One restless night, "the unnamed" - enjoying a cigarette in the courtyard of residential building - heard an outcry... then a fascist crow spoke to them.

An Outcry is a RPGMaker game with multiple endings, where your inactions have consequences. Locking themselves out of their apartment and with no means to quench their nicotine addiction, "the unnamed" ventures through the residential building, asking for a lighter and a smoke. All while experiencing "the outcry" - a swarm of crows who seek to eradicate anyone that doesn't share their "terrific birdness". "The unnamed" is the emotional wreck of a protagonist we are playing. Coming off a terrible and traumatizing relationship, the agender individual must also struggle with nigh poverty, struggling to stay afloat and find a job in the "bustling and flourishing" city of Vienna. To top it all off, they also have to deal with being misgendered to straight up antagonized by their neighbors. Only Anne, a transgender woman and friend of "the unnamed" (and literal girlboss, slay 💅), acts as a beacon of hope and comfort for these dire times.

Basically, you wander the corridors, courtyard and apartments of this tenant building with the usual dialogue choices, combat encounters and branching storylines you tend to find in a decent RPGMaker game. The scope and exploration is kept fairly tight and lean, allowing the small cast of the game to flesh out and get explored quite nicely throughout its short playtime. I really enjoyed the way how the player can choose inactions/ignoring presented options without explicitly telling them. Narratively, the game wants you (the player) to take a stance and act against the literal fascist storm happening in front of you and ohh boy will it condemn you for trying to be a fence-sitter (good).

In it's setting and backdrop, the game doesn't shy away to draw a familiar and on-the-nose picture of Vienna: The run-down Altbau residential buildings (with generous room height and that's pretty much it), housing a melting pot of people, all right in front of the ever-so-busy Vienna city belt, where tons of election ads are plastered throughout the boulevard, imploring you to vote for the next dip-shit conservative fucker from the ÖVP or the FPÖ to join the parliament, while the milieu can only best be described as modern-day depression (aka, the U6-line). This is what basically drew me in, cuz' it's rare to see a game set in my country, let alone in my city and wow the vibes are correct.

In short: It's a good game, I encourage everyone to play it. The game has 5 endings, all results of the actions you take against the existential doom you're facing. Coupled with the dazzling art direction, really strong presentation and execution, this game is on all-fronts (politically, narratively, artistically) a banger.

Punch Nazis, Don't be a centrist, Trans rights!

Reviewed on Jul 09, 2022


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