I said I’m working on new games. And I am! D–the protagonist of Repeat the Ending–turns up in each of them, though not necessarily as a protagonist. In planning and writing these works, I’ve wondered: “What will the nice people who have come to like D think?” Will it be good to see D again, or will he be a bit of a disappointment? Perhaps D’s story already feels complete. Why bring him back?
I’m talking about my own misgivings here as a writer, here, and not about anyone else’s work or characters. But I must admit to carrying these anxieties with me (that’s what I do with anxiety) on my recent foray into the GUTverse.
SPILL YOUR GUT
Coral Nulla
spoilers
Whatever happened to GUT ? First they were gonna be the next big obscure indie band. Then they made a horror movie. There was talk of a sequel, but there must’ve been a glitch. I haven’t heard from them since. Where are they now? Could be anywhere. Ah well. Onto the next batch.
GUT THE MOVIE
Coral Nulla
spoilers
GUT THE MOVIE is a thrilling exuberance. The members of a not-terribly-successful rock band, GUT, set out to make a horror movie. They have no money, and the amount of talent in play is up for debate, but they keep getting awarded larger and larger budgets. I clicked through each of the possibilities because it was such a fun read. A very impressive four hour game from 2023.
GUT THE MOVIE 2: GUTTER THE TWOVIES
Coral Nulla
spoilers
An entrant in this year’s Really Bad IF Jam, G2 claims to have been made in four minutes, making it eligible as a “le trés petite mort” game. It also claims to be a multiplayer game. Even though it’s obviously a joke, GUT THE MOVIE 2 manages to get to something I really valued in GUT THE MOVIE: it embodies to me a sort of DIY punk or low-fi aesthetic in which the creative impulse, or joy in creation, is as important as or more important than technical prowess. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying these games are technically incompetent (though G2 deliberately mimics incompetence in the spirit of the Really Bad IF Jam). They just don’t privilege competence over commitment, sincerity, and what I perceive as joy in the creative act itself.
SPILL YOUR GUT [continued]
Coral Nulla
My initial response to SPILL YOUR GUT, having played the three games back to back, was: “I wish these people were happier.” I had come to like them, and that was what I wanted for them. But an author doesn’t owe me or anyone else that. Even if the tone feels radically different, SYG is thematically true to what has come before it.
The title SPILL YOUR GUT implies confession, or at least the disclosure of secrets, and the work can be experienced as “confessional.” I don’t mean this in a John Berryman or Sylvia Plath kind of way, because I don’t have any idea what the author thinks about these characters. I simply mean that the members of GUT are speaking about their interiorities: the first person “I” is used throughout each of their substories, and I experienced a lot of what they had to say as emotionally challenging, difficult.
The experiences of each of the three members are rendered vividly in a visual sense, as they use a striking interface first employed in the Bluebeard Jam (though I’m not familiar with that work). Low-dpi fonts and scrollbars, and high-contrast red, blue, or green artifacts. It isn’t immediately clear what the choices mean, and this is undoubtedly deliberate. Finding their endings requires a bit of metatextual knowingness. All taken in total, the sum effect of these constructions is a kind of bewildered anguish.
Subverting expectations once again, the “Stace” option, which was employed as a jokey ending in GUT THE MOVIE, is used to contextualize everything and introduce genre-specific tropes (spectacular deaths, a monster, etc). This is where the exuberance of GUT THE MOVIE returns, as Jack and Stace one-up each-other in a cycle of increasingly cosmic cartoon violence. Is Jack the author, the god of this fictional world? Is this about the joy of creation, after all? It is hard to say, as there is a breathlessness to Stace’s (Jack’s, really) narrative that might be experienced as joy, but it feels more smirk than smile. Perhaps it is the despair of Moriarty and Holmes tumbling over a cliff. Whatever this conclusion might mean, it manages to engage with the constrained writing situation of the La Petit Morte category in a way that feels additive and significant.
Taken in total, I experienced SPILL YOUR GUT as a continuation of or an elaboration on the series’ valuation of commitment and sincerity, and the spare interface helps reinforce that impression. I’m rather amazed that this came together in four hours; it’s really quite something.