A mechanically hollow on-rails comedy game with a rather milquetoast anti-capitalist message wrapped around it. A by-product of the Screenshot Saturday Syndrome and it shows - there is so much wasted potential in it's No-ism mechanic and making it more engaging to the player, but instead it really just boils down to pressing a button and adding a bit of flare here and there. It's infuriating to see how much of the "game" inside here is so undercooked and surface-level, yet everything around has so much production, effort and polish put into it. Cute character customization, Multi-language "No" support (that persists in all of it's UI), FULLY VOICE ACTED (though that german-english v/o is breaking my heart to hear please stop) and excellent presentation all cannot carry the burden of a hollow core.

As eye-catching as this title may be, the game feels a bit like a poor new-age impression of John George Jones Games (Definitely recommend a read there, interesting insight into his works). "Go to Hell" felt like it had this petty hatred to the player that it kept through as you pushed through literal hell, while "Fucker Gamer Scum Get Stabbed" is explicitly made to feel juvenile and amateurish to the extend that I think this was intended to feel like it was made by a 14-year-old angsty boy. Which is fine, I guess.

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!

https://gmtk.itch.io/platformer-toolkit
I really recommend everyone, who enjoys game design I suppose, to play this 10-15 minute long game. This is a brilliant piece of gamified education. A playful peek behind the design curtains and efforts of designing a 2D platformer character, without diving too deep into the technical merits of one.

I know people have "varying opinions" on Mark Brown and GMTK, but I definitely am happy to see him manage to use the knowledge gained from his Developing Series and turn it into something educational and really exciting like this!

Y'all remember when games came with actual manuals? Like these quirky little booklets, filled with handy tips, tutorials, lore enrichments and endearing artworks? Sure, as time went on and game's hardware evolved, it made a lot more sense to embed the tutorials, lore and other fun factoids straight into the game. But with it, the manual slowly shifted and morphed into an advert pamphlet, begging you to join some online programs or subscription services.
I say all this cuz' playing The Legend of Zelda made me remember the importance of manuals and how it plays an integral part in the Legend of Zelda.

Which is why I advice any person who wants to play this game to ATLEAST play it with the manual. Me, being the clueless smooth brain out here, decided to just raw-dog the game at the beginning without anything. Just me and the stupid-ass-no-damage-making-"It's dangerous to go alone, take this"-wooden-ass-sword, aimlessly wandering around the map just getting demolished by the over-world's mob of death. The manual at least gave me a general outline on where to go and what to do, but you'll only get so far with it. Good luck finding the entrance to some dungeon on the left side of one specific rock, cuz' yes that's very obvious and not obtuse at all. And if you even manage to get into said dungeon, prepare to fend off so many god damn enemies that the NES can't handle it.

Obtuseness and janky combat aside, the childlike wonders of yesterdays injected into this game makes me reminiscent of days when I would just run around the local hills and forests of my area, with a stick in hand that served as the amplifier of my fantasy situations that my imagination was concocting at the spur of the moment...

...Man I wanna be small with stick again.