All over the Victorian globe, Great Powers prepare for imperial war, colonial states strive to overthrow the yoke of oppression, and everywhere, steampunk marvels of the Artificers and other new technologies unlock previously unimaginable wonders.
In this game, inspired by Jules Verne’s 1873 novel Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours and set the year before, the player controls Passepartout (“goes everywhere”), the valet to a British gentleman by the name of Phileas Fogg. Mr. Fogg has undertaken a wager to circumnavigate the globe within 80 days, and it is up to his unflappable valet to accompany him and make all of the arrangements needed to assure that the undertaking is a success. This boils down to a series of decisions made managing travel itineraries, finances, inventory items and Mr. Fogg’s health, all presented with striking minimalist graphics and a great deal of lush gamebook-style textual passages.
There are numerous potential successful routes — will the player be conservative and go the long haul on the Orient Express and Trans-Siberia Railway, or will they gamble on experimental airships and submersibles and new routes through canals at Suez and Panama? Perhaps a polar expedition will act as a fruitful shortcut? Of course, there are just as many ways to fail — laid low with cholera in Manila, enslaved in an opium den in Hong Kong, or simply arriving back home one day too late. A great deal of role-playing side-business along the way help to break up the routine of getting from A to B.
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