Seduce nobles and attend fancy parties in Ambition: A Minuet in Power

Here's a Kickstarter pitch you don't hear every day: "You play as Yvette, a woman in pre-revolutionary France, using her guile and seduction to advance her position in a time of intrigue, danger, and serial adultery."

It's called Ambition: A Minuet in Power and Joy Manufacturing Co. are crowdfunding it right now. Decadent Parisian parties will be a centerpiece of their game, with every decision from what you wear to what you say potentially affecting your reputation and which faction you're in favor with. The gossip gathered from these parties can then be sold to the papers for cash, the cash spent to grow your network of spies, and the spies used to learn about the next noble you plan to seduce for influence. "Is it wrong?" the designers ask. "Yes. Is it fun? Extremely."

This is a theme and setting that board games like Love Letter, Liberte, and—if things go badly—Guillotine have covered, but it's new territory for videogames (unless you count Assassin's Creed: Unity). Joy Manufacturing Co. are looking for $US60,000 to fund their game and are over halfway there with 20 days left to go. If all goes well they're planning to release in 2018.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.