geralt; instead, you’re his bard pal Dandelion, singing tales of Geralt’s exploits that may or may not be true. This allowed the team at Nerial to “free ourselves from the lore,” as Alliot describes it, and have fun with things. This is especially apparent in the deaths, which come in the form of the aforementioned orgies or even from Geralt drinking himself to an early grave.
“It really helped in two ways,” Harrington-Shaw says of coming up with the Dandelion idea, which came about from discussions with Witcher studio CD Projekt Red. “One is that it helps explain the loop; it gives a really neat end point. And we can have loads of fun deaths because it’s just a satisfying ending to a song. But we think it adds a really fun tension because you are playing as Geralt and you’re trying to survive, but you’re also trying to write good content.”
Image: Devolver Digital
As I played, this setup made me much more open to experimenting. Instead of trying to roleplay as Geralt, I would often make odd choices just to see what happened. This, in turn, helps open up new storylines, giving some payoff for making the seemingly wrong decision. Even an early death can lead somewhere interesting in future runs.
The other notable addition in Reigns: The Witcher is a combat system. It wouldn’t be The Witcher if Geralt wasn’t slaying some monsters, but the idea of battles also had the potential to complicate the streamlined Reigns structure. The team settled on a sort of rhythm game, where you’re moving Geralt side to side on a board to attack or avoid monsters. What makes this system work within the confines of Reigns is that you’re still using the same commands; whether you’re making a pivotal decision or staring down a striga, everything comes down to swiping either right or left.
Despite those changes, Harrington-Shaw says that The Witcher universe is an almost ideal fit for Reigns thanks to its dark sense of humor and frequently bleak world full of opposing factions. More important, though, is the main witcher himself. “Geralt is always facing these tricky binary choices,” he says. “The world of The Witcher is full of murky, gray morality, and that seemed perfect to translate.”
Reigns: The Witcher is out now on PC and mobile.
