yakuza 7

diaries of a spaceport janitor

Disco Elysium?

Oh and Boreal Tenebrae

boreal tenebrae looks sick! gonna check out this and diaries of a spaceport janitor, this list was secretly a way to get people to recommend me games with a vibe i'm into heheheheheheh

mother 3 :]

oh also very much No More Heroes

Shadow of Memories
also not on BL yet but Sticky Zeitgeist def fits the brief

It's not out yet but I just thought I'd put Norco on your radar if it's not already.

Does Mother 3 really count for this? I feel like it certainly has elements of it, but I don't know if it's enough of a focus. (Also, how the hell does Majora's Mask fit...?)

being as it is a game about being trapped in a town and its surrounding environs as the same days repeat one after another, all the while an inescapable crushing feeling of existential ennui looms overhead leads me to argue that Majora's Mask is one of the best fitting games here

- what i've heard of the friends of ringo ishikawa suggests it probably belongs in here as well
- beeswing

Idk if this is a widely known term, I heard it from the Feminist Frequency podcast, but I feel like there's definitely some left-reading going on here. That is to say interpreting leftist politics into something that wasn't made with that intent. That being said, it's your list so if you want to left-read something on here that's a-okay.

@FrozenRoy I think mother 3 fits not just subtextually but also textually, since you experience a town with no knowledge of capitalism transition comically fast into a late capitalist town influenced by militarism, propaganda, and consumerism. Hell even the town theme becomes anxiety incarnate on the track "happy town?". Also adding to this is the fact that the game takes place on a smaller map with a smaller cast of npcs in a single location that you backtrack and speak to over and over as the years go by, which really contrasts with the road trip journey of the previous two games (and the rest of the genre, if we're being honest). I think it fits real good!

@Hot_Anarcocoa Critical theory and lit theory in general I think are all about viewing or interpreting fiction and media through ideological lenses. It's an attitude that assumes fiction to be myth-like or parable-ish in nature and as works that can be understood countless ways subtextually. I think left-reading as a concept is useful when considering authorial intent and the politics of an author, but interpreting and reading text in this manner mostly does away with considering the author's intent and focuses more on ways that it could be read and even on aspects of the text that could've found their way in without the author even knowing.

@dwardman For sure, that's why I said do what you want on your own list. I was moreso responding to FrozenRoy's confusion at a couple titles as well as Woodaba's explanation. It's incredibly easy to left-read just about anything out there because we can just go "look at how capitalism is the cause of all the world's problems" but when people look at a list called "Listless small town late capitalist anxiety core" they're probably going to expect works that deal with capitalism, at least to some extent, explicitly, or in a way that doesn't need to be filtered through personal interpretation. I feel like I'm being too critical now so I must reiterate for the internet that I think this list is fine and those personal interpretations are still obviously valid!

Chulip!

It's not a town, but Venice 2089 is about a company trying to overtake a flooded, nearly dead city and the people who still live there trying to make it work.