Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches Uses Welsh Mythology To Lure You In

Normally, when one hears the name Rhiannon, visions of Stevie Nicks awash in gypsy attire and painfully high-heeled boots dance through their mind as she flips her skirt and shakes her tambourine.

However, if you are more cerebral or lore minded, the name Rhiannon invokes the Welsh horse Goddess – still, if you are an astronomy buff you also know that an asteroid is named Rhiannon. If you are under the age of 12, you might get the name mixed up with the R&B singer Rihanna.

This time, however, Rhiannon is a teenage girl whose very sanity is threatened as an ancient battle for revenge on a remote Welsh farmstead is taking shape. Reports of unexplained noises and strange visions by the girl are seen as merely the figments of an overactive imagination so her parents whisk her off.

However, the history of her family’s new home, Ty Pryderi, holds a terrible connection to a timeless struggle between man and magic – and this is where you, the gamer, come in. Once Rhiannon Sullivan is removed, Ty Pryderi is yours to watch and explore, but their absence can only postpone an ancient inevitability of revenge and death for so long.

Curse of the Four Branches is based on the classic Middle-Welsh prose “Four Branches of the Mabinogi” (MabinOGion) and is set in a mystical place on the Celtic fringes of Britain, a place where myth and magic spill into reality. Welsh, or Celtic mythology and literature in general, as always been of interest to me and I have loads of literature on it and have visited many of these ‘sacred’ places of antiquity – so I am curious as to how much of the Mabinogi legends will come into play in the game.

The original prose is a recollection of the births, lives and deaths of a group of interrelated figures from the British Celtic mythological cycle, with all of the historical, magical and the fantastic we have come to expect from such a time and place. So, I am eager to try out anything that would lend a bit of fun and immersement in a game based on mythology as interesting as this.

Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches is a first person point and click adventure game with story that promises to blend fact, myth, and horror within a rich atmospheric game world. If you are a fan of the P&C genre, ghost stories, myth, mystery, legends, and puzzle games, this might be right up your alley.

Originally titled Rhiannon: Beyond the Mabinogion, Curse of the Four Branches is the debut title from Welsh team Arberth Studios and is to be published by Got Game Entertainment. It is expected to be released on the PC sometime this October.

Screens can be found here and while you are clicking links, you can visit the developer’s site here which is VERY cool because the menu is in Ogam (Celtic writing) and you can also watch a trailer for the game.