send it
24 Killers is a game that grabs you with its title immediately. something i remember dwelling on the moment i had joined the game's discord late 2020. i was enthusiastic to see something like it, due to my own love and adoration for love-de-lic and Moon. the initial teaser of the world let me know that it wasn't a matter of if but when i'd visit it. and 2023.
the weight of Moon as inspiration, as not only work but thematic to be iterated upon, i think could be tremendous. it's a dark game about care, about care that you as the player invest into the game -- and in the end it challenges that very care you cultivated and rebounds it back towards you cruelly: are you giving the world outside these artificial & linear ends the same amount of love?
and that's a lot of weight, for 1997, back when games were a burgeoning medium. it's a game that says these binary constructions can only contain so much -- but your love is infinite. these digital delights have predetermined ends. and that's a thing that no other game has really tried to formalize. Moon exists in a medium where these metatextual moments are often of form but hollow. games don't tend to say things. nier can delete your save. horror games can make you think there is a virus in your pc. even narrative games with multiple endings don't reflect your intent -- endings are content to be seen regardless of canonicity. nothing really is a mirror back at you saying, "... and?"
i won't talk too much about the mechanics of 24 Killers -- it's a rich unfolding of a world a la key and lock and the more you unlock the more locks will be revealed for you, and so on. the narrative core is that you are an echo in this world's narrative: an isolated spirit from the void where there is nothing at all let alone love. your awakening into the world is a violent one -- you're angry clay, mad at moon for sculpting you into the silhouette of man.
moon asks you to cure yourself of a "curse" by helping the residents of the island while moon, in her celestial role, prepares to birth a new universe, as is customary, as is implied is the way of things. moon is at times suspicious and dogmatic but always caring and eventually you realize this space is the continuity and there's no twist or curve upcoming. the 24 killers were soldiers and others on the island who were mutated and in their loneliness alike you as an echo find yourself within them and their friendship materializes you. to be a curse is to be away from others and the bonds that connect people. the bonds therefore break the curse. not really a curse then... but the desire for home that everyone has innately. to be at home. to be loved.
and the husbandman emphasizes this to you, too, if you haven't realized it yet. you see, 24 Killers iterates on moon by saying that things matter even if they are a story. come, let's retell this story once more, and again, ten times and so on. let us make friends once more with these killers. because the care that we invest into these spaces is a reflection back onto us no matter what. and that even if these are stories hardcoded to chips and so on, so what? they make you smile, don't they?
24 Killers is a game that grabs you with its title immediately. something i remember dwelling on the moment i had joined the game's discord late 2020. i was enthusiastic to see something like it, due to my own love and adoration for love-de-lic and Moon. the initial teaser of the world let me know that it wasn't a matter of if but when i'd visit it. and 2023.
the weight of Moon as inspiration, as not only work but thematic to be iterated upon, i think could be tremendous. it's a dark game about care, about care that you as the player invest into the game -- and in the end it challenges that very care you cultivated and rebounds it back towards you cruelly: are you giving the world outside these artificial & linear ends the same amount of love?
and that's a lot of weight, for 1997, back when games were a burgeoning medium. it's a game that says these binary constructions can only contain so much -- but your love is infinite. these digital delights have predetermined ends. and that's a thing that no other game has really tried to formalize. Moon exists in a medium where these metatextual moments are often of form but hollow. games don't tend to say things. nier can delete your save. horror games can make you think there is a virus in your pc. even narrative games with multiple endings don't reflect your intent -- endings are content to be seen regardless of canonicity. nothing really is a mirror back at you saying, "... and?"
i won't talk too much about the mechanics of 24 Killers -- it's a rich unfolding of a world a la key and lock and the more you unlock the more locks will be revealed for you, and so on. the narrative core is that you are an echo in this world's narrative: an isolated spirit from the void where there is nothing at all let alone love. your awakening into the world is a violent one -- you're angry clay, mad at moon for sculpting you into the silhouette of man.
moon asks you to cure yourself of a "curse" by helping the residents of the island while moon, in her celestial role, prepares to birth a new universe, as is customary, as is implied is the way of things. moon is at times suspicious and dogmatic but always caring and eventually you realize this space is the continuity and there's no twist or curve upcoming. the 24 killers were soldiers and others on the island who were mutated and in their loneliness alike you as an echo find yourself within them and their friendship materializes you. to be a curse is to be away from others and the bonds that connect people. the bonds therefore break the curse. not really a curse then... but the desire for home that everyone has innately. to be at home. to be loved.
and the husbandman emphasizes this to you, too, if you haven't realized it yet. you see, 24 Killers iterates on moon by saying that things matter even if they are a story. come, let's retell this story once more, and again, ten times and so on. let us make friends once more with these killers. because the care that we invest into these spaces is a reflection back onto us no matter what. and that even if these are stories hardcoded to chips and so on, so what? they make you smile, don't they?