A beautifully haunting mess of format, absolutely devastating and personal, but not particularly logical nor linear. An amalgamation of seemingly menial logs, turned into fundamental terror all encapsulated by a odd, alien foray into a mass of taboo and haunted data.

I'd recommend playing this game here: https://laingame.net/ with both the simplified and TSX versions being fantastic though the Simplified being definitely the most cohesive as you can tackle it at your own pace and rewind/skip at your own leisure without the hassle of its obtuse node system.

Gameplay elements included (for TSX), it's a purposefully clunky mess of slow menu choices as you slowly go from log to log, unlocking others, and watching a screen of data move over and over (with chances of things appearing if idle). Overall, not fantastic but serves its purpose. Ultimately outdated.

What makes this media piece so memorable as a "game" is its experience, even in the two modern ways you can play; it's still squeamish and utterly overloading. Not many other games have near the amount of encapsulated phobias and latent trauma that this game handles so well. It's subtle, arguably slow, personal, and painful.

Reviewed on Nov 13, 2022


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