What Out of Copyright Characters Would You Like To See A Game About?

[alias_sqbr]

There's a bunch of otome about out of copyright characters: all the Alice in Wonderland influenced games, Code Realise about various 19th Century European characters like Frankenstein, Ozmafia about fairytale characters etc.

But there's a whole bunch who never get to be sexy bishonen (/bishoujo/whatever the non binary term is)

A while ago I had fun pondering Australian examples on my blog, including The Jolly Swagman, The Man From Snowy River, and The Magic Pudding.

So who are some obscure or unusual out of copyright characters fictional characters you'd enjoy seeing in a dating sim/otome game? Extra points if they're not from the UK or US.

Copyright law is a mess, but anything from around 1920 or earlier is a fair bet.

Comments

[waterscroll]

Ok this is kind of out there but I've been thinking about it all night so why not:
Nathan the Wise (18th cent. German)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_the_Wise

The whole setup reminds me of an otome novel: 3 rings, 3 religions, 3 men, 3 perspectives on what it means to live a good life, one woman protagonist navigating between them. And I think the otome novel genre could be very interesting for thinking through questions of pluralism and tolerance and how they look different from different social locations.

And I'm sure Saladin would make a great bishonen.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh wow! That could be very interesting, even if you'd have to do some heavy adapting to make it romance unless you wanted it to be all incest. Plus of course the standards for religious tolerance have changed a bit since the 16th century.

One thing I liked about Akash: Path of the Five was how each path was about picking a friend/boyfriend but also a magical discipline/future life direction, even if it didn't a lot with that aspect. I feel like I've seen other games do stuff like that but am blanking. Anyway, paths as explorations of different life philosophies etc is always interesting.