At once a fiery power fantasy about bringing America to its knees and a cautionary tale about internet fame swallowing its subject whole, Psychocolonials is a fascinating visual novel. It’s kind of impossible to talk about it without talking about its creator Andrew Hussie’s most well-known work, Homestuck, so let’s get into that first. There’s obviously plenty of overlap in narrative voice and art style (and music, courtesy of Homestuck music team member Clark Powell), but even when it comes to its format, Psychocolonials feels more like Homestuck than it does like other VNs; rather than reused sprites and backgrounds punctuated by bespoke CGs, Psychocolonials is entirely composed of unique if rough illustrations (tellingly, they’re even referred to as “panels” at one point) and the occasional animated cutscene (I kept getting thrown off by the lack of a “[S]” preceding each one). And of course, it’s hard not to read parts of the story as allegorical for Hussie’s own experiences as the figure at the center of Homestuck’s passionate fandom—the mental-health-destroying weight of all that attention, the inability to control your following even as you bear responsibility for your influence over it.

Even if you don’t know a thing about Homestuck though, Psychocolonials is a great time. It’s fun watching events rapidly escalate from social media rebrand to geopolitical chaos, the character writing is really sharp, and as fucked up and bleak as it gets at times, it’s also incredibly funny when it wants to be; there’s one gag in particular involving spinning guns that absolutely killed me. The ending goes on longer than it needed to and the pontificating about leftist revolutions at the end felt pretty shallow, but I did enjoy getting called out for trying to save-scum the final choices.