A Family Supper -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author(s): Emily Short, Richard Evans, Linden Lab Genre: Mystery Website: http://versu.com Language: en First Publication Date: 2013-02-14 License: Commercial Forgiveness Rating: Merciful Rating: 3.5 (based on 2 ratings) ABOUT THE STORY The Quinn family is hosting a small house party, but an unconventional guest threatens their peace with sonnets, vegetarianism, and a gift for finding everyone's sore points. When secrets start coming to light and a corpse appears, it's up to you to bring about justice … if justice is even what you want. "A Family Supper" is a Versu game, featuring rich character autonomy and a wide variety of possible interactions and endings. It uses a social AI engine developed by Richard Evans, and is published by Linden Lab. It appears this game is no longer available as Linden Labs, which acquired the IP, has discontinued development. EDITORIAL REVIEWS The Gameshelf > I was rather pleased, in "A Family Supper", to find myself steering the tone > of a social gathering with no explicit direction or goals. (Terrifyingly > like real life!) Then I hit The Twist, and found that the latter half of the > game was strongly goaled -- although with plenty of play in how I dealt with > those goals. Presumably I could have ignored them completely, or had an > attack of Regency-style vapors. In any case, it demonstrated that the Versu > engine was capable of handling both modes. 50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron A. Reed > Supper begins during a meal at the home of the Quinns, a well-to-do if > stodgy couple whose guests include a flamboyant, rakish poet named Brown, > “naive young debutante” Lucy, and the witty but less well-off Elizabeth > Bennett (lifted from Pride & Prejudice). While other Versu stories imposed a > more traditional plot, Supper was intriguing in part for how it let the > social act-and-react loop at the heart of its engine take center stage. As > dinner unfolds, the characters, with their different levels of intellect and > propriety, have plenty of opportunities to delight, offend, and scandalize > one other; and two playthroughs can turn out very differently.