It's more or less a test game, to be honest. I basically beasted it out over the course of two days, and eventually got sick of it, so I just decided to release it and get the story out of my system. It's a super-cheesy, saccharine-sweet period romance, and the endings are a little abrupt (like I said, I got sick of it...and I really need to learn to write romance scenes...). But I hope someone can overlook its flaws and enjoy it anyway...despite the occasional historical inaccuracy.
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"Mail Order Bride" is a short GxB story set in the American West during the 1860s. (Keep in mind that "West" at the time referred to anything beyond the Mississippi). You play the titular character, Temperance Adams, a young Bostonian schoolteacher who has decided to move West and marry a man she has never met, but only spoken with through postal communication. However, when she arrives, she discovers she has to deal with a set of totally unforeseen circumstances...what will she do?
The game is short, less than 10k words, and only features one "obtainable" guy, and really only two characters total. Just as a warning, there's a bit of an info-dump at the beginning of the game about the history of mail order brides during western migration and Manifest Destiny; it was actually a very common practice. (Sorry, if you're not interested in that. >.<) So that no one has any misconceptions about this, I'll say right now that it's not "Oregon Trail." Sorry; I love "Oregon Trail" too.
There are three possible endings. I tried to make the "good" ending not too frustratingly difficult to get, but I worry I might have made it too easy. The other thing I worry about is the menu choices being too cryptic. Ugh...the story itself is a little underdeveloped and uses some badly written devices (man, I'm really selling this thing, aren't I?). Maybe I'll make an extended version someday, with some American Indian characters, which is something I cut out from this story.
As for the distributions...I've only had a chance to test the Windows version, and it works fine on my computer. I don't know about Mac and Linux...but if you run into problems with any version of the game, please let me know and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. Also, if you catch any grammatical errors or typos (and I'm sure there are many, despite proofreading) please let me know about that also. Thanks for playing, and even if you don't like the game, maybe you'll learn something.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
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