One Final Pitbull Song (At the End of the World) (Paige Morgan)
Played on: 1st October
How I played it: On the IFComp site via Opera
How long I spent: 2 hours to read the first five chapters
Content warning: this game features extreme violence, gore and sex. I haven’t written about this content in the review.
We’re starting off IFComp in style, with a horror-comedy written in the Harlowe engine for Twine which I did not manage to finish in the 2-hour judging limit. The player-character TeeJay is arrested along with her ex and thrown into prison, where they, along with dozens of other prisoners, are forced to investigate a deep deep hole that’s opened up in the prison yard. Also, it’s 60,000 years in the future and the only culture that still exists is bootlegs of Pitbull songs.
I liked this one a lot. The worldbuilding concept is immediately funny, and One Final Pitbull Song (let’s call it OFPS) absolutely commits to the bit. It also introduces some interesting concepts with regards to narration, establishes a failing romance in the opening chapter, and sticks you in the middle of a heist scene. Later on, it brings in themes of transgender experiences and satirises the prison-industrial complex. OFPS has given itself a lot to do.
I wonder if maybe it’s a little too much! The tone veers around a lot in the opening couple of chapters, juddering between serious explorations of its motifs and really goofy worldbuilding and nudges to the audience. Because there’s so much to do so quickly, I think a couple of established setting and plot points get forgotten here and there. The biggest example I can think of is the introduction of Frankie, who accuses TeeJay of being an undercover cop in one scene and then offers to help TeeJay lay her hands on some drugs in the next without any apparent moment of trust-building. The jokes are funny enough, and the character work (especially between TeeJay and her ex Samuel) is strong enough that it’s hard to mind, but OFPS feels a little scattered at first.
It’s all in service of funnelling the player towards Chapter 3, and getting those characters down that big hole. The “horror” tag is there for a reason; once OFPS gets going, it goes hard. I don’t play a lot of horror because I scare very easily, and this got me very tense and upset (in a good way). OFPS has a few tricks up its sleeve with multimedia and text effects, used sparingly enough to catch you off-guard; but it also has a couple of just very upsetting scenes in it. It’s written well, and I was carried by the momentum of the writing even when I wanted to stop. I think two scenes in particular are going to stay with me for a while: one for being genuinely nightmarish, and the other for being probably the grossest thing I’ve ever read in anything. You’ll know it when you read it.
(The use of text effects and certain thematic elements put me in mind of House of Leaves. I don’t know if the author will take that as a compliment or a grave insult, but just to be clear, I mean it in a nice way. I love House of Leaves.)
OFPS is very linear, which isn’t a complaint. This is one of those Twine games which needs Twine for its text effects and little asides rather than for major story branching. (I think there is some story branching, based on how the chapter select screen looks, but it’s not obvious to me how my choices came into play.) But there is something going on with choice as a theme. TeeJay and other characters lament the difficulty of making decisions throughout the game, and admire others for their decisiveness. Minor choices such as what side to have with your meal are framed as pivotal decisions, and are followed with a sense of dread.
An interesting companion piece might be The Light in the Forest, a good game I played in this year’s Spring Thing which I can’t remember if I published a review for or not. That game similarly uses Twine to explore choices through the point of view of a trans character with trauma, simulating her decision paralysis by overwhelming the player with dozens and dozens of useless links during a scene where she just wants to make lunch. OFPS doesn’t pull the same trick, but I think it’s playing with Twine in a similarly interesting way. After certain major events down there in that hole, the nature of the choices you get changes in a way that I’ll hide the spoiler for in the below details tag, but which does a lot to mirror the player character’s mental state and determination.
Okay here’s the spoiler for Chapters 4-5:
You stop getting choices! I’m pretty sure Chapter 5 was entirely linear. TeeJay becomes decisive because she feels like she has to, and that’s mirrored when the player stops getting to dither over choices. Linearity might be dissatisfying in other IF games, but here it’s earned and it’s clever.
I didn’t manage to finish OFPS. The IFComp 2-hour judging limit expired at the end of Chapter 5. I was slowed down a bit by writing review notes, but I think the game is still probably a smidge too long for IFComp. It’s a pity – it was starting to become clear how the themes work together, but I’m not able to write about the game as a whole. There’s a lot I haven’t touched on because I think I needed to see more of it. I’ve barely mentioned whatever’s going on with the narrative voice, which is established early in the opening passage and never mentioned again, but which is still there if you look for it. Also, again, this is set in a post-acopalyptic world which runs on memories of Mr. Worldwide. That’s easy to forget once the game gets scary, but it’s not nothing.
I can’t yet vouch for OFPS as a whole until I see the ending, but I can definitely recommend the first five chapters. OFPS is imaginative, pretty funny, and tons of fun to power through. That said, I think I’m ready for a cosy half-hour puzzler now.
I just took another look at the playlist in the game’s blurb on the IFComp ballot. Okay, that’s pretty good.