What do you get when one watches too much Full Metal Alchemist? Probably something that spawned in the minds of the creators of My Lovely Daughter. MLD is a simulation game with elements borrowed from other works of fiction that involve alchemy as part of the narrative. The game wants to focus on the idea that “life is not beautiful,” and the few things that can make it pretty are things like family and success. The game wants to present the question of how far will you go to achieve them. Equivalent exchange and such.
Alchemy-simulator?
This hand-drawn simulator is about Faust, a run-of-the-mill father figure, living in a medievalishtown. He wakes up, all Breath of the Wild style, with no memory or recollection of what happened or who he is. The only thing he remembers is that his quest is to revive his daughter. To do this, he will go all out and create a new soul for her ‘frozen’ body, by summoning homunculi and killing them for soul parts. For those unfamiliar with what a homunculus is (homunculi is plural), a quick summary: A homunculus (Latin for “little person”) is a representation of a small human being. Popularized in sixteenth-century alchemy and nineteenth-century fiction, it has historically referred to the creation of a miniature, fully formed human. The concept has roots in preformationism as well as earlier folklore and alchemic traditions.
The homunculus first appears by name in alchemical writings attributed to Paracelsus (1493–1541). De Natura Rerum (1537) outlines his method for creating homunculi: That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse’s womb, or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse’s womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.
My Lovely Daughter
So, for those familiar with the concept know that homunculus has feelings (of the sort). The main premise of this game is killing the things you summoned. The summoning is done with components like wood, iron, flesh, etc. The higher the quality, the higher the level of the homunculi you will create. When you kill one of your homunculi, you will regain some of the materials you used. Insert Elton Johns’ ‘Circle of life’ and you have created a new Full Metal Alchemist trauma. To regain/rebuild the soul of your daughter, you will need to combine the base emotions of a human being. Every homunculus has a specific emotion, ranging from anger to sadness. And you can’t just create a soul based on one emotion since we humans are not only .. angry all the time (for example). To broaden the emotional range of your homunculus, you can give them gifts, play with them and then brutally murder them when the moon shines bright and full. Oh, and they call you daddy, which is creepy.
Abuse & Love?
The game’s challenge isn’t so much a gameplay challenge as an emotional one. My Lovely Daughter balances between generating income, buying material, creating homunculi and killing them. While it may be easy to cast off your grumpy failed Enmity homunculus to free up her room and scavenge what meager resources you can from her corpse, it’s much less pleasant to do the same to a beautiful, sweet Titanium homunculus who’s been writing you letters and whom you’ve been talking to every week and showering with gifts, especially when she pleads for her life and starts crying. This is the point the developers want to make. Faust is supposed to be a loving father, with the ultimate purpose – reviving his daughter. But in the process to do such a thing, he will abuse and murder all his other .. daughters. And it’s this premise that gives My Lovely Daughter its strength. It still does not change the fact that the gameplay becomes a little bit stale and repetitive.
