Not long after I posted the announcement for A More Beautiful World I was approached by the developers thanking me for my feedback on the pitch and had made changes to the main page. They also provided more links to the demo so that those like myself that might have had problems downloading it have more options to choose from. With that said, I decided that it was appropriate to finally grab it and play through it. And I am happy to say that while the pitch seemed barren the demo is far from it.
In A More Beautiful World you have two factions that, more or less, are at odds with each other. On the one hand you have the arcanely gifted magicians and on the other you have the more mundane humans. Being blessed by the heavens the magicians ruled over humans and kind of developed a bit of a superiority complex. To borrow an overly used cliche, power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely. These guys decided that humanity was becoming a bit of an upstart trying to build things instead of willing them into existence and waged war against them for going against nature. Things didn’t turn out all that great for both sides.
Anyway, the demo for A More Beautiful World starts out with a human envoy meeting with a council of magicians to broker peace and the head magician during the talks agrees to send one of her own into the world to see if what they have built is as “beautiful as your ancestors have decreed”. Guess who this ambassador of sorts is. If you read my previous post then you’ll know that this is the young girl Violetta, the “Wandering Witch” always journeying from one place to another. It’s never stated why but fate has plans for her and magicians believe that everything is foretold already.
The second half of the demo has our young witch meet her first group of humans on her journey, starting with a wandering merchant who loses his entire wares to bandits. Agreeing to take her to the next town they spend a good deal of time talking to each other about each other. Mostly the merchant about himself. In the town we find out that plague has stricken the populace and we see how human nature can be cruel in the face of such panic and strife. The demo then ends on the merchant brokering a deal with the militia of the town.
Honestly, after seeing the original pitch for A More Beautiful World I was willing to write it off as a poorly planned Kickstarter. While it’s still far from perfect the demo does show a lot of promise and the story shown so far has captured my interest. Is it enough to put down $15 for? Probably not for me but it’s certainly worth checking out. If there is one issue that I have is the lack of branching paths. Of course, this is just a small slice of the full game so there could be choices down the line. Even if there isn’t I’ve still enjoyed visual novels that are completely linear but with captivating tales to tell. And I have to say that this one counts.
