GameCeption (Ruo)
This game is entirely dependent on its plot twists. I can totally imagine someone playing the game and thinking “ZOMG!!1!” when they happen and being delighted. I, alas, was not that player.
The other game I’ve played so far that is foundationally hinged on its plot twist was ‘Please Sign Here’, and like that game, I felt the rest of the game didn’t support that twist enough, so you end up instead thinking, “Wait, but what about…” and realize that nothing really makes sense. I do think that in general, the ‘but wait…’ instinct tends to only kick in when the rest of the work has already failed on some other level, and your brain is floundering around for something logical to wrap its dislike around. That said, there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense in this game, and I’m going to ruin everything by what-abouting for the rest of this review, so I’m wrapping it in spoiler tags. It’s not particularly necessary to read, it’s mostly just ‘this game didn’t work for me’ in more explicit terms. It didn’t make sense, but I’m not convinced it was supposed to make sense, either; it’s more of a ZOMG-delivery mechanism that either works for you or it doesn’t. That said: spoilers ahoy!
So, the game centers around three plot twists: the first is that Ziyan (the nominal PC) isn’t playing a game with a game avatar based on his partner Airen…he’s actually controlling the REAL Airen! For me, this was somehow obvious even before we got to the ‘playing the game’ part, but also isn’t ever followed up on, or made ‘real’ in the rest of the game:
- Nobody controls Ziyan with a controller when he leaves the building later
- Nobody controls Airen when Ziyan finds him later,
- There’s another duo that’s wandering around outside later together, and neither is controlling the other.
There’s also the more prosaic questions of ‘how on earth did a game company manage to make something that literally controls a real person?’ or even ‘How is killing people for fun tolerated in this society?’ (There’s a throwaway line at the end of the game that nods at an answer for this that I didn’t really believe.)
The next twist is that the answer to ‘who is the player’ isn’t Ziyan nor Airen… it’s YOU! And, I mean, OK? Yes, I’m playing the game? It’s a Twine game in ifComp. Ziyan and Airen don’t exist in my world; they’re in the universe that the author created. LASH and other games have had nods in this direction in the past, but usually there’s some sort of framing story? Which this game didn’t have? Not only that, but it’s Twine, for goodness sake; you don’t really ‘control’ anyone like you would in a parser game or a controller-based game. I picked options off a menu. Who came up with those options? There’s no sense that Ziyan is coming up with options and you’re compelling him to go with one over another. Heck, in the end, the game design is just a classic maze, where if you hit a dead end, you’re sent back to earlier until you successfully navigate it. There is no way that I have a single shred of influence on Ziyan’s life; I’m just here to observe.
The final twist is that a year later, Ziyan unleashes a new game on the world that’s his revenge, and suddenly I AM THE HUNTED. And of all the twists, I liked this the best! Not as Ziyan unleashing the game on me, but on his universe. But again… I’m still playing a Twine game. It’s literally the same Twine game I’ve been playing the whole time. If Ziyan is mad about me controlling him earlier (I guess?) I’m still controlling him, because I’m the one still clicking on links and closing the browser, consigning his entire universe once again to not exist. Even if we consider the idea that Ziyan has somehow enmeshed his whole (city? Country? Civilization?) in his new game, it’s not like there’s anyone out there forcing people to play. Countries still have laws, and it’s still just as illegal to kill people as it was before? And people generally don’t kill each other, because it’s obviously a bad idea? And still, fundamentally, I don’t exist in Ziyan’s universe.
The problem with the game entirely existing as a ZOMG-dispenser is that it misses out on the potentially interesting ramifications of the universe it posits. What would it mean to society if you could pick up a controller and literally pilot your friend around? What would it mean to society if everyone collectively decided that killing other people was fine if it was for the purpose of ‘sport’? What would it mean if the actions I was taking playing a videogame had real-life repercussions in a different universe? None of these questions are asked in the game, much less answered. I kind of feel like they didn’t even seem interesting to the author in the first place. But for me, I can’t really enjoy a game that’s all twist, no filler.
Did the author have something to say? Yes, they had some surprises in a box that they pulled out and threw at me.
Did I have something to do? React to the surprises, with basically no agency.