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.

Numerous failures and this is it, colloquially known as The Run. I've got my undying squirrels, my golden pelts, scissors and hourglasses, and I'm ready to rock. Boss 1, cake, Boss 2 fish in barrel, boss 3 BAM. This time was different; I was going the distance. All that's left is Leshy himself. You wanna go 1 on 1 with me? Come at me then.

It is difficult to put into words just how hard my ass was humbled.

The fight barely lasted a few minutes. The scales tipped against me, the candle went out, there was darkness and the mad visage of a man who had me in check from the start. I was sent to the same Game Over screen I had been far too familiar with at this point. Leshy asked me to make my death card, held up his camera, the screen filled up with blinding whiteness, and I was sent all the way back to the beginning. It had become slapstick routine at this point. "Nyuck nyuck nyuck, see ya next time, kid."

I was humiliated, disgraced, and left to pick up the pieces of my shattered ego. And yet, even at my lowest point, I felt this sickening bolt of pleasure as I began my next round of torture. Inscryption is unflinchingly difficult at times. And yet, it's so coy about it. The game makes itself a little easier every time, giving you more cards, more abilities, new items, and hints. I suspect that there's also some brilliantly designed behind the scenes trickery making RNG more forgivable after every defeat.

I've never been this Tsundere'd by a game before. It rejects you with all of the banal cruelty of a high school anime girl, but beckons you back for more. "I-it's not like I want you to win or anything, b-baka!" There is something strange, and even romantic, about the whole affair.

It's a cycle of frustration and elated discovery played back to back in a delicate, intimate dance. The game learns you, you learn it; you get closer, it lets you, too close and you're sent back to the ground to grovel like a dog, and earn your right to its touch once more. It's laborsome patience and agony, but I want more. I'm being edged by software.

You're either turned off by this type of game or you're a glutinous hog scarfing down the whole plate, leaving no crumbs behind; it's me, I'm the hog. New game, new strat. With full unashamed cowardice, I decided to meta-game with the best decks that corporate SEO regimented gaming guides and Reddit could give me. This time I'll be smarter, stronger, and I'll win. It's a golden run: I get every card I need and a blessing from RNJesus. I rush through the bosses once more; now, it's just me and Leshy. I'm showered, I've had lunch, I've got my deck, I'm ready.

I could almost hear the game sarcastically saying "Heh, clever girl" as it sent me back to the ground, once more becoming the boar on the floor. My golden deck had betrayed me. The heart of the cards was not with me that day. It's very likely that I'm just bad at video games, but I'm not mature enough to accept that. So I'll continue to believe that the game possesses divine powers beyond that of Zeus, Beelzebub, and the Prophet Muhammad.

Consecutive runs fared no better. My defeats ran quickly and on rhyme, like some eldritch Dr. Seuss shit. But I came back, hardier, hungrier. Squirrel head, rabbit hole, stunted wolf, defeat; Again, cockroach, ouroboros, pack rat, pack shit, no good shitter's clogged; Once more, bug head, bees, many lives, golden pelts, ah fuck, damn, defeat; Snake gone, rat gone, wolf gone, all my cards gone, ahhhh stuck in the shit!

This game is sentient. I don't mean in the cutesy Undertale/Doki Doki Literature Club way where some code trickery renames files or remembers if you've deleted saves. I mean it in the 'I know what you tell your therapist' cosmic horror way. It knows how to push me, it knows how to win me back; it exploits my insecurities, ruthlessly, mocks me, makes a pain pig of me, and yet, every time, comes back with a tenderly spoken "It's okay, you'll do better next time..."

As of writing, I haven't beaten the game, but that's OK. I've come to love the edge, the precipitous excitement of getting closer to the finish, all while being put in my place by the weight of my own incompetence at the very last second. I forgot to talk about the story. Is there something wrong with me?

I'll probably beat Inscryption one day, as all lovers must eventually part. But for now, why rush? Let me savor my sadomasochism, like a wine mom with a Steam account.

Papers, Please is a McCarthyist 'critique' on communism, made by an American who knows nothing about communism.

It is the usual propaganda about the Soviet Union: poverty, brutal regimentation, breadlines, and violent suppression. This is an incredibly reactionary view of the USSR that isn't historically accurate at all, but Lucas Pope, like many conditioned liberals, has bought into it wholesale.

Arstotzka is 1960s East Germany, after the Berlin wall was constructed. The political backdrop is the Cold War, but Pope has taken a side here in exaggerating the 'dystopian horrors' of Communism, while giving the West, especially America, pretty much a free pass. This is a game about immigration, but Pope, a citizen of a country with one of the most brutally hellish immigration processes in human history, thought the best vehicle for this would be a long-gone regime with no relevance on the global stage.

It is telling that Pope's inspiration for the game came from his direct experiences with travel from the US to Asia and back again. From Wikipedia:

"From his travels in Asia and some return trips to the United States, he became interested in the work of immigration and passport inspectors: "They have a specific thing they're doing and they're just doing it over and over again."[8] He recognized the passport checking experience, which he considered "tense", could be made into a fun game.[4][6]"

What led Pope, a white man, to immediately think of Communism when he experienced the hellish ordeal of American Capitalism?

Pope has said that he intentionally avoided references to real world Communist nations for "narrative freedom" in a game that proudly declares "Experience the Communist state of Arstotzka" on its product description page. Also from Wikipedia:

"Pope also based aspects of the border crossing for Arstotzka and its neighbors on the Berlin Wall and issues between East and West Germany, stating he was "naturally attracted to Orwellian communist bureaucracy".[11] He made sure to avoid including any specific references to these inspirations, such as avoiding the word "comrade" in both the English and translated versions, as it would directly allude to a Soviet Russia implication.[9] Using a fictional country gave Pope more freedom in the narrative, not having to base events in the game on any real-world politics and avoiding preconceived assumptions.[10]"

And yet, the end result is exactly that, and somehow even worse. By removing history and specificity, Pope has given himself license to strawman Communism however way he wants. And if someone smart enough calls him out, he can very slyly go "Actually, none of these countries exist, bro ;)."

Pope wants it both ways: he's using real world propaganda in a 'fictionalized' way. But the ghost of Mccarthyism has made Red Peril omnipresent. The player, through Capitalist media and education, is conditioned enough to put the pieces together. When they play Papers, Please, they're thinking of the Soviet Union, they're thinking of China, they're thinking of Venezuela or whatever other State Capitalist country that has been coded Blood Red Commie.

His latest game Unsolicited seems to be an 'anti-capitalist' mea culpa of sorts, focusing instead on...writing emails and junk mail? To Pope, the horrors of Communism/socialism are mass genocide, long lines of immigrants being denied their own freedom, and a ruthless black-hearted government hellbent on using the blood of its own citizens to fuel the war machine.

The horror of Capitalism is spam mail.

Much like Ken Levine and the Bioshock team, Pope's ideal future is neither late-stage capitalism nor communism, but a make-believe in-between. Papers, Please is a damning demonstration of the liberal-fascism compromise that isn't concerned with the history of Capitalist violence. Pope plays very irresponsibly hard and fast with real world anti-leftist politics, which has very real world implications.

After a few years of playing, I think I've figured out the optimal way to play this game.

Step 1: Create a new account called "ONLYNOVA"

Step 2: Get to Ranked play as fast as possible

Step 3: Insta-lock Nova.

Step 4: Pick the worst Nova build and spend the entire game trying to kill Li Li/Morales.

Step 5: End the match with two murky kills and 36 deaths.

Step 6: Become the village idiot everyone knows and disconnects when they see.

Step 7: Only ever type one thing in chat and only when the match is over: "GG only have two arms can't carry this much garbage."

Step 8: Retire a proud and successful Nova main after being mass reported and permanently banned.