I think playing The Baron would have been more interesting if I hadn’t read the introduction in the menu before playing. I understand why he would want to give a warning of dark themes, but it left me far more critical of it than I would have been otherwise. I ended up judging less what he had done and more what he was trying to do.
I do admit it is more interesting and creepier on second playing. The first time is confusing, and fairly surprising at the end when you find you *are* the baron and what you have been doing to Maartje. The second time though, you see the alternate answers and start to understand what they mean, about doing this every night, about saying things to the baron about you-we (which if it hadn’t been an option would have made the revelation more surprising). The castle is also a lot more creepy when you realize it’s in his head. The question and answer with the gargoyle was more significant as well. I was also a lot less sympathetic to the main character on the second go, knowing more about him. In many ways I think the game was written with the second playing in mind more than the first.
I thought it was an interesting experiment in writing, but as others have posted, I don’t think the *form* was as vital to the story as it often is for other IF games. You could easily see this as a short story. The storyline is fairly progressive - reading the other entries, I see some have experimented and found it very linear, with the input of the user making little difference. Of course, you don’t realize this the first time around, and having it be IF does make you identify closer with the main character than a novel might. However, I don’t think it truly takes advantage of the form for an emergent story in the way Galatea does.
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