Hustle your way out of a loan shark's 97k debt. Charming, neat little game during its early runtime when it was pulling its punches and i could enjoy the little joys of pickpocketing average joes and janes. Then it pulls the most maddening plot twist on you and i nearly gave up. It forced me to directly engage with all the narrative irritations that i had to mentally avoid just to find pleasure and tone from everything else.
In fairness, I really the 'framework' this game resides in - using pickpocketing and eavesdropping as an alternative to learning about NPC's and absorbing the world. I love the way your mc kicks shit when you inspect it, and the different reactions she has. When the art and object-oriented design is doing the talking, it's a good adventure game supported by fun low-key npc interactions! It's just that the core writing murders it. I went into this knowing it was gonna be peak contrived indie-not-really-indie writing, with all the 'talking directly at the camera' moments and unfunny 4th wall breaks - but for MOST of it, the lower-laying characters and vibe were enough to gloss it over. The main stereotyped conflict takes a backseat so you can focus on just living and surviving in the concrete jungle. But then 'the moment' happens - the one it's just SO fucking proud of itself for, - and the plot starts making shit up on the fly to justify whatever new revelations they've thrown at you, and you feel sick. I know I'm not the target demographic for this game, and my opinions are always gonna be filtered through general disdain for this side of indie writing culture, but it really cannot be said enough: A safe comfort food story is always gonna be better than a shallow self-serious ego trip.
And even outside the crux of the main conflict, most writing here is just annoying. When it's not throwing a cringy 'wow, did we just reference the thing you know from the internet??' punchline, it's using the worst possible interpretation of American 'wow, awkwaaaard' conversation pieces. It wants to be an overly-comfy, sterilized story at constant odds with the weight of its conflict. It wants to have its cake and eat it too. And you know? Maybe that's the point I guess?! I do think it's admirable how the game is able to use the contrast between its dramatic plot and the overly commodified interactive areas to replicate that feeling of the plastic bougie. It's a toybox-filtered interpretation of a weighted scenario with consequences that dramatically impact innocent people. Everyone around you is caught up shitting themselves over the small things while your financial stability is hanging on a thread. Again, it's a strong non-spoken narrative design style! But it's not a well-written scenario when I have to listen to the same annoying one-dimensional cast and their trope-by-trope woes. I can't remember ANYONE'S fucking name in this as-is. So overall, why should a decent person give a rat's ass?
Aalso, minor spoilers, but one of the characters that helps you later on in the story is a black-coded (I say 'coded' because everyone has neon-colored skin so you can't accuse them one way or another of being racially selective) woman, and the way she's written in implies she was some huge radicalist in the past, and that past influences her helping you out in the main story. You could kinda parse lesbian from her dialogue and design, or just general feminist. But she's also a cop. and, the relationship between those two character traits is never fucking addressed or contextualized, and it makes the character's involvement in the endgame act (after spending the prior parts being a comedy relief npc) completely forced in at the last moment. Again, what's the point of trying to be so self-serious if you're afraid as hell to get your hands deep in any genuinely touchy subject fields?
The more i think about it, the more this game reminds me of my experience with Going Under - which had the same strengths and problems. There's a cleverness to the interactive components that is constantly being undermined by shallow dialogue. The gameplay mechanics and experience you get out of the world and ludonarrative do infinitely more to serve its satirical messaging than its palatable script can. The people and trinkets that populate this game's runtime do more to invigorate emotions than any of the eye-rolling one-liners and smacktalk can, let alone the predictable tropes and hackish plot twists.
And godDAMN does this game run like shit for a 2D visual novel with tweened sprites. That's what you get when you drop a 10000x20000 PNG into your game as a background map I guess.
Anyway, this game is mid, I should've been more fucking suspicious when I got this from a fucking fanatical bundle of all things
In fairness, I really the 'framework' this game resides in - using pickpocketing and eavesdropping as an alternative to learning about NPC's and absorbing the world. I love the way your mc kicks shit when you inspect it, and the different reactions she has. When the art and object-oriented design is doing the talking, it's a good adventure game supported by fun low-key npc interactions! It's just that the core writing murders it. I went into this knowing it was gonna be peak contrived indie-not-really-indie writing, with all the 'talking directly at the camera' moments and unfunny 4th wall breaks - but for MOST of it, the lower-laying characters and vibe were enough to gloss it over. The main stereotyped conflict takes a backseat so you can focus on just living and surviving in the concrete jungle. But then 'the moment' happens - the one it's just SO fucking proud of itself for, - and the plot starts making shit up on the fly to justify whatever new revelations they've thrown at you, and you feel sick. I know I'm not the target demographic for this game, and my opinions are always gonna be filtered through general disdain for this side of indie writing culture, but it really cannot be said enough: A safe comfort food story is always gonna be better than a shallow self-serious ego trip.
And even outside the crux of the main conflict, most writing here is just annoying. When it's not throwing a cringy 'wow, did we just reference the thing you know from the internet??' punchline, it's using the worst possible interpretation of American 'wow, awkwaaaard' conversation pieces. It wants to be an overly-comfy, sterilized story at constant odds with the weight of its conflict. It wants to have its cake and eat it too. And you know? Maybe that's the point I guess?! I do think it's admirable how the game is able to use the contrast between its dramatic plot and the overly commodified interactive areas to replicate that feeling of the plastic bougie. It's a toybox-filtered interpretation of a weighted scenario with consequences that dramatically impact innocent people. Everyone around you is caught up shitting themselves over the small things while your financial stability is hanging on a thread. Again, it's a strong non-spoken narrative design style! But it's not a well-written scenario when I have to listen to the same annoying one-dimensional cast and their trope-by-trope woes. I can't remember ANYONE'S fucking name in this as-is. So overall, why should a decent person give a rat's ass?
Aalso, minor spoilers, but one of the characters that helps you later on in the story is a black-coded (I say 'coded' because everyone has neon-colored skin so you can't accuse them one way or another of being racially selective) woman, and the way she's written in implies she was some huge radicalist in the past, and that past influences her helping you out in the main story. You could kinda parse lesbian from her dialogue and design, or just general feminist. But she's also a cop. and, the relationship between those two character traits is never fucking addressed or contextualized, and it makes the character's involvement in the endgame act (after spending the prior parts being a comedy relief npc) completely forced in at the last moment. Again, what's the point of trying to be so self-serious if you're afraid as hell to get your hands deep in any genuinely touchy subject fields?
The more i think about it, the more this game reminds me of my experience with Going Under - which had the same strengths and problems. There's a cleverness to the interactive components that is constantly being undermined by shallow dialogue. The gameplay mechanics and experience you get out of the world and ludonarrative do infinitely more to serve its satirical messaging than its palatable script can. The people and trinkets that populate this game's runtime do more to invigorate emotions than any of the eye-rolling one-liners and smacktalk can, let alone the predictable tropes and hackish plot twists.
And godDAMN does this game run like shit for a 2D visual novel with tweened sprites. That's what you get when you drop a 10000x20000 PNG into your game as a background map I guess.
Anyway, this game is mid, I should've been more fucking suspicious when I got this from a fucking fanatical bundle of all things