This Way Madness Lies Review
This Way Humor Lies
Why the twin narrative pillars of Shakespeare and the magical girl genre have never previously found common ground in works of fiction is a question that scholars have shamefully only dared to whisper about on lonely winter nights deep in the bowels of dusty university libraries. It was left to Robert Boyd and Bill Stiernberg of Zeboyd Games to finally bring the two together, with a healthy dose of Eldritchian horror thrown in. Packed into a pleasingly tight seven-hour experience, This Way Madness Lies is an excellent blend of disparate genres, solid gameplay, and humorous writing.
This Way Madness Lies follows a group of third-year high school girls in the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society. The game doesn't waste any time setting up the premise: not only are these girls accomplished thespians, they can also travel via dimensional portals to other worlds based upon various Shakespearean plays. These worlds are under attack from nightmarish monsters, and these young actors change into their magical girl forms to battle the beasts and rescue some of the most iconic characters in literature. Between their extra-dimensional duties, the girls attend an English Literature class taught by a stream of substitute teachers as the regular teacher suffers from an unending string of strange and unfortunate events.
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Those minor quibbles apart, Zeboyd Games has provided a splendid experience from beginning to end. With a bevy of 50-100+ hour RPGs weighing down RPGamers' backlogs and more always on the horizon, its smaller experience makes for a welcome, hilarious, and reinvigorating respite. With such great writing, beautiful art direction, and a battle system with just the right amount of depth for its length, This Way Madness Lies' lovely bite-sized package is still as fulfilling an RPG experience as they come.
Score: 4.5/5
