Review | Dark Queen of Mortholme - Witness Me
A snap of the fingers, and the body of the hero disappears in purple witch fire. The click of armored heels echoes as the Dark Queen strides back to her throne — the only available destination. In the empty room, the acoustics are deafening. She is alone here, as she always is, except when briefly interrupted. When she reaches that throne, they’ll come again. She’ll kill them, again. How many times has it been, now?
Dark Queen of Mortholme requires you, playing as the titular queen, to slay the hero. In fact, it is all there is to do in the game. You are furnished with a small but varied moveset to diversify the bloody work. The hero always returns, presumably respawning somewhere outside of your throne room, which you cannot leave. Each time, you have a brief conversation, and then combat commences. You win. Then, the hero returns. It’s almost excruciatingly simple. But, something is different each time the hero comes back. They start to learn your moves, get extra health, and acquire a stronger weapon. Each time, they last a little longer against you. You begin to feel your supremacy being dismantled, and eventually defeat looms. It’s a tidy little game that evokes reflection deeper than the simplicity of its conceit would imply.
There is a preciousness buried in Dark Queen of Mortholme like a gemstone. It suffuses the interludes in the inevitable conflict between the hero and the dark queen. It is in the words exchanged between them. It is in the silence after the hero lies dead — again — and how the queen’s treatment of their corpse evolves, touchingly. The queen towers over the hero, at once motherly and, like Sauron at Barad-dûr, a leviathan. It is a reminder that love does not always take the shape we wish it did.
Dark Queen of Mortholme punches at a greater weight than its sub-hour runtime would suggest, because it is built so tightly. It has two characters. It has maybe a hundred lines of dialogue. It is restrained to exploring one video game trope, the showdown with the final boss, by flipping the perspective to that of the enemy. This trope is so entrenched that with a trick so simple as to be almost obvious, a whole world of introspection is unearthed.
Taking on a role normally played by code, and now finding yourself being learned by code as the game’s NPC hero gets better at dodging your attacks, is nauseating. The hero adapts while you, the player, must remain static. The killing blows that once felt so powerful begin to show the weakness of their timing and spacing, providing room for the hero to slip through unscathed. Lots of games let you play as the villain — Overlord, Tyranny, Dungeon Keeper — but in these you still remain the agent, acting upon the world. Here you are not subject, but object, there to be acted upon. For me, that is the real meaningful role reversal here beyond the hero-villain dynamic. The story bears your name, but it is not about you. You bear the title Dark Queen because you are the thing to be overcome.
This story is more interesting than just playing the bad gal. The hero seems to understand that they are in a game, or at least some kind of loop. They know they are destined to win. The Dark Queen must learn this, and whether she accepts her fate is up to you. Her foe is questing on the hero’s journey offscreen, like some classical Greek demigod, assured of their victory. But the locus of character development returns to the throne room when I realise the Dark Queen is the one who must change in a more fundamental way, despite not being the protagonist. That character arc is what I play games to see. I want to be in that throne room when the Queen does that same double take at the door, awaiting the beginning of the cycle anew. I can’t leave the room, but I don’t want to leave the room. What I came for is right here.
Dark Queen of Mortholme is “pay what you want” on itch.io.
