in an episode of gamespot’s audio logs, disco elysium’s lead designer and writer robert kurvitz was asked to discuss ZA/UM’s approach to CRPG design, in which he makes clear the title’s great tabletop roleplaying game influence, contrasts disco elysium against modern CRPGS, and elucidates the rationale behind certain UI decisions the game had made. one of the very first things kurvitz highlights, and what was apparently one of the decisions given primacy in pre-production, was the concept of placing the text box in the righthand side of the screen in contrast to the game’s contemporaries, even outside the CRPG genre, which typically slot the text boxes in the lower middle of the screen. the benefits to this alternative organization seem immediately obvious as kurvitz spells them out: increased screen real estate, far more interesting visual composition, and a modality which seemed to emulate the engrained habits of run-of-the-mill technology. peer at disco elysium’s textbox and your mind may not immediately pick up on the contours of its design, but your subconscious will instinctively understand it relates to the modern desktop experience. it innately resembles the windows toolbar, where the clock and calendar is – the screen is visually ‘weighted’ to the right, where the center of gravity is, and it reflects the placement of the players right hand on the keyboard.

the deceptive genius of this UI design is that it wasn’t enough to simply reflect a desktop, which disco elysium’s target demographic was instinctually bound to – ZA/UM wanted to snuff out any and all competitors. that means taking inspiration from unlikely sources, one of which was social media. this helps explain why the prose of disco elysium is so confrontational, sharp, abrasive, sensational; it explains why the text-box was designed to reflect an addictive scrolling experience ala twitter; and it builds upon centuries of entrenched human behaviour in its column design, which may inadvertently reflect a phone but also reflects the structure of a newspaper article. in an era where developers have now fully committed themselves towards eradicating loading screens in a veiled effort to curb the impoverished, stimulation-craving instincts of their player bases (a major hardware decision which is replete with as many pros as cons), ZA/UM subtly adapted the topography of phones that so many players were already used to for their own purposes.

kurvitz’s final salvo is illuminating. every element of this design is an amendment which reflects a critical problem in the games marketability, that disco elysium, judging by its phenomenal success, ameliorated fully: how do you sell a modern CRPG that is simultaneously defined by its lack of combat and by its verbosity? well, it’s simple. everyone says they don’t like reading and claims they don’t want to read – but reading is all we do on social media, in private messages, in news articles. we take it for granted. player retention was a big problem for ZA/UM, so the designers intelligently made what seems like a very easy observation, but then engineered everything about the game’s flow in order to manufacture a state that hopefully will allow players to immerse themselves and to truly salivate over every last written word the game has to offer.

so, reading is something we do every day. no-brainer. but the same exists for writing. both exist in a connected equilibrium. just as we read every day, we write just about every day – whether we realize it or not. some research even suggests that where the mind is allowed to wander while reading, neurons will roar to life and the brain will mimic and simulate the act of pen flowing on paper, gliding betwixt margins with grace and individualized efficacy.

it would be more accurate, however, to make the claim that we’re typing every day.

are typing and writing of the same scholarship? could one make the claim that writing is therefore impoverished by the usurpation of typing – the same way kurvitz attributed to his audience a kind of destitution of readership? reflecting on this opens the floodgates of a perennial chirographic concern. the digital epoch has not responded with kindness to the eloquence of handwriting. surveys often suggest swathes of people go more than half a year without handwriting, and countries that are at the forefront of educational theory like finland suggest that it may no longer bear the same relevance on day-to-day activities as it once used to. the practice is fading, its dominance curtailed by the dissemination of keyboarding. this is in spite of a marked increase in literature suggesting the many benefits of handwriting. among the myriad cognitive benefits there are particularly noteworthy virtues such as attention sustenance, increased capacity for memory, improved self-regulation, and the ability to plan ahead. children who learn to write by hand are known to activate adult-like pathways in their minds which aid in facilitation of improved memory.

and for many, handwriting is an exercise in aesthetic pleasures, a distinct mark of individuality, and a reiteration of a practice undertaken by even their ancestry that innately links mind and soul, body and space, the sensate and the insensate, an unwitting cooperation between all the ontological elements of lived experience that inform existence and being, a unification of self and language. there is the concern that the abstractions of writing, that once in the past were nothing more than pictographs painstakingly carved into slabs and yet was still a decidedly intellectual, tactile, expressive, and intimate practice, are lost in the mechanical era and the complex beauty of it has vanished. many continue to remind and advocate for the pursuance of ‘bilingual writing’ – education that fosters children who can handwrite as well as they type and thus don’t fail to attend to their expanding minds. on a more anecdotal level, all of this rings as true – too often does the pursuit of typing education boil it all down to a callous, impersonal drudgery that serves only to prepare children for the rampant dehumanization inherent to the workforce.

if any of this discourse seems like a relatively modern concern, don’t worry – it isn’t. let me take a quick step back. walter j. ong indicated that our history in knowledge storage can be divided into two phases: the oral-to-literate stage and the chirographic-to-print stage. in the former stage, culture began to transition into a society that relied more and more on the written word and began to leave oral tradition behind – as far back as 3500 BC, sumerians sought to preserve their history by capturing and transcribing oration. in the latter stage, the individual handwritten texts began to be mechanically produced and widely disseminated by means of the printing press. this evolution of writing technology invariably altered the way humanity came to grips with their own awareness and how this changed the epistemology of the time. in ong’s view, it was this shift from the oral tradition to a society of literacy that broke apart the old ways of tribal unity, as fostering literacy operated in tandem with greater levels of individuality. the chirographic-to-print stage of the 1500’s only further reinforced this.

it is here where i must remind that typing is the apotheosis of these differing stages of written tradition, and one that has remained in the public consciousness since the late 1800s – far from a modern invention. the first commercial typewriters were made available in 1874, and the first stenograph was invented in 1879. the history of typing predates the personal computer. but nevertheless it is the fixed rigidity of typing – when taken from its latent form and iterated upon, recontextualized in the digital epoch as an apparatus to be used with the computer – that ong sees as a synthesis of the oral and the literate. it’s a kind of folding together of space and time, one of the arguments of this viewpoint being the idea that the premise of instantaneity central to typing on a computer transforms printed word into something more akin to oration and therefore reunites our own epoch with the era of oral tradition as a result of totally reconfigured relationships between all the constituent elements of the past two stages: the writer, the text, the audience, the interfacing, the medium.

others are not so kind – any technological evolution brings trade-off, and some philosophers note that history is simply an unfolding narrative of intangible gains and omitted losses. of the many philosophers to grapple with the heady question of how the modalities of writing inform existence, heidegger is an authoritative voice and spoke often of the cultural loss typing imprinted on society. it is his view, and that of his supporters, that typing represents something perverse and impersonal, something amputational in logic. the body is diminished and conveyance is thus diminished too; the essential realm of word and hand is shattered, depriving the person of dignity and irreversibly altering our relationship with language and distances ourselves from it, changing something from beautifully abstract transmission to simple transposition. certainly, this view seems almost supported by modern empirical studies that uncannily echo some of these concerns!

and yet, type dreams seems to believe otherwise, and treats all text within as something to be given primacy, something that is profound and bold and transcendent. richard hofmeier’s second developmental outing is an anachronism-laden victorian-set game about typing. so committed to typing it is that everything about interfacing with the game involves the use of keys rather than the mouse, removing yet again any semblance of a bodily gesture that might conflate modern typing with traditional handwriting. you enter a username and password to begin the typist’s journey, and from there depressions of the spacebar cycle through menus, tapping the enter key confirms, hitting the escape key…escapes, and the very act of typing itself provides shortcuts with which to access menus.

as you play type dreams, you get a greater sense of where its priorities lie, and it’s something coincidentally shared with tetris effect, another game i recently played and appreciated: the answer is transcendence. actually, it would be far more accurate to say that what type dreams pursues is something close to ong’s vision of modern typing: complete synchronicity across boundaries of space and time. and it does so by providing an utterly unique audiovisual experience that goes far beyond the simple educational value of a typing game. in type dreams you find a wealth of categories of typing exercises: rote exercises, poetry, classical literature, even smut and songs/lyrics. and in each ‘stage’, reconfigured as a kind of desperate arcade scenario, the player, alongside their chosen imitation avatar, competes with only themselves for faster and faster words-per-minutes, for fewer errors, for unapproachable streaks of correctly placed letters. at the onset of the game you must choose between digital keyboard and typewriter and i must wholly recommend the typewriter – passages are smartly fragmented by the continual rhythm of the player sliding their fingers across function keys f1-f12 to emulate the carriage of a typewriter, a sensory experience unlike anything else that inadvertently calls to mind musicality and instrumentation, suggesting that rather than representing a kind of blasphemous automatism typing may well be a new kind of instrument. a tidbit that is particularly noteworthy and relevant to my argument: typing activates an area in your brain that is equivalent to what drumming activates in your brain.

and it is this kind of ‘music’ and kinaesthetic experience that forms the basis of what type dreams achieves so excellently, as so few games do, interrogating ideas that similarly, so few games do. in type dreams the keyboard is an instrument, a weapon, a guide, an anachronism, a representation of shared consciousness, reflecting an understanding of the infinite forms of text as well. type out these chords of text via an angry letter to a newspaper and listen to the game channeling these frustrations in the forms of aggressive grunts with each letter misspelled or each error in keystroke; explore the textual melodies of some poetry and watch as the visuals accompanying your office change, freeing the mind and allowing poet and player and avatar to be intimately linked like nothing else; type out an account of keyboard rebellion and understand that the drudgery linked between workforce and the word processor can be subverted by the daring, that there is more to text than copying or correspondence; be transported across space and time to verbose scrawlings on prison walls, to the history of stenography, to socrates on trial. it’s a thrillingly evocative experience that lessens the temporal and spatial boundaries of history and literature and that is characterized by efficiency and dexterity in a way that recalls music, so it helps that the music accompanying each stage is really solid – the bimanual and repetitive nature of typing necessitates an audiovisual layer to allow the mind to coalesce with text and wander freely.

all of this serves to strongly re-evaluate typing in the modern era and to rebut most of the concerns of heidegger with new presumptions on what it even means to type, and it allows the self to feel the keyboard as something other than a symbol of workplace productivity. it filters in expression and individuality back into typist methodology, which may explain why there is no mechanical difference between the two typewriters on offer – only an aesthetic one. you begin to pick up on the subtleties of typing’s topography, on how hands moving across keys can influence emotion and thought, on how it serves as an appropriate contrast to the unimanual nature of handwriting. handwriting allows for reflection, for contemplation, but what type dreams suggests is that typing can become a tool for embodiment. this makes sense given the increased tempo that contrasts the two modes of writing, but it’s yet another point in the game’s favour- can you still feel the significance of the game’s text in spite of that breakneck pace, or has it slipped through the permeating fog of synchronicity? type dreams works its ass off to have your answer be a resounding yes. yes, in spite of the kaleidoscopic nature of digital text, in spite of its immaterial and infinite nature, in spite of the concern for the lessened significance of text and how it may erode at our senses and reduce our attention into fragments, transcendence can still occur. meaning can still be felt. text hasn’t necessarily been impoverished – not when it’s so lived-in.

that isn’t to say the game is perfect. in fact, the game is laughably imperfect, probably the most laughably imperfect game i've given such a high rating. it’s buggy, there are some UI issues and several technical dilemmas, and the greatest kicker of all: it’s unfinished. as i tried to unlock more of the game’s levels in proto-drakengardian fashion i came to realize there was only so much available, that the game was in an adolescent state and might never see completion. yet so much of the game contains the seeds of what is such an unexpectedly ideal game for me that i cannot help but give it such high accolades – the immensity of the experience is deserving of far more attention and far more interrogation from far smarter figures than i.

richard hofmeier is a complex figure for the games media to reckon with. after the smash hit success of cart life in indie games circles, he vanished from the public eye and released cart life in open source format, citing its imperfection as a barrier to its permissibility as a for-profit release. type dreams was his second major outing, released on itch.io in an incomplete state, originally at a price so that hofmeier could make ends meet. by his own admission, he disliked the fact that he had to do so, but he had been working away at this and several other projects over the course of several years, so he had to release at least something to get past his perfectionist tendency. since then the game has received several inconsistent updates before the pipeline of developer communication shut off entirely without warning in november of last year. currently, the game is listed as cancelled on itch.io. the version of the game you can download, uploaded 81 days ago, is listed as td_final.zip. when you try to click on the game’s “story” mode (one might assume the game’s main campaign would have been papers, please-esque; reliance on electricity was a drawback for the digital keyboard made apparent to the player when they are prompted to choose their instrument of choice), you are greeted with the following message:

“These stories were boring. Consider making up new ones; new stories about [PLAYER NAME] might be worth writing.”

as it stands, i have no way of knowing if the sentiment of this message and the title’s abrupt and unquestioned ‘cancellation’ are related. but in my heart of hearts, i hope hofmeier returns to this project. there’s nothing else like it.

https://hofmeier.itch.io/type-dreams

ALRIGHT, blanket announcement: on top of the game being available on the internet archive, as was wisely pointed out by DJSCheddar, MrPixelton was kind enough to get a mega link up and running for type dreams using their copy of the game since my laptop was indisposed. so shouts out to you guys, you both rock, and all of it helps to keep this game preserved and alive. i think the internet archive solution will be the public one and ill keep the mega link open for private channels/as a backup. thanks everyone for your efforts! whenever hofmeier returns to the public eye please try to financially support him, we need this kind of creativity in the medium

be sure to reach out if you'd like the mega link!

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (5th Aug. – 11th Sep., 2023).

The origins of The Incredible Machine are shrouded in a degree of uncertainty, as interviews with its creators, Jeff Tunnell and Kevin Ryan, are difficult to trust. An article by Jimmy Mayer led to a discussion that found an obvious aesthetic similarity between The Incredible Machine and an earlier game, Creative Contraptions (1985) [1]. Although the technical limitations of the latter make it rather rudimentary, The Incredible Machine is certainly inspired by it, both in its colour palette and in some of the mechanisms used. Shamefully, this inspiration was never mentioned by Tunnell or Ryan, who were perhaps too concerned with basking in the laurels of their creation or asserting their fame and legitimacy. Nevertheless, the title remains impressive, with its then-sophisticated physics engine providing a naturally creative experience.

While comedies of the 1980s and 1990s often featured Rube Goldberg's machines for their absurdly complex structure, The Incredible Machine uses the concept to test causal reasoning – as in Creative Contraptions – and to present some axioms of Newtonian physics. The various levels gradually introduce the different objects of the game, without ever forcing the player's hand, but rather letting them experiment. The player is free to experiment and understand, by running the simulation several times and adjusting the various components, how the different mechanisms can be triggered, the role of gravity, the parity of the gears and other ideas. This trial and error contributes to a childlike sense of wonder that works remarkably well. In one stage, the player has to undo a pattern of ropes: the exercise is not particularly difficult, but there is something hypnotic about watching the rope weave realistically through the air, following wide interlaced loops. While it is possible to modify gravity or ambient pressure, The Incredible Machine sometimes strays from real physics to facilitate certain puzzles: the trampolines strangely assume that an object gains energy after a bounce, and the seesaws hardly respect Newton's third law.

However, these discrepancies could be understood as a deliberate attempt to widen the range of possibilities. Some levels imply a natural solution using all the tools in your inventory, while others are much more open. The player can use or ignore the mechanisms already placed on the board: solving a puzzle in an extremely minimalist way, taking advantage of the physics engine and carefully thought-out bounces, is not uncommon, as the model is always deterministic. This plasticity is echoed in the Freeform mode, where imagination is the only boundary: impressive – if unrealistic – perpetual motion can be created among other complex contraptions. This philosophy of wonder, creativity and experimentation was later reflected in Zachtronics' productions, which are also concerned with this didactic aspect. Anecdotally, some of the tracks of Shenzhen I/O (2016) sound surprisingly like The Incredible Machine's 'Euro'. There is something empowering about a title that gives the player all the latitude they need to feel in control of their instruments and their environment. And despite some ergonomic shortcomings, The Incredible Machine still manages to capture that magical feeling.

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[1] On the influences of Mouse Trap (1963) and the discussion surrounding the origins of the game, see Jimmy Maher, 'The Incredible Machine', on The Digital Antiquarian, 8th June 2018, consulted on 11th September 2023.

     'My own experience duplicated the fictional one: I'd burned out – or perhaps drowned – any lingering pretentions to savage paradises and island idylls. I was left with the safety net of an English home. Now, like Crusoe, I would go back, and like him, I would wonder how long it might last.'
     – Kevin Rushby, Hunting Pirate Heaven, 2001.

Played with BertKnot, through the PC collection.

In the summer of 1698, the House of Commons passed a charter establishing a consortium of merchants as a new East India Company, alongside the old one founded in 1600. The charter stated in particular that 'the Company [shall] to give security to bring to England all their goods, except in certain cases specified in the Act' [1]. One of the consequences of this restriction on the destination of goods was the loss of profitability for slave vessels, since it was the very low price of slaves in Madagascar that made the voyage from the island to North America profitable. The disappearance of this particular trade had a direct impact on the pirates of the Indian Ocean, who were immediately cut off from the British Atlantic. In the two decades following the charter of 1698, many pirates opted to leave for the Caribbean or to return to civilian life thanks to the wealth they had accumulated [2]. The last decades of the Golden Age of piracy were therefore not as dramatic as popular culture usually suggests.

     Echoes from the Pirate Coast

Some legends have been fostered by ancient documents: A General History of the Pyrates (1724) by a supposed Captain Charles Johnson has fuelled fiction, including Walter Scott's The Pirate (1821) and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1881). In particular, the mention of Libertalia off the coast of Madagascar, a pirate colony founded by James Misson and a veritable proto-anarchist utopia, has captured the imagination for centuries. In Hunting Pirate Heaven (2001), a romantic and deliberately vainglorious voyage, Kevin Rushby sets off from Deptford Creek for the east coast of Africa in search of these fantasised ruins, accompanied by colourful companions. Rushby's humour and his interactions with the various characters subtly overshadow the narrator's intelligence: the faux-naivety is a facade, for he knows full well that Libertalia does not exist. Rushby stages his disappointment as if to exorcise an orientalistic fascination. Libertalia was surely never more than an invented counterpoint to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), which expressed a visceral antipathy to piracy insofar as it only undermined the absolute authority of the legitimate sovereign's continental power [3].

Concluding Nathan Drake's adventures after his return to a quieter life with Elena, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End evokes similar themes. The protagonist is reminiscent of Rushby in many ways: he is an accomplished adventurer with a natural wit, set on the trail of legendary pirates almost against his will, but unknowingly enjoying the rush of adventure. After the supernatural confrontations of previous titles, Uncharted 4 opts for a more human perspective, tying its progression to Nathan's reunion with his brother. The title often manages to strike a good balance regarding the protagonist's inner conflict, but suffers from some rather awkward narrative missteps. While certain sequences are effective because of their contrast, surprising the player when they are caught up in the frenetic action that characterises the series, some ideas remain particularly under-exploited. Elena and Nadine may be presented as strong women, but they are relegated to supporting roles.

     Nathan Drake's illusory precautions

Similarly, given the game's primary desire to be a human drama, the portrayals of Sam and Rafe lack texture, with the latter especially bereft of subtlety: by establishing him as a symbol of despicable toxic masculinity, Uncharted 4 artificially absolves the other male characters of their harmful behaviour. The last third of the game is particularly unfortunate, offering an all-too-convenient way out for the various conflicts and frictions between the main characters. And while the title begins with a Nathan who has lost some of his agility and daring in his retirement years – the museum infiltration sequence works well – Uncharted 4 is too quickly overtaken by the ghosts of his heritage, and culminates in some explosive gunplay and swashbuckling, a far cry from the restraint of the hero at the outset.

The game introduces stealth sequences during certain battles, which become almost mandatory on the highest difficulties due to the sheer number of enemies. However, Uncharted 4 offers no tools to facilitate this approach. Nathan automatically hides in the tall grass, and it is impossible to distract enemies or shoot them from a distance with a silencer. The player is forced into a rather uncomfortable waiting position, unable to shoot at highly exposed targets. Similarly, the different zones do not allow for very creative play, as the actual spaces are so narrow. In the later chapters, many of the gunfights take place in corridors, effectively locking the player into a brutal frontal engagement. Worse still, some levels encourage the player to remain static, creating bottlenecks to avoid being caught in a pincer trap: by trying too hard to subvert its basic formula, Uncharted 4 ends up falling back on the same clichés – not necessarily unpleasant, but out of touch.

     Forgotten contemplation and dreams of tranquillity

These design choices can be seen as a continuation of those made in The Last of Us (2013), introducing a pseudo-organicity to exploration and progression. The game constantly attempts to offer multiple paths in outdoor areas, but fails to live up to its ambitions. Climbing sequences are as linear as ever, and the player is merely invited to zigzag between rocks and use the grappling hook to follow a well-defined path. Even the driving sections follow this pattern. Although Uncharted 4 features some stunning landscapes, it struggles to really showcase their majesty, with so much focus on finding the path that will get the player closer to their goal. The title always divides its large chapters into several micro-zones that the player can explore – to find a page of a journal or steal an artefact – but they are so enclosed that finding the way out always feels unnatural.

Progress is also constantly interrupted by obstacles that require the player to fiddle with the game's physics, be it by moving crates, using the grappling hook, driving the car or several at the same time. These activities, designed to simulate the realism of exploration, distract from contemplation, given that the title only lasts around fifteen hours. Instead of basking in the scenery and enjoying the poetry of the moment – a single sequence with Elena offers such contemplation – the title is constantly noisy. Uncharted 4 still creates an effective and entertaining chemistry between its characters, but at the cost of a clumsy demystification of its atmosphere. Magadascar, the high point of the journey, is never highlighted. A country with a largely oral tradition, it is presented only from a tourist perspective, with its market, carts and baobabs – ultimately no more than a postcard.

To some extent, Uncharted 4 is the antithesis of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002). Both games use the image of piracy to describe freedom, but they relate to the world in entirely different ways. The Wind Waker is an introspection on boundless seas and a pledge for a new society where empathy must prevail over the arrogance and imperialism of previous generations. Link's adventure is a pretext for discovering the world beyond the skies of Outset Island and learning about the societies and customs of Windfall and Dragon Roost Island. Uncharted 4 is a selfish tale, centred on the Drakes, for whom the destruction of the world is of little consequence. The various pirates mentioned serve only as warnings to the two brothers and have little to say about a better world. The utopia of Libertalia is merely an ironic mirage with no real depth or value, unlike in Hunting Pirate Heaven, where it allowed Rushby to discover other cultures and realise his own orientalism. Uncharted 4 fully embraces it. The game is never unpleasant, though, and it is easy to get caught up in the drama of the narrative, the fairly well-paced progression and the sweetness of the ending; yet the overall experience is forgettable, so riddled is it with concessions.

__________
[1] 'The Charter of the 'New' East India Company, 5 September, 1698', in Peter J. Marshall (ed.), Problems of Empire: Britain and India (1757-1813), George Allen and Unwin, London, 1968, p. 194.
[2] More specifically, piracy continued in the Indian Ocean, but against British ships. The British government offered amnesties to curb the phenomenon, but the pirates were particularly suspicious of these proposals and preferred other options. Christopher Condent preferred the French offer to colonise Bourbon Island, while Richard Taylor found refuge in Portobelo after negotiating his amnesty directly with the local Spanish governor. In other words, for them piracy was a transitional venture, designed to accumulate wealth before finding a comfortable place in civil society. On the topic, see Ryan Holroyd, 'Whatever happened to those villains of the Indian seas? The happy retirement of the Madagascar pirates (1698-1721)', in International Journal of Maritime History, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 752-770.
[3] Dominique Weber, 'Le pirate et le partisan : lecture critique d'une thèse de Carl Schmitt', in Esprit, no. 7, pp. 124-134.

     Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (29th Aug. – 4th Sep., 2023).

The 1990s marked a transition for the Japanese arcade market, as the historical business model was no longer viable. Technological developments by the various home console manufacturers brought fierce competition to the arcade industry, while the success of medal machines and other purikura – state-of-the-art photo booths popular with teenage girls as part of the kawaī culture – pushed the various arcades and shopping malls to target teenage and family audiences, more lucrative demographics [1]. While games such as Virtua Fighter (1993) and beatmania (1997) set trends in the arcade's last golden years that the various publishers tried to capitalise on, SNK failed to achieve structural success with its various titles, which all too quickly went out of fashion. Cool Cool Toon appeared to be one of the last attempts to stave off the bankruptcy looming after the failure of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 and Neo Geo World, combining rhythm gameplay, motion capture and a colourful aesthetic for the Dreamcast.

The Story mode places the player in the role of Amp or Spica, whose campaigns feature exclusive tracks. Cool Cool Toon aims to create a highly tactile relationship between the player and the game, making full use of the Dreamcast's joystick. Moving it to reach the different notes mimics the protagonist's dance steps. The player is constantly invited to indulge in this fantasy, just as the character immerses themselves in a kawaī world. The soundtrack contributes to this impression with its slightly dated quality: the title alternates between sweet and burlesque tracks, city-pop, disco and funk flourishes [2]. Cool Cool Toon combines, with a certain humour and a touch of melancholy, the spectacle of the boy bands and dance divas of the 1990s [3] with some musical genres that were losing ground among young people. As a swan song, Cool Cool Toon tries to conjure up an unexpected success with the home console audience, but seems to be haunted by the ghost of the past and suffers from a lack of legibility – especially during the complex sequences with sliders and half-tilts – despite some good ideas, such as modulating the difficulty during a song.

Yet there is something particularly touching about the title, which shines with sincerity through the childish speech and naive attitude of the characters. More than a story for chūnibyō, the game expresses the frustrations of a lost generation: Amp and Spica transcend class hierarchies through their talent at flitzing, while 1990s Japan is marked by growing inequalities between the winners and losers of modernisation. Contrary to the image of an atypical niche game that still persists in the West, Cool Cool Toon had positioned itself as a synthesis of Japanese popular culture at the turn of the century, without the expected success – in line with previous attempts such as Koudelka (1999) and Athena: Awakening from the Ordinary Life (1999). Perhaps Cool Cool Toon failed because it was released on the Dreamcast, because it was connected to the Neo Geo Pocket, or because it was too difficult for the average player. Anecdotally, the game's concept has been carried over into The Rhythm of Fighters (2014), although simplified by touch controls. It is difficult not to see Cool Cool Toon today against the backdrop of its context; perhaps it is this singular magic, so wistful despite its sugary colours, that makes it such a delightful game.

__________
[1] Other factors explain the market shift. On the console manufacturers' side, technological progress and the new distribution structure – with the major studios abandoning the toy distributors and setting up their own systems – meant that costs could be cut. For the arcade, the 1984 extension of the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act (Fūzoku eigyō torishimari hō) to include game centres, the bursting of the economic bubble, which multiplied the costs of electricity, rents and machine maintenance, meant that the risks of arcade-type services were no longer sustainable when safer alternatives were available. In general, the number of game centres has declined since the mid-1990s and their average size has increased, as the lucrative medal and prize machines take up too much space for small venues. On this topic, see Yuhsuke Koyama, History of the Japanese Video Game Industry, Springer, Singapore, 2023 [2016, 2020], pp. 109-135.
[2] It is worth noting that one of the only tracks that openly embraces a more modern feel is 'Grown Up World'.
[3] The choreography and set design of Cool Cool Toon bear a striking resemblance to the kōhai groups of Johnny's jimusho (KinKi Kids) or the idols promoted by Tetsuya Komuro (Namie Amuro). The game is also reminiscent of the very 'visual' bands and performances of the late 1990s, such as Yūwaku (1998) by GLAY. On this topic, see Fabienne Darling-Wolf, 'SMAP, Sex, and Masculinity: Constructing the Perfect Female Fantasy in Japanese Popular Music', in Popular Music and Society, vol. 27, no. 3, 2004, pp. 357-370 and Carolyn S. Stevens, Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity, and Power, Routledge, New York, 2008, pp. 53-58.

I was planning to play through the game 2 more times, once with the Dark Urge Origin and once going the "evil"/absolutist route
But then I saw how much stuff Larian is already announcing to add and idk I am just so fucking tired. Yeah I felt like the ending was a bit lackluster and it's cool that Karlach will be able to get a better ending and all but like.
I would just like to be able to buy a finished game. And then play the game at launch with the knowledge that I'm not missing out on anything by not waiting 5 years until every single patch has dropped. It's so strange to me that there was this huge discussion when this game came out about setting new standards because you can just buy a complete game for 60€ when the game demonstrably wasn't complete.
Of course I like it when things get better over time but I don't have enough time to replay every single game each time it gets a patch so I'd just appreciate it if a game releasing meant it is now as good as it gets. Especially a title that spent 3 years in early access.

What a huge disappointment. Once again I tricked myself into getting excited for a new FF, and once again I am paying the price.
The story is a disaster - "tackling" heavy themes around slavery and abuse without any understanding, hammering a child's concept of "Slavery = bad" into you over and over again, only to then drop this plot completely 2/3rds in, having done nothing interesting with it. In very poor taste.

Talking about poor taste, the women of FFXVI are a mysogynistic disaster. Jill is about as important to the story and scenes as the dog, for the most part, and the female villains are either sexy evil temptresses influencing the great men in charge with their vaginas, or defined by sexual trauma. A low point in the franchise.

The gameplay looks sick, but runs its course shockingly quickly because it barely evolves - Use your abilities on cooldown, then hit square X square X square X square X. This works from hour 1 to hour 40.

Some of the side cast is really good (Dion and Cid), and the games does have some of the undeniably sickest boss fights I have ever played in my life, but it is smoothered by so much tedion (I didnt even get into the horrific main story pacing, or the filler ass side quests), and a story that is unfocused at best and offensive at worst..

     'There was an old Man of the Hague, whose ideas were excessively vague; he built a balloon, to examine the moon, that deluded Old Man of the Hague.'
     – Edward Lear, A Book of Nonsense, 1846.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (22nd Aug. – 28th Aug., 2023).

After his cycles of paintings on family and parties, dedicated to the study of interpersonal relationships, Michael Andrew spent several years developing a very refined meditation on the theme of air. He called this series 'Lights', which consists of a series of landscapes over which a hot air balloon flies. It hovers over the English countryside, over a river, through a city lit by the glow of the night, and so many other places before finally arriving at the sea. Lights VII: A Shadow (1974) is an ecstatic, dizzying work. The composition is divided between the sand, the sea and the sky, while the green shadow of the balloon stretches across the lower part of the canvas. Andrew's use of acrylics renders this landscape seemingly abstract, making it look sunburnt, like an old photograph.

For Andrew, the balloon represents the ego, and each painting is a way of pursuing inner meditation through exposure to the sensory world: 'the balloon was a metaphor for the self as it dispenses with the ego, gradually attaining spiritual enlightenment in the process. The balloon is thus present in the first three paintings in the cycle but absent from the next three. In the seventh and last painting only its shadow is represented' [1]. Andrew's contemplation is rooted in his singular relationship with the world, steeped in Zen philosophy and fascinated by the scientific advances of the twentieth century. To some extent, his 'Lights' series retains some of the realist features of his formative years.

Detchibe has explored the ways in which Hiroshi Nagai's work shapes a situated perception of the 1980s: it is necessary to correlate these ideas with the declinist discourse that haunted the Lost Decades following the collapse of the Japanese economic bubble at the end of the 1980s. Gradually, the positive valence attached to companies and work was eroded by at least three factors perceived by Japanese society and highlighted by the media: a relaxation of labour laws that allowed companies to employ part-time workers, leading to a sense of 'unemployment within the company' (shanai shitsugyo); critical difficulties for young people to enter the labour market; and the collapse of the myth of social equality with the disappearance of the middle class of office workers [2]. This frustration was clearly expressed by Artdink with the release of Aquanaut no Kyūjitsu (1995), which follows a burnt-out oceanographer who tries to reconnect with the environment by exploring the sea with a deliberately meditative approach.

Kaze no NOTAM also suggests a return to a certain serenity, but with a focus on contemplation rather than exploration. The player is invited to fly over different environments at different times of day, accompanied by a soundtrack that echoes the city-pop aesthetic that was in decline at the time. Kaze no NOTAM recontextualises inactivity, turning it into an opportunity for introspection, as the balloon is subject to the uncertainties of air currents, without the possibility of changing its course in detail. For workers, the unemployed or young people at a loss for meaning, the title suggests taking the time to question the reasons for existence and the value of time, conjuring up an optimistic view of a golden age recently lost: the only thing that counts is the present. Among the most striking moments in Kaze no NOTAM are some breathtaking vistas. Flying over a canopy bathed in the rays of the sinking sun has a special magic, as does seeing the northern lights overhanging the long skyscrapers in the glittering city heavens.

Like Andrew's 'Lights' series, the game offers semi-abstract scenes thanks to the sharp PS1 edges of the topography: the title leaves it to the player's imagination to fill in the picture. The variety of environments also allows for a real progression in the meditation exercise. It is surprising, however, that Kaze no NOTAM places such a strong emphasis on objectives; while Aquanaut no Kyūjitsu involved building a coral reef, finding artefacts was an underlying product of the organic exploration of the seabed. In Kaze no NOTAM, the mere selection of an objective in the main menu distorts the idea of an unfettered meditation, especially when certain modes impose a time limit. The player can, of course, ignore these targets – after all, the point is simply to fly. As Andrew, eternal dreamer of another world, noted when he borrowed a Rosalie Sorrels song for a tentative title of his paintings, Up Is A Nice Place To Be (1967), 'the best' even [3].

__________
[1] Richard Calvocoressi, 'Michael Andrews: Air', in Gagosian Quaterly, Spring 2017.
[2] Andrew Gordon, 'Making sense of the lost decades: Workplaces and schools, men and women, young and old, rich and poor', in Yoichi Funabashi, Barak Kushner (ed.), Examining Japan's Lost Decades, Routledge, London, 2015, pp. 77-100.
[3] Richard Calvocoressi, op. cit.

     'They sat side by side in forward-facing seats, and her mother settled deep into the seat and fell into a slumber. Nagase tried to look out the window at the night-time landscape along the tracks, but the only thing she could see in the window was her own reflection against the dark background.'
     – Kikuko Tsumura, Potosu raimu no fune, 2009 (tr. Kendall Heitzman).

Played with BertKnot, in preparation for my upcoming video essay on the Sumida River and urban watercourses. This game and review evoke situations of suicide, incest and sexual violence in postwar Japan. Reader discretion is advised.

Japanese horror stories have historically been dominated by vengeful spirits (onryō), whose death or tragic circumstances of life cause them to return to haunt the world of the living. Often women, they come to embody the failure of individuals to live up to their moral obligations of respect and altruism (on) to others. The onryō has a special place in this system of obligations, as women are frequently in a subordinate position in the Japanese hierarchy; their revenge is thus associated with an implicit critique of the structural injustice of Japanese society. Female spirits are metaphysical intermediaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead, embodying the faults of the former. It is no coincidence that Japanese horror films have historically been shown during the summer: the Obon festivals, celebrated in August, are considered times when the dead return to family altars to communicate with the living, who must then pay their respects.

     Mountains, water and forests: to die among the trees in Japanese fiction

Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water explores common themes in Japanese horror, overlaying them with a Shintō aesthetic in which women are the catalysts for harmony between human civilisation and the natural environment. The player is invited to follow Yuri Kozukata, Ren Hojo and Miu Hinasaki, all three of whom are irresistibly drawn to Mt. Hikami. The site exerts an uncanny attraction, playing on their mental instability. Although Mt. Hikami is a place with traces of urban modernisation, it is best known as a convenient place to commit suicide. The forest in the game is reminiscent of Aokigahara, which is notorious for its high suicide rate. The depiction of Aokigahara is heavily influenced by its description in Seichō Matsumoto's Nami no Tō (1960). Several elements of this detective story have had a major influence on popular culture and beliefs: suicide, steeped in shintō and Buddhist sensibilities, is presented as a positive alternative to real-world suffering [1]. Aokigahara is also described as a place from which no one ever returns.

An epidemiological study of suicide in Aokigahara reveals that people who attempt suicide in this forest do not necessarily do so for religious reasons and are not originally from the region, but admit to wanting to experience a 'pure' death by sharing their last vision with other suicide victims. Remarkably, cases of dissociative amnesia and suicide pacts have also been documented in Aokigahara. For Yoshitomo Takahashi, 'forms of significance attached to suicide in Jukai are symbolic value, imitation, purification of one’s death, reconfirmation of one’s will to commit suicide, sanctuary, the wish to disappear, and the wish to belong' [2]. These socio-cultural phenomena are echoed in Maiden of the Black Water, where the corruption of memory and the desire to rejoin the dead haunt the game's discourse. The more she explores Mt. Hikami, the more vulnerable Yuri becomes to the recollection of her previous suicide attempt, while her ability to see the memories of others builds empathy for those who wish to die on the mountain. Unlike Ren and Miu, who are primarily interested in finding a specific person, Yuri is haunted by the ghosts of a large group of departed souls.

Mt. Hikami's sickly charm is explained by the symbiosis between the ghost of one of the priestesses, whose gaze drives the victim to commit suicide, and the mysterious environment. The dense forest suffocates the player in a gloomy, alienating heat, while the streams, fog and setting sun add to the mystique of the place. A similar depiction can be found in Episode 26 of Mushishi's first season (2005), Kusa o fumu oto, where the mountain is constantly surrounded by fog, the colour of which changes according to the well-being of the region and the Mushi River (kōmyaku) that runs beneath it. Mushishi links the prosperity of the region's inhabitants to the well-being of the mountain; Maiden of Black Water follows suit, making water the symbol of Mt. Hikami's purity. Described as purifying when the rites are properly observed, the water absorbs the memories of its inhabitants and must be constantly cleansed of this corruption (kegare) by women's sacrifices. This cyclicality of human experience – born of water and returning to water – is the primary driving force behind the tragedy, as it is consubstantial with the appearance of curses.

     Making and unmaking of the body on Mt. Hikami

Much of postwar Japanese horror is directly concerned with the notion of the body (nikutai) [3], and Maiden of the Black Water instantiates this aspect in a number of ways. The characters' bodies can get wet, making them more vulnerable to ghosts and supernatural phenomena. The rain thus acts as a constant reminder of the corporeality of the protagonists, who cannot escape the contingencies of physical existence. Moreover, Maiden of the Black Water does not hesitate to break and twist bodies in particularly violent ways. The boxes in which the women are placed force them to bend their limbs into uncomfortable positions, as illustrated by the erratic movements of their ghostly forms. The various spirits are disturbingly animated, both in their disquieting immobility and in their sudden motions.

The title manages to convey the circumstances of their death and their regrets through their movement. Each encounter with a ghost instantiates their physical death, contributing to a real sense of malaise. The more action-oriented gameplay of Maiden of the Black Water contributes to this newfound nervousness. The title requires the player to be more mobile and constantly think about the camera angle – with the WiiU version forcing them to move the Gamepad. The horror is no longer so much in the viciousness of the encounters, made easier by the introduction of weak spots and the fact that photographs taken during a Fatal Frame do not consume film, but rather in the depiction of the spirits themselves, which are much more vengeful and aggressive.

Maiden of the Black Water also succeeds in its first half in striking an elegant balance between the introduction of new environments and their repetition. Mt. Hikami uses all the grammar of Japanese gothic horror while blending it with the disturbing grime of urbanisation. The cable car that leads in and out of the forest is used to enclose the horror, suggesting that spiritual experiences can only take place on the mountain. The title, however, subverts this idea by emphasising the physical suffering of the characters, beyond mere nightmares. Even outside Mt. Hikami, the protagonists' bodies are failing, abused by nightmares or numbed by suicidal thoughts. In a way, Maiden of the Black Water is a reminder that the trauma suffered by women leaves indelible marks. Several characters suffer the consequences of sexual violence, while Rui is constantly torn by the weight of gender and social pressures.

     New masculinities, femininities and motherhoods in Shinzo Abe's Japan

Ren's representation of ideal Japanese masculinity makes him a disturbing presence: the sections in which he has to defend the shop from ghostly attacks are particularly effective. The appearance of the spirits outside the mountain decisively shatters the idea of a curse confined to Mt. Hikami, while Ren's visits to the rooms where the various teenage girls sleep are bound to cause acute concern. Ren is never voyeuristic, but he serves as a unsettling male avatar, demonstrating that women can never let their guard down around men. Ren highlights both the breakdown of masculinity and the growing social problems in 2010s Japan.

Contemporary Japanese horror is characterised by the dissolution of traditional solidarities in the face of rapid urbanisation. Ada Lovelace argues that recent decades have seen a shift in the representation of the onryō, whose figure is no longer necessarily linked to issues of revenge for violated social norms. The weight of globalisation and Western influences is said to have deconstructed the traditional female monstrosity: 'ghostliness is no longer the figure of anxiety; whether it is the self destructive longing for the abject maternal, or masochistic fetishes for a Westernized woman, women who are not confined to gendered discourse, who are thus monstrous, become the figure of desire' [4]. It seems to me that Maiden of the Black Water mitigates this hypothesis by offering a third neo-traditionalist path.

The suicide pacts of the high school girls, the implication of sexual violence and the incestuous relationships evoke the limits of the social contract in Japanese culture, where the expectations placed on girls are unbearable. The paranormal is precisely one way of highlighting this oppression: the fate of the priestesses illustrates an insupportable philosophy of sacrifice in contemporary Japan – through Shintō rituals – but also the betrayal of the concept of family, as the men fail to live up to the promise they made to the priestesses. The role of Kunihiko Asō and the various men portrayed is particularly telling, as they are both the main causes of the curses of Mt. Hikari, and the people the game chooses to repudiate in its final scenes.

     Ikiru

What sets Maiden of the Black Water apart from the other games in the series is its focus on motherhood, guilt and the desire to make amends. Unlike previous titles, the relationship between daughters and mothers – biological or otherwise – is infused with genuine hope. The violence suffered in the past is acknowledged as part of their identity, but the focus is firmly on the future. In the light of the social changes of the 2010s and the new motherhood theorised by Shinzo Abe, the game seems determined to reject the eternal tragedy of the female condition and propose the rebuilding of a family, softening the weight of blood and accepting that a family is not necessarily biological [5]. Maiden of the Black Water reappropriates traditional notions of on to create a new vision of Japanese society with a more peaceful relationship between daughters and mothers. This new representation of motherhood can also be found in recent crime and horror fiction: Paranormasight (2023) is a topical example of this renewed discourse.

The noticeable change in the game's discourse compared to the previous Fatal Frame games gives the series a sense of closure. While it is unclear whether a future project is planned, the absence of a new game for almost ten years supports the idea that Makoto Shibata no longer sees its relevance. It is possible that Maiden of the Black Water was an unintentional way of exorcising the nightmares that plagued his nights and were the source of the various Fatal Frame games. Steeped in the traditionalist aesthetic of Japanese gothic horror, Shibata may have wanted to put an end to the voyeuristic male gaze of female tragedy. This latest title brings to a close the storylines of the series' core characters – Miku Hinasaki finds an answer to her relationship with the world of the living, while Asō is ultimately presented as the cause of all the misfortunes, though he never understood it, being so fixated on himself.

In this newly imagined future, a new Fatal Frame is perhaps unnecessary, as the answers are left to Japanese society itself, whose challenge is to adapt to a modern world and its issues. Maiden of the Black Water is far from a perfect title; less overtly horrific than the first three titles, some chapters suffer from a certain slowness and excessive ghost encounters, while some narrative threads are abandoned too early as the title tries to evoke too many different themes. Nevertheless, the game is carried by a constant flame that begs not to let go of life and not to surrender one's individuality to the pessimism of traditional rituals. Yuri's last tears are filled with sincere empathy; Shibata's voice, mixed with those of Asō and Ren, disappears in favour of an optimistic sisterhood. After thirteen years of suffering, this is perhaps the best way to end Fatal Frame.

__________
[1] Roxanne Russell, 'Views of suicide in modern Japanese literature: a positive portrayal in Nami No Tou', in Southeast Review of Asian Studies, vol. 28, 2006, pp. 199-201.
[2] Yoshimoto Takahashi, 'Aokigahara-jukai: Suicide and Amnesia in Mt. Fuji’s Black Forest', in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, vol. 18, no. 2, 1988, pp. 174.
[3] This centrality of the body can be explained by a number of factors. In particular, the atomic bombs are seen as a direct attack on the idealised body (kokutai) of the Japanese nation, while the American occupation has been compared to the sexual violence suffered by prostitutes. On corporeality in Japanese art, see, for example, Fusako Innami, 'The Flesh, Subject, Embodiment in Postwar Japan: Through Nikutai and Gutai', in Gérard Siary, Toshio Takemoto, Victor Vuilleumier, Yinde Zhang (ed.), Le corps dans les littératures modernes d’Asie orientale : discours, représentation, intermédialité, Collège de France, Paris, 2022 ; Ayako Saito, 'Occupation and Memory: The Representation of Woman's Body in Postwar Japanese Cinema', in Daisuke Miyao (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, pp. 327-362.
[4] Ada Lovelace, 'Ghostly and Monstrous Manifestations of Women: Edo to Contemporary', in The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, vol. 5, 2008, p. 41.
[5] The game is neo-traditionalist in that it promotes a familial ideal in line with Japan's new political agenda; it should be contrasted with feminist authors such as Sayaka Murata, whose work is characterised by a radical rejection of the traditional family and a defence of asexuality. Although Chikyū seijin (2018) makes no value judgements, it describes the complete dissolution of interpersonal relationships to the point of total social isolation, a sign of the tragedy of women's condition.

     Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (15th Aug. – 21st Aug., 2023).

Variations on the Knight's Tour problem are a convenient way of teaching the movement of the piece to beginners, who are often baffled by its atypical movement. Among the atypical manoeuvres in chess are the long knight repositionings, which are among the most impressive sequences because they depart from the intuitive idea of not moving just one piece during the game. For example, initiates will be familiar with White's typical Nc3-b1-d2 manoeuvre, a staple of Indian structures that can build into more advanced sequences. Outside formal games, the knight has long been a favourite for applying chess to puzzles: it offers ideal complexity without really requiring tactical or strategic vision, as only short sequences need to be remembered – similar to the quick manoeuvre aforementioned.

Alexey Pajitnov offered an interesting version for the Famicom in Knight Moves (1990), in which the player had to move a knight around a rectangular chessboard in order to collect hearts that would appear one at a time. The game is driven mainly by its scoring philosophy, and the strategy is to pass over the same square several times to make a hole. The more holes the player clears before collecting the heart, the more points they score; the holes are subsequently closed and a new round can begin. In 1995, the concept was slightly altered for the release of an eponymous game for Windows. While the idea of recovering items by avoiding falling into holes was retained, the title now invited players to solve hand-crafted boards by finding an effective solution. On paper, the idea is a sound one. Having clearly defined squares to cross allows the player to think ahead and makes the knight's manoeuvres much smoother. The player can let the tempo of the action dictate the pace, but they can also force the knight to finish their move immediately, a kind of hard drop à la Tetris. The distinctive feature of Knight Moves is the presence of enemies that traverse the chessboard; they do not, however, follow the movement of chess pieces, but instead travel along a more or less fixed route, getting in the way of the player.

The asymmetry between the movement pace of the knight and the opponents is certainly worth appreciating, but the implementation lacks clarity. The oblique perspective makes it difficult to see the most distant squares, and it is not uncommon to misjudge the hitbox of a bat due to the awkward angle. Enemies with short cycles, such as spiders, are also rather unpleasant with their occasional unexpected turns. As the title progresses, these structural problems become more pronounced. In its second half, the game introduces enemies that can make multiple squares inaccessible, adding to the general chaos of Knight Moves; to some extent, this forces the player to react quickly. However, some enemy fire is a slightly random projectile that can instantly ruin a board if the RNG is unfavourable to the player. This is a problem especially in the final Level, where visibility is poor due to the dark colours. Some moves can already be quite complex to solve, simply due to the presence of moving enemies, without taking the projectiles into account.

While Knight Moves is generally enjoyable in its early stages, it struggles to develop an intelligent approach to the knight's movements. Only once does the game use teleporters with finesse, elegantly altering the parity of movement and inviting the player to first understand the general concept governing the board. Towards the end of the title, some of the items are placed on squares that are difficult to access due to holes in the layout, requiring the player to think deeply about the manoeuvre before starting to move, but Knight Moves leaves very little observation time to grasp this challenge, as the knight is not invincible before his first move. The player has to learn on the fly that a particular coin is the real challenge, a very frustrating feeling after spending several dozen heated seconds avoiding the erratic movements of enemies.

Knight Moves suffers from rough gameplay, made worse by graphics that are more distracting than anything else. Some levels are genuinely enjoyable, letting the player naturally blitz through each move before the enemies have made the board uncomfortable to navigate or visually cluttered. On the other hand, the game lapses too easily into artificial difficulty, where the player has to manage the tempo of their moves while praying that the RNG is in their favour: the last two rounds leave no room for improvisation, and blitzing every move is easier after spending time working out the long manoeuvre from start to finish. Knight Moves seems to have found a decent concept to explore, but the execution mostly highlights the weaknesses of a title that could not figure out how to balance puzzle and action.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (8th Aug. – 14th Aug., 2023).

In his memoirs, Sid Meier points out that SimGolf was conceived as an organic fusion of the spirit of Tycoon games and Will Wright's latest hit, The Sims (2000). Unlike the Civilization and SimCity series, SimGolf is intended to be a highly accessible title that hides easy rewards behind artificial complexity. In the words of Jeff Briggs: 'You want [the hole] to look hard, but still play easy' [1]. This gameplay philosophy is not surprising, as it is at the heart of most video games. What makes SimGolf so elegant is the degree to which the game pushes the boundaries of so-called complexity, when in fact everything is remarkably intuitive and requires minimal effort, giving free rein to the player's ideas.

To some extent, this approach to design should be contrasted with the colder, more mathematical approach of SimCity. The latter is built around a set of ideologically driven axioms, presented in Christopher Alexander's A City is Not a Tree (1965) and Jay Forrester's Urban Dynamics (1969), that have a lasting impact on the way players use the tools at their disposal. The use of taxes, for example, responds to strong neo-liberal beliefs that low taxation promotes economic growth, while high taxation necessarily increases the risk of collapse and recession. On the other hand, the title does not take into account recent developments in urban social science on very specific issues such as public lighting, the colours of the city or light mobilities. SimCity is an ideological creation whose rules are sometimes confusing and have prompted the drafting of guides to circumvent them, leading to the emergence of a completely new game through its reception by the public.

The great strength of SimGolf is that it understands the flexibility of simulators and builds its entire design around it. Meier and Briggs' very permissive philosophy leaves all the keys in the hands of the player. Even more than with the other Tycoon games, the creative process is rooted in what the player wants. It is less about creating a course to precise standards - although at a certain point it is preferable to offer a good variety of holes, with layouts that encourage creativity without being too difficult - and more about trusting the player's intuition. A hole that pleases them will undoubtedly please all golfers visiting the resort. This balance is achieved by constantly involving the player's avatar in the design of the golf club. Periodically, they are invited to take part in an open competition within their own structure, a perfect opportunity to empirically assess whether the overall design is effective, in addition to the rather cold financial statistics and volume of critical feedback. As Sid Meier sums it up, the absence of competition pushes back the need for design optimisation and allows the player to focus on other creative aspects [2].

There's something very tangible and personal about SimGolf, whose technique benefits from the graphics engine that would later be used in SimCity 4 (2002), with real 3D models. The game has an almost touching softness, and the low number of visitors compared to other Tycoon games encourages greater contemplation. Even when the course comes under pressure around the creation of a thirteenth hole, due to the formation of bottlenecks on certain complex holes, the game never really punishes the player. Problems can easily be solved by reordering the holes or hiring Marshals. As a rule, the player's investment in the game is constantly rewarded by a larger cash flow without any downside, which makes it easier to modify and create new holes.

While far from the complexity of SimCity and Civilization, SimGolf carries the spirit of unbridled creativity that Sid Meier approached in C.P.U. Bach (1994), a 3DO baroque music generator that, despite lacking any real interactivity, was a veritable hymn to creative freedom. SimGolf extends this concept, using a theme more accessible to the general public and placing itself in the zeitgeist of simulation games at the turn of the 21st century. The result is a curiosity that is both easy to pick up and very supportive of the player and their creativity.

__________
[1] Sid Meier, Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games, Norton and Company, New York, 2020, p. 147.
[2] Ibid., pp. 147-148.

     'Then he whirled around, pressing his fists to his temples, and howled — a long, roaring howl like that of a beast. A cry of confusion and desperation. A cry that tore at the hearts of all who heard it.'
     – Keigo Higashino, Yōgisha X no Kenshin, 2005 (tr. Alexander O. Smith).

Played with BertKnot.

A distinctive feature of death penalty in Japan is the regularity with which it is applied, in contrast to other countries such as the United States. Even after the moratorium that followed the LDP's fall from power in 1993, there was little change in judicial practice, with no politician willing to make serious changes on the issue. In 2009, a major judicial reform was undertaken to correct the excesses of the system, notably by strengthening the rights of the defendant and limiting the value placed on confessions, which are often brutally extracted by inspectors. Some commentators have seen the introduction of jury panels as a means of opposing the death penalty, on the assumption that citizens would be reluctant to choose it in a real case that they would have followed from within. In other words, the 2009 reform hoped to bring about a slow change in mentalities and a rejection of the death penalty through its reduced use.

     Capital punishment, public opinion and Japanese detective fiction

While the 2009 reform has been effective in changing concrete aspects of police investigations and increasing public confidence in the judiciary, its impact on the application of the death penalty has been particularly disappointing. In the 2010-2018 period, the capital punishment was adopted in 68 % of cases where it was requested by prosecutors, compared with 56 % for the 1980-2009 period [1]. This higher figure can be explained by a more careful choice on the part of prosecutors, who restrict the death penalty to the least ambiguous cases. It is worth noting, however, that juries are fairly consistent in following the recommendations of prosecutors on this issue and remain particularly conservative. Japanese public opinion thus remains attached to the death penalty and its application. This situation is not surprising: liberal nations that have abolished the death penalty have often done so against the tide of general opinion and under more progressive governments.

One feature of Japanese opinion is the moral and ethical value it places on the death penalty. It is considered both inevitable (yamu o enai) and necessary to avenge the victims [2]. Although governments are content with this situation in order to avoid reforms from above and going against the tide of public opinion, Japanese detective fiction was quick to question this phenomenon and felt compelled to take a stance on the issue. Among popular works, Kindaichi shōnen no jikenbo (1992), featuring a rebellious detective growing up in the Lost Decades, emphasises the tragedy of killing and the detective's function in society. This desire to understand the criminals serves to build a discourse in favour of rehabilitation. Alternatively, Meitantei Konan (1994) presents an idealised detective in a society where the police institution is characterised by exceptional probity: Gōshō Aoyama, despite his social conservatism, passively opposes the death penalty, as his universe seems completely unaware of the concept.

Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, which inherits the comic and violent aesthetic of Danganronpa, also revolves around these themes, but offers an overly vague and conservative moral. The player takes on the role of Yuma Kokohead, an apprentice detective flanked by Shinigami, a goddess of death whose powers allow mysteries to manifest physically in a Labyrinth. While these powers allow Yuma to solve various cases, the price is the soul of the guilty party, who inevitably dies after solving an investigation. The events of the opening chapter lead Yuma to investigate the secret of Kanai Ward, alongside the various one-off cases he encounters. The title takes a disturbingly lighthearted approach to the death penalty, and never manages to make the moral dilemma facing the detective believable.

     A chain of references serving as a parody

This frivolity is understandable, given the game's representational choices. Kanai Ward is immediately reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII's (1997) Midgar, and RAIN CODE never hides its inspiration: Amaterasu Corporation is literally a copy of Shinra, and the similarities extend to the interiors of buildings and laboratories. The title piles up references constantly: the Mystery Labyrinth is an odd borrowing from the Palaces in Persona 5 (2016), while the cases crudely parody stratagems found in Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (2013) or Meitantei Konan. The series of locked rooms in Chapter 1 is particularly clumsy, and the subsequent mysteries are astonishingly simple – Chapter 4 gives all the solutions to the investigation straight away, but drags on for several hours, deliberately avoiding the obvious answer to the mystery. Instead, the player is forced to spend two hours investigating a trivial murder mystery, before spending an hour and a half traversing the Mystery Labyrinth, only to suffer two more recapitulations of the investigation.

Because the progression is so sluggish and the pacing so helpless, it is impossible to take the various characters seriously. In Danganronpa, the Trial mechanic created a genuine, if clumsy, discussion between the characters, and swept the player into a storm of contradictory and naive opinions: this approach suited the game's premise. RAIN CODE tries to be more surgical, but above all it comes across as more ridiculous. The Reasoning Death Matches, similar to the Non-Stop Debates, lack substance because the gameplay has been simplified by the more action-oriented gameplay of RAIN CODE, which forces the player to dodge the opponent's sentences. To compensate for the mental strain, the game steers the player significantly more towards the right answer. The irony comes to a head when the most interesting questions within the mysteries are clearly considered too complex and are solved by simple QTEs with no choice. More generally, Kazutaka Kodaka has chosen to spend more time on mini-games, which follow each other for several dozen minutes with very little variety.

In some respects, RAIN CODE is reminiscent of the structure of Meitantei Konan & Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo: Meguriau Futari no Meitantei (2009), with a series of small cases and simple puzzles, but without the strong interactions between the characters of two historical detective series. RAIN CODE only has one-dimensional characters, either because they are immediately discarded or because they have to lose their memories to justify the game's mechanics. Similarly, Kanai Ward is never built as a coherent universe with a genuine social texture. The game is content to pile on a few noir fiction clichés and offer side quests whose hollowness is rare in the medium. There is something particularly ludicrous about the way the inhabitants of Kanai Ward interact with each other, and this only serves to undermine the game's twist, whose pretentious revelation is undermined by the fact that it is one of science fiction's most famous narrative twists.

     Kazutaka Kodaka: morals and fetishisation

While Danganronpa simply highlights the tragedy of the desperate actions of high school students, RAIN CODE attempts a broader discourse on democracy, corporatism, social organisation and capital punishment. Firstly, it is hard to take any ethical considerations seriously when Yuma is flanked by Shinigami, who combines all the most outrageous elements of sexualisation – the Shinigami Puzzles, reflections of Hangman's Gambit, seem completely out of place with the beach aesthetic and Shinigami in a bathing suit. Until chapter 4, RAIN CODE never manages to get away from the idea that justice is about maintaining order and that the death penalty is a necessity (yamu o enai). Even afterwards, the title absolves the player through a series of events that allow Yuma to shrug off any responsibility. The discourse on finding the only truth – a rehash of Meitantei Konan's catchphrase, stupid as it is – is particularly hypocritical when even Aoyama's manga argues against the death penalty.

Above all, RAIN CODE spends its time sexualising female characters in all their forms, from schoolgirls to maids: at least two characters regard women as sexual objects, and are portrayed as comic devices. The game feels much more voyeuristic than Danganronpa, as there is no strong character who can really stand up to Yuma until the very end. The resolution of the final chapter is particularly muddled, attempting to rehabilitate the characters for the heinous murders they have committed based on the belief that everything fits into a carefully thought-out 'perfect solution'. That criminals had to be slaughtered to achieve this solution hardly seems a problem. The title's audacity culminates in the epilogue, where one character finds a magical and simplistic solution to Kanai Ward's central predicament, effectively rendering all the tragedies pointless.

In many ways, RAIN CODE takes its cues from Danganronpa, but in a crude and unpleasant way. The game suffers from an excessively slow pacing and always feels perfunctory in the way it treats its characters. Technically, the game is particularly abysmal, suffering from substandard graphics and a soundtrack that is nowhere near the chaotic and enjoyable explosiveness of Danganronpa. Given the disastrous and conservative way in which the death penalty discourse is handled, there is reason to fear that the very likely sequel to RAIN CODE – buoyed by its very satisfactory sales in Japan – will, if the post-credits scene is to be believed, explore the violence of the Californian riots of the 1980s and 1990s.

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[1] David T. Johnson, The Culture of Capital Punishment in Japan, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2020 [2019], p. 85.
[2] In particular, the victim's relatives can plead directly before judges and juries, explicitly requesting the death penalty for the defendant. These proceedings are marked by theatricality and intense emotions that directly and negatively affect lawyers, magistrates and jurors. On this subject, see Yūji Itō, 裁判員の判断の心理:心理学実験から迫る, 慶應義塾大学出版会, Tokyo, 2019, pp. 48-66.

A fatigued yet kind-hearted love letter to humanity and its suffering across the ages.

Harvestella works within a framework of an eclectic mix of influences; Rune Factory would be an obvious choice, but the game goes far beyond the "farming sim + combat" elements of its gameplay: From the level design and combat mechanics of Etrian Odyssey and Final Fantasy XIV to the narrative chops of Nier, Harvestella wears its influences on its sleeve, to the point where it feels like a collection of the passion the devs have for the JRPG genre. But Harvestella rises far beyond a simple facsimile of the giants of the medium that it stands on the shoulders of, knowing exactly why it is that these game mechanics work and understanding how to weave them together into a tight experience. Etrian Odyssey works its level design magic on the way it utilizes TP to condition exploration: Do you keep going when you are low on resources and risk death or retire early from the expedition to safety? Harvestella adds this philosophy to its farm work aspect: Do you keep going and risk death before finding a shortcut, or will you risk interacting with that event hoping it will heal you? Or will you use the food you have obtained from your farm to give you the literal energy to keep going? Do you, then, plan out your farm to yield crops suited to your exploration needs, or perhaps more lucrative crops so you can buy upgrades for your farm? Will you spend the day exploring that new dungeon you just unlocked, or will you go back to a previous one to get the materials needed to craft items that will allow you to build shortcuts or clear new paths? None of these design elements are unique to Harvestella of course, but they are all woven together with the good judgment needed to make it stand next to its storied peers. And, thanks to the relative simplicity of all its systems, the game never feels overbearing in the things you can do, ironically making it a far more "relaxing" game than more complex farming sims.

But what ends up being most memorable about the game is no doubt its story. This is where the game digs its heels deep in choosing to be a "proper" JRPG above being a farming sim, delivering a melancholic story about grief and pain, and what comes after that. All the characters in Harvestella are defined by loss, and both the main story and individual character stories deal with that pain; the pain of connection, the pain of losing someone you love, the pain of never having known a proper home, the pain of betrayal, and the pain of humanity itself across time and space, condemned eternally to self-destruction. Harvestella makes use of the humanism at the heart of the genre to explore all these and more, in the process sinking its teeth in plenty more of themes ranging from spiritualism to the romanticism of scientific exploration. It may not be the most expertly woven story out there, but it is nevertheless filled to the brim with passion and kindness.

All of this is then capped off with Go Shiina's FANTASTIC soundtrack, offering his best work to date: From battle tracks such as this to area themes such as this, there is not a single track that is not memorable.

Game also deserves a shoutout for being one of the extremely few games out there to allow the player character to be non-binary, which was a nice surprise to see. However, you should still play the game as a girl so you can experience it as the greatest sf yuri love story ever told as it was intended. I Understand the devs' vision, do not question me.

Harvestella is ultimately a weird game that defies expectation, and perhaps its middling reception is owed to this. It is a game that one has to meet halfway and understand how and why it does what it does. If you can do that, you will find that its big heart will earn it a place in yours.

     'For practice, she started keeping big, American-style chunks of beef in the refrigerator, making steaks every night and serving them with lectures on "rare" and "medium" like some overzealous hotel waiter.'
     – Akiyuki Nosaka, Amerika hijiki, 1968 (tr. Jay Rubin).

Played in preparation for my upcoming video essay on the Sumida River and urban watercourses.

The policies of the MacArthur administration during the occupation of Japan (1945-1952) were the driving force behind a lasting trauma in the Japanese collective unconscious, contrasting the wealth of the Americans with the difficult years of deprivation for the local population. By the end of the 1940s, Japan had become a key ally for the American regime, which was keen to establish an outpost in East Asia. Political tensions between the two countries culminated in 1959-1960 with the Anpo protests (Anpo tōsō), which split activist movements and reinforced anti-Americanism as a marker of identity [1]. More precisely, opposition to the United States was not limited to a rejection of Japanese foreign policy, but was a radical programme based on emotional and identity-based reactions. As Americanisation has transformed everyday life in Japan, the various artistic productions emphasise the creation of an in-between cultural space – neither fully American nor fully Japanese – as a result of the friction between the two cultures, something that Haruki Murakami's novels illustrate perfectly.

     Anti-Americanism and socio-cultural hybridity in Japan

Although Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken retains the same hard-boiled aesthetic as Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken (1987), the second title in the Tantei Jingūji Saburō series turns out to be more concerned with the presence of foreigners on Japanese soil [2]. The titular detective is assigned to investigate the disappearance of Eva Christina, who works in the consulate of the fictional Baraka. Jingūji is soon confronted with a series of murders and realises that these incidents are linked to a smuggling operation taking place in Yokohama. The different environments underline the exotic nature of the case, alternating between Western-style buildings, Japanese neo-urbanity and traditional memorials. Yokohama vibrates as a tourist city, a quality that the pixel art successfully conveys. The player is caught between views of the stadium, Chinatown and temples, all flanked by tall modern buildings.

Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken follows the hard-boiled formula more closely, with the investigation refusing to be a honkaku mystery: the plot is linear and poses few significant problems, as the suspects are clear from the outset; the title rather emphasises the cultural and urban representation of Yokohama as it rapidly becomes westernised. At the end of the 1980s, the city was indeed restructured with a new business district, Minato Mirai 21, whose skyline mimics those of US East Coast cities. Remarkably, one of the central questions in the investigation revolves around a blue Mercedes-Benz, a telling sign of Western modernity – and it should also be noted that Consul Robert K. Busk speaks only in katakana.

     An artificial thriller

While Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken reflects a concern regarding the West and the difficult relationship maintained with Taiwan, the script is relatively unremarkable. The game seems forced to build itself around a series of murders to justify the 'renzoku' of its title. The suspense is pretty underwhelming, except for a few action scenes: Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken more broadly embraces a cinematic approach, by lowering the difficulty compared to the previous episode. Having dispensed with its overhead-view and impromptu 'game over', the game is also more generous with clues; while it is still unlikely to complete the title by brute-forcing interactions, the mystery is straightforward enough to ensure that the player will not get overly confused.

The game also puts much more emphasis on its secondary characters, which perhaps explains some questionable narrative choices, although the dialogue feels much more natural. Yoko Gyoen is much more active, demonstrating excellent detective instincts; as a polyglot, she also acts as an interpreter when dealing with foreign characters. Although Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken allows the player to choose their assistant, there is little reason to select Hinode Hitoshi, as Yoko proves to be far more capable and a welcome representation of women.

Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken feels very complementary to its predecessor, offering a radically different progression and story. While the script is more coherent and avoids an implausible twist at the end, the ensemble is comparatively weaker. Similarly, the plot is simplified, but lacks the mysterious tension of the first episode – the title boasts a jazzier OST, but abandons the musical jingles for the critical clues that drive the investigation. Instead, the focus seems to be on the portrayal of Yokohama, the interference of Westerners in modern Japan, and the inability of the local authorities to act. As such, Yokohama-kō Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is a vivid illustration of Japan's conflicted relationship with the United States, halfway between fascination and loathing.

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[1] Students who lived through the waves of protest in the 1960s and 1970s were particularly affected by these events, whose political and aesthetic reverberations are both numerous and complex. On the topic, see Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2018 and Gavin Walker (ed.), The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese '68, Verso, London, 2020.
[2] Unlike countries like Taiwan, where US domination has been essentially institutional, Japan is marked by its physical presence, hence the – sometimes misguided – ever-present metaphor of Japan as a prostitute. Margaret Hillebrand writes: 'Female sexual labor, organized crime, drug and alcohol abuse, inter-racial violence, and the McDonaldization of cultural life dominate the thematic plane, [...] all depict US influence as a virus that infects and destroys its host' (Margaret Hillebrand, Literature, Modernity and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction (1960-1990), Brill, Leiden, 2007, p. 132).

     'The colour of joy has become the colour of shame.'
     – Yōzaburō Kanari, 'Yukikage Village Murder Case' (File 23), Kindaichi shōnen no jikenbo - Case Series, 1999.

The Tantei Jingūji Saburō series belonged to the first generation of Japanese detective games, whose early explorations allowed them to branch out in very varied directions; while Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (1983) and Yamamura Misa Suspense (1987) offered fairly traditional, honkaku mysteries, more atypical titles such as Sanma no Meitantei (1987) were deliberately more humorous and light-hearted. Tantei Jingūji Saburō positioned itself as a representative of hard-boiled detective fiction, which is not necessarily an obvious idea. From the 1920s to the 1950s in the United States, the genre enjoyed a very apparent surge, inspired by the social changes in the country, by sacrificing the traditional codes of detective fiction – namely the emphasis on solving the crime – for a darker portrayal of society.

     Hard-boiled crime fiction in Japan

Japanese crime fiction, which has its own codes compared to the West, did not embrace this fundamental change. The hard-boiled remained a very modest part of the genre and was reinterpreted rather late in Japanese social crime fiction (shakai), especially in women's fiction [1]. As such, Tantei Jingūji Saburō is something of a notable exception in Japanese production and serves as a convenient fulcrum for understanding the evolution of the genre over the decades. The first title, Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken, highlights the characteristic features of the franchise. At the request of Inspector Sanzō Kumano, the player must solve the murder of Momoko Takada, a hostess at Shinjuku's Bar East.

In grand Japanese tradition, the player is presented with an impossible situation, as the victim's body was found in the middle of Shinjuku chūō kōen, a park nestled among Tokyo's tall buildings and offices. The problem is that it was raining on the night of the murder and no footprints were found at the crime scene. Given this difficult premise, the player is given an extraordinary degree of freedom. While the controls are fairly traditional, with the eternal 'Ask' and 'Examine', Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken also allows the player to call out to passers-by or take photographs. More amusingly, it is possible to accuse suspects or threaten various characters, with sometimes unexpected consequences. Amidst all the possibilities, critical actions are highlighted by rather ominous musical jingles, the game's only soundtrack.

     Freedom and limits in 1980s Japanese detective games

The investigation must be carried out efficiently and quickly, as the game has an internal timer that runs out with each action taken, with the player having only a fortnight to complete the investigation. More than its predecessors, Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken has a formidable difficulty. While the initial inquiries are fairly straightforward and provide a reasonably good understanding of the relationships that bind the victim's acquaintances together, the progression of the title is tied to exploring Shinjuku Central Park. The title uses an overhead view, and identifying places to investigate is jarring, as they are not explicitly labelled and the player has to check every tile by switching to the subjective view: stopping by the local police station and examining the crime scene can be missed, preventing the discovery of clues crucial to solving the case.

Despite the capricious progression of the investigation, which requires the player to go through very specific triggers, Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken still charms with its very urban flair, which contrasts with the more picturesque cases of Misa Yamamura. The game offers a rather exotic cross-section of Shinjuku, halfway between the elegance of the offices, the nocturnal life and the end of the yakuza. The motive for the crime serves to underline the harshness of Japanese society, but the solution to the mystery is unsatisfactory. The concept of a crime scene with no footprints is a common one in crime fiction, with two possible subtypes: either there are no footprints at all, or only the victim's footprints are found.

The game falls into the first category. Meitantei Konan (1994) proposed this premise several times [2] and managed to get away with some very creative devices, but Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken fails to convince due to the improbability of the method used and its overly convenient nature. Nevertheless, the title remains an interesting and innovative take on the early investigation genre, offering much more room for manoeuvre than its contemporaries – even if it is ultimately under-exploited: the first part of the title leaves plenty of opportunity to wander between the suspects, but the second half opts for a very rigid structure that does not welcome the player taking liberties.

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[1] A chronological study shows that the 1990s saw a major restructuring in the field of Japanese detective fiction. In addition to the development of shin honkaku, women writers adopted characteristics of Anglo-Saxon hard-boiled fiction to express a different vision of society. In particular, Murano Miro, Natsuo Kirino's main protagonist, becomes a detective and gradually comes to understand the constraints of society. The novels are written in the first person and offer a completely female perspective. In Tenshi ni misuterareta yoru (1994), Miro fully exercises her independence, but is also confronted with a number of obstacles, especially as she has left the Japanese middle class. Moreover, the sexual relationships she enjoys do not serve to turn her into a woman-object: 'Kirino has created a female detective who, by virtue of her age and widowhood, escapes the normal pressure on young women to [pursue] marriage. Miro is able to have a relationship with anyone that she chooses and she also can control the outcome of her relationships. The likability of the men Miro selects is not at issue here, but rather her decision to enter and end the relationship.' (Amanda C. Seaman, Bodies of Evidence: Women, Society, and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2004, pp. 92-93).
[2] 'Shiroi Sunahama Satsujin Jiken' (1997) uses a beach setting, while 'Kijutsu Aikōka Satsujin Jiken' (1998) features a snowy forest. In both cases, the environment is crucial in staging the murder.