I don't want to write this review. Words are difficult, limited. They can dilute experiences, rob them of their inapprehensible qualities. Writing often forces me to coagulate my emotions, my thoughts, stops them in time when I am mercurial, ethereal; here and not here. But I am haunted by the fear of not saying anything. I am compelled to express, no matter how vulnerable the form that expression takes. That is the scariest part of writing: being vulnerable against overwhelming violence.

And that's okay.

The Red Strings Club is a refuge for that vulnerability. You will feel shame, you will get hurt, you will feel alone at times, even helpless, but that's OK. People who are like you who are here now and those who have come before you, have felt it too. In loneliness is togetherness. It's what we can do against overwhelming violence.

That isn't to say that it's a game about unbridled optimism -- the exact opposite. It's the darkest interpretation of Capitalism as recuperative violence that I've ever seen in any video game (haven't played Disco Elysium yet, sorry). This game terrifies me. It came out of nowhere like a demon and took over my thoughts for what will most likely be a very long time.

It's a horrible feeling. What do we do with it? I don't know, and maybe the game doesn't either. Its only solution is the simplest: love and be loved. What has been commodified into the cliche has metamorphosed here into devastating, ugly-sobbing beauty through painful sincerity. Perhaps that is the power you and I have. The power that's in all of these awful, oppressive systems that seem impossible to destroy is in us too. Not as a message of uncritical hope, but one of poignant endurance. We will always love in the end and find love in the end. Till the end, we have us.

That can take us so far, but it can also fell us a great height. But the fall is worth the climb. At least I think so.