(Is anyone else mind-poisoned enough from Why Pout that you keep reading this title as “gnome oar”? Or is it just me? 
)
4 | LGG | NO MORE
4 | LGG | NO MORE
by: alyshkalia
Progress:
- I reached the end in about 8 minutes.
Engagement with Horror Genre:
- I would describe this piece as “queer/feminist revenge horror.” There’s an interesting strain in horror that’s a kind of wish-fulfillment revenge fantasy. In real life, abusers often continue their abuse without accountability, and if justice does arrive, it’s often deferred, delayed, or otherwise incomplete. In this story, “father” is not only an abusive patriarch, but also he occupies a position of religious authority, exactly the kind of figure who is unlikely to be stopped from abuse due to the social hierarchies involved. When the protagonist is imagining the illustrations they saw earlier, it’s strongly implied to be sexual in nature (Oh the horror! A woman, reading about sex? In a book? It’s more likely than you think…) which is certainly a queer-coded theme. Becoming a “monster,” too, is a strongly queer-coded story element. And it doesn’t feel like much of a coincidence here that a werewolf is the monster du jour (…de la nuit?) given cultural associations between the moon and menstruation. What Father is so opposed to is, essentially, a woman powerful enough to stop him and silence him. Over the course of the short narrative, the agency of the player grows and grows until we fully take over.
Things I Appreciated:
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This game has really well-implemented descriptions. For instance, describing the lantern as “A wrought iron cage for a flame” feeds back thematically into the story. I particularly liked the descriptions of sound and motion—despite being stuck in a carriage for the entire story, the motion of the carriage as it jostles about gives the impression of a dynamic space.
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As I commented briefly above, I like the progression in the sense of agency at the story. At first, I felt like when I tried to do just about anything, Father would stop me. A few times, I just used the “wait” command because it didn’t seem like there was much to do, so it made me wonder if I was meant to get through a certain number of turns for an event to occur. However, this was not the answer: I had to think more about what I could do and keep trying. This made the transformation feel a lot more satisfying, because it wasn’t handed to me by a turn-timed event. I had to discover my agency, and my character’s power grew as a result of my own observations and will.
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I of course, love a story where I get to be the “monster.” (And the “normal” human is, you know, the Real Monster™). You might as well call this a WerewolfApologist narrative! I know that “queer people identifying with fictional monster characters” is probably a well-known concept at this point, and I could write heaps of paragraphs on why I’m like this
, but I don’t want to clutter up this response too much, so suffice it to say that this really is my kind of story.
Miscellaneous Comments:
- I had an interesting experience with the twist, because the cover art alone primed me to think I was in a werewolf narrative. I tried a few ways to get the game to give me a description of the illustration I was remembering to confirm my suspicion, which didn’t seem to work. I was just slightly disoriented by the task of trying to figure out how to get a parser game to give me a description of an object in my memory that is not physically present in the space. One of the things I typed in was “become werewolf,” which didn’t work, but essentially was the solution (I just had to figure out how to do that). The reason I put this section here is because it’s really the only time that I had any kind of parser questions, and it certainly wasn’t enough to hold me back from finishing and enjoying the narrative.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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Really, the precision and beauty of short-form parser content that is well-polished. I spent very little actual time with this game, but there was a density and richness to that experience because of the level of detail. This was well-conceived and played out in a compelling way. I personally don’t write much short form content (nor have I ever attempted to write a parser game) but this game really helps me imagine how those two genre/form elements can work together well.
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Each line of description is pulling its weight in pointing back to the tone/theme of the piece. This is a different approach than most puzzle games. I would probably not want to “examine shovel” in a puzzle-based parser game because I already know what that is and the game would probably just be like, “It’s an ordinary shovel you can dig with.” If a shovel appeared in this game, I would expect it to say something diabolical like “The last smear of Father’s blood still clung to the blade.” The intimate attention to detail for a small-scale game like this packs a punch.
Memorable Moment:
- When I did, in fact, “become werewolf”.
DemonApologist_NoMore.txt (5.4 KB)