I played 80 Days with my sister, Ngoc, this past week. We heard that the experience was more enjoyable on an iPad, so we opted to download it from the app store.
80 Days is a text-based adventure game that is based off of Jules Verne’s novel, “Around the World in 80 Days”. We play as Passepartout who is the valet of Phileas Fogg. Fogg places a wager that he can travel around the world in 80 days, and it is our job to get him there. The game is set in a streampunk themed world and the choice of the player affects the outcome of the story.
I played a complete run through of 80 Days twice. I played it once before class and decided to give it another shot after our discussion. During the first playthrough, I was not a fan of the story telling and the number of decisions I had to make was overwhelming. I restarted the game a few times because I felt like I had made a mistake. At some point, I wanted to get through the game, so took three fingers out and randomly selected options until the game was over. I think speeding through the narrations caused me to not appreciate the writing as much as I should have. It also caused me to not be attentive to train schedules which led to me being stranded in Yokohama for a week longer. In all, it took us 97 days to finish the game. While we “skipped” through the narrations at a few points, some of the most notable parts was being imprisoned for 5 days, participating in a boxing match during one of our travels, and attending a sailor’s funeral. At some points of the game, I was struggling to pay for the trips. I also learned that we did not need to stay at a hotel for every night we spent in a city (this realization helped me in the next playthrough oops…).
My opinion of 80 Days improved after my second run through of the game. In this iteration, I went around the world in 60 days! For routes, I went from London -> Warsaw -> Yokohama -> Honolulu -> San Francisco -> New York -> London. Additionally, I read through most of the narrations and made decisions that felt most sound to me. Since I was intentionally choosing actions, I felt that there was less chaos that occurred than when I played it the first time. The only stressful arc for me was the murder mystery of Madame Shu. It was fun interacting with all the suspects and in the end, we didn’t end up in jail (yayyyy). The trip from New York to London is a whopping $6700. I didn’t have the funds to take the flight immediately so I had to stay in New York for an extra week (rip my dreams of getting under 50 days 🙁 ).
I think that my initial impressions still stand, but I definitely stand by them more now. I thought that the story was fun to interact with and by taking different routes and actions, it is cool to see the number of people and cities you can meet. In further conversations with the reading, I can also see the White Protagonist sentiment that was highlighted. Many of the items and NPCs are there solely to interact with the main character. Additionally, while there is diverse cast of characters, the people of color are subjected to supporting roles. The game addresses some of these issues by highlighting the mistreatment of indigenous people and giving options to go against it. The players are also given chances to learn about customs of the places that they are in which is nice.
In conversation with agency, while the game gives off the illusion of choices, it does end up defaulting to the main plots to drive the game. I noticed this when the guard asks for 80 pounds to stay on the train and no matter how many times I restarted the game, I still had to pay him.
In all, 80 Days offers a unique and engaging experience. I can see that this game is not for everyone, but for those who give it a chance (or even a second one…) there is much to love about the game.
Hi Phuc! It was super fun playing with you. I also really liked your analysis of the White Protagonism aspects of the game such as having POC characters as the supporting NPCs, and centering the game around two White men who travel the world. The designers of the game did try to subvert this in different ways, such as how you mentioned, giving players a choice to educate themselves on some of the different customs or highlighting the mistreatment of indigenous groups. Overall, I would agree with your rating due to some flaws within the game, but really enjoyed the experience of it.
Thank you for this reading! I cannot help but wonder how well we, as designers, can evaluate games that are outside of our favored genres! I don’t like first person shooters, yet they are a huge part of games. Portal was inspired by them… is there a way to figure out what the play style is right for a game?
I thought it was interesting how you mentioned how “many of the items and NPCs are there solely to interact with the main character.” Is there a way to design games such that we have items that interact with multiple characters or beyond the control of the main character? I wonder how we might interact with items then through that experience
Hi Phuc, thanks for your thoughts on 80 Days. First, I find it really impressive that you made the trip in 60 days during your second playthrough. I definitely was not on track to make it anywhere near that number. I appreciated your thoughts on White Protagonist sentiment and people of color being subject to very supportive roles. I did like how there were different opportunities for the player to kind of jump out of that role a bit – whether it be to learn about customs and explore, learn about the indigenous people, scuffle with people, etc. I’m glad you gave it a second chance!
Hi Phuc, I really enjoyed reading your analysis! I think it was quite interesting to hear about how the game provides with the illusion of choices — there were often a lot of instances in my own playthrough where the options didn’t actually give you as much agency as you thought you might have. I was curious that influenced your later playthrough, did some your choices feel less meaningful?