The Novelist
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
The Novelist asks one central question: can you achieve your dreams without pushing away the people you love? The game focuses on Dan Kaplan, a novelist struggling to write the most important book of his career while trying to be the best husband and father he can be. The Kaplans have come to a remote coastal home for the summer, unaware that they're sharing the house with a mysterious ghostly presence: you.
Read the family's thoughts. Explore their memories. Uncover their desires and intervene in their lives. But stay out of sight; you can't help the Kaplans if they know there's a ghost in the house. It's up to you to decide how Dan's career and family life will evolve, but choose carefully; there are no easy answers, and every choice has a cost.
Dan's relationships – to his work, his wife, and his son – react and shift in response to your choices. With a different sequence of events in every playthrough, The Novelist gives life to a unique experience each time you play
The decisions you make will define the Kaplans' lives, but they may also tell you something about yourself.
"A quite remarkable simulation of family life" – 8/10 – Edge
"Sincere, realistic writing and an inspired approach to player choice" – Polygon
"The Novelist affected me, deeply … I frequently cried" – Rock Paper Shotgun
"Stands head and shoulders above all others … well-written and genuinely moving" - Indie Game of the Year – Continue Play
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
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The Novelist is all about improbable choices and uncompromising compromises between selfish people experiencing the Murphy Law to ensure that everything which could go wrong goes wrong.
The protagonist of this story forces himself to write a novel when he is not in the mood and therefore turns his dream into a nightmare because instead of enjoying what he does, he makes it a painful chore.
He has to struggle alone because he is not supported by his family who has each their own needs and desires and no one ever desires to make anyone else but themselves happy.
Indeed, Dan is obsessed by his novelist career because he wants to create something to be remembered and therefore he is too busy worrying himself about what strangers who he will never meet will think of him after he is dead instead of enjoying life while he is still alive, Linda expects his unconditional support for her painter career and got the nerve to be disappointed if he doesn't always prioritize her while she never prioritizes him herself and Tommy is a self-centered brat who expects his parents to do everything he wants and throws a tantrum if his every whim are not satisfied.
Even as each of them notices that the others are unhappy, no one ever desires to make anyone else happy as each of their desire is a selfish one.
Moreover, while I understand that this game wants to tell about the hardships of balancing career and family life, this premise is flawed because they are incompatible to begin with.
Careerist people, meaning people whose job is their passion, need to be free to dedicate as much attention, time and energy to their job as they want and they don't want to be burdened by anything, including a family, which would get in the way of their career because this is what fulfills them whereas family people are people whose dream is to build a family while their job is merely a mean to sustain their real passion which is their family and they don't care about their career because their job is only a mean to an end and not an end itself, they wouldn't even want a job if they didn't need money because they want to dedicate all of their attention, time and energy to their family life while their career is nothing but a chore to them.
And since the aim of this game is not to teach a realistic experience of life but to convince people that life and compromises are hard then it triggers everything to happen simultaneously just to force us to choose who to grant their wish at each chapter in a way to unavoidably disappoint everyone else, which is not how life actually works because life is not a succession of events scripted to happen at the same time and to grant only one wish at a time.
Experiencing this "game" actually made me feel that it was designed by a depressed person who only wanted to share their melancholy with other people because "sadness seeks company", which is why the conclusion of this "game" is that everyone can't be happy because some people's happiness has to be sacrificed in order to grant one person's happiness and such a conclusion results from a reasoning in a mind of someone disappointed in life and experiencing depression.
I know what I talk about because I already experienced such melancholy myself and I don't appreciate that someone tries to burden me with their own melancholy while I already struggle with my own so I didn't enjoy this "game" and I deleted it as soon as I finished it once because I already know that no matter my choices, the outcome will always be that everyone can't be happy because this "game" was designed to be fatally unrewarding just like its designer felt that life is fatally unrewarding so what's the point of restarting it for the same outcome?
This game to me, was difficult to pick up -- but so hard to put down. I didn't think I was that invested in the game until after it finished and I think about it occasionally.
Me the entire game: No one cares about your needs Linda, your kid is SAD.
Me at the end: Okay, time to chose Linda's ending.
Beautiful game, beautifully written. 10/10. Want 5 more. <3
You know it's gonna be a good game when you already care about the characters and not messing up their lives after reading the description