The game’s hero is Caliban, who is portrayed as an anthropomorphic beast. The gameplay involves combat with enemies and puzzles. The goal of the game is to kill Prospero and to interfere with his larger plans as they develop in The Tempest.
An event scene shows the entirety of act 1, with the events that have the least immediate relevance to Caliban, such as the shipwreck, abridged. Caliban is then seen on another part of the Island collecting wood, at the beginning of act 2, scene 2. Here, Caliban fights a group of Island spirits before meeting Stephano and Trinculo. Gameplay resumes after act 3, scene 2, when Caliban convinces Stephano and Trinculo to help him kill Prospero. The player is now tasked with defeating Prospero and restricting his control over other characters on the island. This is only accomplished by preventing Prospero’s manipulation of nobles, not through any direct interaction, allowing the central organization of the story to remain intact. The player controlling Caliban is required to advance Caliban’s goals while hindering Prospero’s. If both programs are successful, the player wins.
Making Caliban hero of the game necessitated changes to the play’s original plot, but Caliban’s goals and attitudes in the game reflect the more prevalent aspects of his character in The Tempest. The passages that I used as a starting point for my adaption are suggestive of this aspect of Caliban. In act 4, Caliban shows that he wants to kill Prospero, above all else, chastising Stephano and Trinculo for “[doting] on such luggage,” imploring them to “do the murder first” (4.1.221-2). Later, in act 5, Caliban rejects this viewpoint, opting to “be wise. . . And seek for grace” (5.1.309-10). Taken together, these lines suggest that Caliban is driven to interfere with Prospero’s plans, and holds little interest in rebellion or his own freedom for his own sake. Caliban’s general attitude, as seen in these passages, inspired the conflict and resolution of the game. Placing Caliban in the universe of a video game, where victory is of primary importance helps to clarify and exaggerate his role in the play without it being overshadowed by the larger context of the original narrative.
When adapting Caliban’s character, I chose to focus on his inhuman qualities, and had intended for his visual portrayal to seem mostly bestial (see image). Stripping Caliban of the humanity he has in The Tempest also diminishes his victimization, which is significant when reading the play in terms of race or colonialism. Reincarnating Caliban’s character in a video game also forces him to operate as a human, in some sense, irrespective of his portrayal. Incorporating puzzles in the game takes advantage of this connection between Caliban and the player, as Caliban is forced to interact with the (virtual) world as a human would. Thus, Caliban can become definitively human, at a mental level, as a video game character, since he directly inherits the reason of the controller. This relationship between the Caliban and the player also augments certain traits that Caliban has in the play. For example, Caliban’s insistence that he is similar to Prospero, and that Prospero’s books and magic are the only things separating them. The extent to which this similarity exists in the play is debatable, but the video game universe clearly places both characters on a similar level, and Caliban’s ability to manipulate others in the game is meant to exploit this. As a video game character, Caliban becomes and equal to Prospero, altering his original character.