CW for Analogue: A Hate Story: torture, sui*, spousal abuse, gaslighting, child death, incest, alcoholism
A weird echo of Digital: A Love Story with a really unfortunate and poorly researched attempt to make a feminist game that barely even reaches the capacity of second-wave feminism. I played this at launch and then replayed recently for KRITIQAL's game club. What this game expresses about when and why patriarchy exists or the fact that it's told in this strange grab bag of feudal Korean "Asian stuff" is bewildering to me now as it was then. The ratio of logs to character interactions makes the historical narrative, the characters themselves (why is there both a direct prompt system and a push notification thing?), and dramatic setup for the player character on the dead ship feel completely flat. The route split happens before there is any space for either character to make more sophisticated thoughts and arguments about the game's core moral dilemma and it feels like the game shoots a better or more concise thought before anything can take off. There's some exciting stuff here in the UI that I just like more over in Digital where I don't have to deal with this strange cynnical "aren't you completely compromised picking a girl in the game where there are only route choices centered around the women" thing here.
A weird echo of Digital: A Love Story with a really unfortunate and poorly researched attempt to make a feminist game that barely even reaches the capacity of second-wave feminism. I played this at launch and then replayed recently for KRITIQAL's game club. What this game expresses about when and why patriarchy exists or the fact that it's told in this strange grab bag of feudal Korean "Asian stuff" is bewildering to me now as it was then. The ratio of logs to character interactions makes the historical narrative, the characters themselves (why is there both a direct prompt system and a push notification thing?), and dramatic setup for the player character on the dead ship feel completely flat. The route split happens before there is any space for either character to make more sophisticated thoughts and arguments about the game's core moral dilemma and it feels like the game shoots a better or more concise thought before anything can take off. There's some exciting stuff here in the UI that I just like more over in Digital where I don't have to deal with this strange cynnical "aren't you completely compromised picking a girl in the game where there are only route choices centered around the women" thing here.