Maybe that obsession never left you! And, if so, I am so happy to bring you today's game recommendation: The Good People, or Na Daoine Maithe.
The Good People is a lore-rich and choice-driven romantic visual novel inspired by Irish mythology. You will play as a 19-century Irish tenant farmer (pronouns customizable), who gets robbed and lured into the mythic, war-torn world of Tír na nÓg. And, because of a serious case of mistaken identity, your life is entwined with fairy affairs and the Seelie/Unseelie conflict.
The Love Interests
The Good People boasts a colorful cast of fae LIs, including royalty and tricksters that offer something for everyone:- Shae Féarglas (they/them). An honourable Seelie soldier questing to find a lost princess.
- Keagan Máistirúin (he/him). The Seelie court spymaster with a plethora of enemies.
- Aífe Ealabhàn (she/her). Queen of the Seelie, a rumoured usurper falsely ordained by the gods.
- Maeve Troiduair (she/her). An Unseelie folk hero endowed with the power of the morrígan.
- Flannán Mac Lugh (he/him). The newly crowned Unseelie king, and son of the unseelie’s infamous rebel leader, lugaid.
- Robin Goodfellow (any/all). A shapeshifting trickster of unknowable origins, whose primary goal is making mischief for the Unseelie.
Features
While The Good People's selling points are definitely its themes and beautiful art, I'm really excited to get more of the seamlessly integrated language lessons throughout. Yes—you can learn a little Irish while playing because each word used is clickable, which changes the dialogue box into a little dictionary that provides both pronunciation and translation/background for the given word (or name).It's such a cool mechanic for a game and, so far, I've only seen something similar with Laga, a game I previously recommended.Na Daoine Maithe is also gorgeously illustrated, both in terms of sprites and backgrounds—the latter of which are further shown off by a sort of moving "camera" that makes it feel like you, as the MC, are able to look around a bit. It is limited, not a full 360 or anything, but it's still very cool and moving your mouse around can sometimes help find little horse prizes (that'll make sense when you actually do it lol).
Another thing I love about this game is the voice acting. Ugh, it's so good!! 😩💕
Most voice acted visual novels only have a single sound, word, or phrase from a given bit of dialogue, but The Good People has a fair bit more. It's not 100% voice acted, no. But, the chosen bits of voiced dialogue we do get is the entire sentence or even a few more! And it's so good! The voice actors do an incredible job of conveying emotion and tone which is something I tend to miss in a lot of voiced games. Usually things feel stiff and detached, like they're just reading from a script of lines with zero context for what they're saying. That is not the case with Na Daoine Maithe. Everyone, especially Aífe, sounds so amazing and real and feeling. And I simply can't wait to get my hands on the full game so I can hear more!
While the game is currently in development, the free demo does an excellent job of building anticipation for the final game! The demo consists of the introductory "preface" of The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe), which makes up about 2.5–3 hours of gameplay. As with most demos, it ends at the point where you'd be able to select a route.
But, that's not totally it! After the game's credits, there is a secret ending that requires players to open a door with a secret code—found only by making a certain choice in the middle of the demo. And, if you do find it, you'll probably need this alphabet guide because it requires a bit of decoding/translating.
I don't want to give anything away, so I encourage you to check out the game's Itch.io page and maybe even the Discord which is constantly buzzing with game talk and memes 🤭
Final Thoughts
I'm really excited about this game! It took me a while to play because I had to take it chapter-by-chapter with no way to save in the middle of them (I hope that's a demo-only feature, or maybe I missed the save button in the beautiful interface). Still, I had a lot of fun with it and I can't wait to learn more lore about both the characters and Irish folklore as a whole.The Good People is fully funded via Kickstarter at the beginning of this year, so I'm hopeful about seeing updates from it soon. The developer, Moirai Myths, is very active in the Itch comments and so you can follow them there, on Twitter, and on Tumblr.