When it comes to short experiences, it's a little hard for me to judge the worthiness of how it affects me as I am sometimes unsure of how much intention was measured by length. For example, is the experience short because it has a simple thing to say and can it effectively do it? Or was it a constraint of time or budget? Was it more a hobby or afterthought or something akin to a school project, brief and meant to test drive an idea to be fleshed out later?

In many ways, Astronomical Club for Queers, touches for me in various aspects all three of those experiences. A short game that I played the Switch version of, the game focuses on a central characters struggle post a flood, a civet named Louie. I initially saw it as a queer romance as the characters story focuses on them anchoring to Oliver, their friend and I hazarded someone they might crush on? The issue and to be honest it might be a personal one, is that the gender identities and orientations of characters are discussed on most of the games front pages but going in blind I wasn't really made too aware of these as I experienced the game itself. Perhaps it's that my own perception and cues are muted from my many years struggling to parse and understand any world I was not immediately aware of or felt party to. Perhaps I felt the game was too brief to let me see this insight or pick up on the cues of it, or again, perhaps I'm simply reading too deeply into the idea someone's identity being advertised loudly in the text is something I may want but perhaps we should move past.

The gameplay is very minimal and brief and it feels a bit frustrating to not have the ability to go check dialogue you've already read and it feels quite easily to accidentally leave the star gazing element of the game, making it feel too brief and too easily traversed. But again; these nitpicks are simply wedges in the tires for me, as while this was not my favourite experience technically or personally, it is one I deeply appreciate. I spend oft times wondering on my friends and as fellow queer people, wondering on how long these moments of value will hold on for. I don't know how long I or they have with me. So the reason I value this still a little higher then perhaps the system or experience gives me is that the message inside of it, of that anxiety and holding onto tangible moments of community, stands tall even past the mire.

In the midst of the final boss fight of Helltaker, I said and I believe I quote 'I wish burnt pancakes on the creator of this game' as I tried to deal with the boss fight for the umpteenth time. Maybe the feeling that the shift from planned puzzle solver to real time attempt at rhythm game was jarring to me. Maybe I hadn't really be grabbed by the scenario of this game as deeply as others might have. Perhaps I was dealing with the frustration of how snap quickly I'd had to make judgements when before it'd been something however mundane I'd been able to take at my own pace. Maybe it was just frustrating and boring to my own perspective? All of them are I think true of the matter.

Helltaker is at its core, a vehicle for the creator to show off their cute demon and angel women original characters. It is at its best when it is showing off said cute designs and playing around with its semi 'I'll kill you or kiss you vibe' and to a degree though it's rare, in a puzzle solving vibe. While it feels very restricted in how you can solve said puzzles in my own limited experience with the genre, having more played things like TETRIS, it isn't exactly a bad experience. A single set solution doesn't make a puzzle bad and even when I didn't know, the solution was something I looked up with my girlfriend who I was playing it alongside in the moment so it felt collaborative and fun. But the inherent experience itself was not one that gripped me because it didn't feel strong enough, just rigid and difficult. I also acknowledge that is exactly the vibe some might seek, but this game itself was valuable to me for a different reason.

This was the first game where the 'reward' for completing it was 'you get this girl in your harem' and the final boss fight was awful that I said a different, perhaps other defining personal moment aloud; 'Yeah, but is she worth it though?' The games gameplay and experience were such a turn off, the idea of dating a cute woman was not just a straight up yes, which for my queer ass is a massive step toward not blindly playing and enjoying a game because cute girls are in it. The games premise, its gameplay and its inherent here or there on some elements (how rigid it is, how it doesn't really commit to me in flowing solutions, how some of the girls don't really feel like even with the talk option they don't really grab me as characters, how abysmally hard the final boss fight is and goes on) and that maybe, just maybe there could have been more done to facilitate a more fun experience. But I guess I'm just content that Helltaker taught me; even I'm growing a standard of which I don't want to subject myself to things. And how Helltaker has ideas that might work but that maybe they're simply not for me.

Also; I'm sorrowful for wishing your pancakes get burnt friend, that final boss just sucks really bad.

CW: Sui, Possible Transantagonism, COVID-19

All of my life, I've been consumed by an anxiety around people. The unpredictability of how they act, why they do what they do and the sudden emotional shifts of others, has frightened me as I spent a large amount of it seeking connection, care and companionship. As such, my encounters with people have been littered with everyday fears that festered silently amongst a field of caution within.

And then, the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic rendered people no longer just frightening but avatars of illness and death. Everyone wasn't just an emotional unknown, but a physical one, where isolation brought loneliness but company brought the fears of somethings far worse. It was no longer just a fear of people as an experience, but also on a conceptual level that drove me further inside and afraid of the world. And in the wake of that, came the early release of World of Horror.

World of Horror is a roguelike, point and click adventure game in which your choice of character must stop an Old God, corresponding to ideas and myths built around the drab and dreary Lovecraft canon or the works of horror creators like Junji Ito, George Romero, Sam Raimi and so forth, by stopping the summoning of this being who you cannot defeat by those who wish them brought here more than anything; cultists, rapt lovers of the end of the world and those who think the end of us as people is what is best for us all. And in it is in this timeframe, with the mindset I have told you, in a world filled with people ushering on endings for people without any semblance of remorse of understanding, that World of Horror so perfectly captured me.

The game itself is drenched in atmosphere, from the use of classic black and white colour palette's that seem reminiscent of old manga to the use of creased, greasy looking and smudged character art and designs that remain moulded in emulation of the dark works that they so adore. Whether this veers deeply into plagiarism over homage, is something I am unsure of, as the experience I've had directly of Ito's work among the others is limited. As I say, the inspirations clearly strike many people but for me, the experience of solving mysteries, and stopping a great evil with you and a few friends, not only felt loose enough to impart myself into, but the feeling of hope even among the dark it grasped was one I desperately needed in the place I found myself in.

Flash forward to 2023 and the full release of the game; and I've found I've changed a little. While the world is no less under threat from ignorant people hastening a doom for others they believe is deserved and that desire to save the world, to stop the darkness keeps my passion for the game burning, the flaws of the game and the real world horrors it attempts to deal with, perhaps in a clumsy manner, stick with me. It's use of sui in both a focused case and as a status effect confound me with how it still feels like it doesn't quite feel right to do. One of its characters backstories makes me worry it's echoing transantagonism tropes of trans 'serial killers' or those who kill those of the identity they want out of jealousy or desire. And the bugs, the still quite bugged mysteries in some cases, the new release feeling only a little more expanded then where it started, the inherently too RNG based experience leading to experiences that feel almost too unfocused. At some point, the horror is bypassed to become essentially a speedrun game and while that's no bad thing, it means that as I've become more fluidly good at the game, the less enjoyable it's been for me. I found that maybe, what drew me most to the game, was it was the right experience for the right time and the right moment. The world now may still be horrible for people, but I've found better ways to see it through, with friends that anchor me once again to people, then getting stuck in this game. And I am thankful for that, to be able to move past World of Horror, thankful for what it's given me, then simply staying stuck in that endless cycle of trying to save a world I no longer wish to obsess over.