Alabaster

Alabaster, a self-professed Fractured Fairy Tale by Emily Short and various other authors, is an Interactive Fiction game that retells the story of Snow White through a dark mirror.

The game places you into the shoes of the huntsman ordered to kill Snow White and bring her heart back to the Queen. You secretly made a pact with Snow White to let her go in the woods and bring back the heart of a hart to the Queen instead, but as the fateful hour approaches you can't help but take note of Snow White's erratic behavior in the woods and the rumors you've heard about her being even more dangerous than her stepmother. You're alone with Snow White now, however, and the only way you'll get any answers is by questioning her or any other creatures that might be nearby. If you really want to know the answers, that is...

The main appeal of this game is its complex conversation system created through a collaboration project among Emily Short and various other interactive fiction writers who added conversation options and dialogue after one another in a round-robin-like manner. It isn't quite as conversation-focused as Emily Short's earlier work Galatea famously was, but the conversations you can hold with Snow White on numerous topics are definitely the most important and interesting parts of the game.

Further information and download links for this game can be found here.


 * Bittersweet Ending: Most of the endings are like this. Even the happiest ones where have bittersweet undertones of, respectively.
 * Dead Person Conversation:
 * Demonic Possession: One of the conversation threads has you learn that the Queen summoned demons and gives you the option to ask if the Queen was possessed by them.
 * Dialogue Tree: Sort of. The conversation system is much more complex than a simple branching dialogue tree, but you usually get suggestions about follow-up dialogue options after asking or saying something.
 * Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Snow White, so very much.
 * Fairest of Them All: You can ask Snow White this word-by-word. Her reply borders on Never Heard That One Before. You can also learn that the Queen summoned the demon Lilith with the express purpose of becoming beautiful, although Snow White becomes evasive if you ask her why the Queen wants to kill her which means that you never know for sure if the Queen was really jealous about her beauty or not.
 * Fallen Princess: The princess shows telltale signs of being off, the cause of which can be confirmed through dialog.
 * Fractured Fairy Tale
 * God Save Us From the Queen: To say that the Queen went a little crazy after the disappearance of her husband and her possession of the Magic Mirror would be a massive understatement.
 * Grimmification
 * How Do You Like Them Apples?: The game's cover art is that of an apple with a bite taken out of it, and an apple is the answer to a riddle Snow White tells you if you follow a certain conversation thread.
 * I Do Not Drink... Wine: Inverted; Snow White's regular drinking of red wine is taken as a sign of her possible vampirism.
 * King Incognito: One conversation thread has Snow White suggest that the disappeared King may have been blood-sundered and become an ordinary person in the process.
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia:
 * Magic Mirror: An evil one that the Queen possesses, naturally.
 * Multiple Endings: No less than eighteen of them.
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same: They're called "dwarrows" in this world, and are mentioned to have waged a nasty war with the kingdom the PC comes from.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: The PC suspects Snow White may be one at the beginning of the game, and it's easy to see why.
 * Perspective Flip
 * Too Dumb to Live: You can return to the castle with Snow White still with you. This goes about as well as you'd expect. You can also.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can drive Snow White insane by repeatedly asking her probing questions. Considering that you get numerous signs of her impeding Freak-Out if you continue questioning her and that, you'd pretty much have to be a heartless bastard to go this far.
 * Wicked Stepmother: But of course. It's implied in a couple of conversation threads that this wasn't always the case, however.