Unnecessary Backstory
When I was but a wee baby child (and by that I mean 13-14 or something) I played Slouching Toward Bedlam. I think I found it on Jayisgames along with others like Suveh Nux and Violet. Unlike the others, though, Slouching Toward Bedlam is the one I was absolutely enamored with. Heavy symbolism, strange conspiracy, occult religion, clever metanarrative, and poetry, poetry by my favorite poet no less! The game made my head churn with new possibilities for what games could do, and made me interested in playing and even possibly making IF.
Also unlike the others, Slouching Toward Bedlam is the only game I hadnât replayed in the many years since first playing it. Iâve played many IFs multiple times, especially those old first games I discovered, as theyâve all imprinted themselves on my psyche some way or another. But as my social and progressive awareness grew, I became more and more wary of touching this one again. I wanted it to sit, beautiful, awe-inspiring, pristine, in my memory; I didnât want to replay the 2003 game about Bedlam Hospital and magical insanity since I suspected that with my awareness nowadays, I would see it as reprehensibly ableist.
But I recently bit the bullet and got myself to play it once more. Here are my thoughts.
My actual thoughts
Ableism
content warnings: ableism obviously, suicide discussion
The good news is to me this game isnât reprehensibly ableist, at least not more so than stories nowadays are (for ex: Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners and its depiction of âcyberpsychosisâ) (if you argued that many stories nowadays are still reprehensibly ableist, I could see that argument though). Like, I deffo think itâs ableist, but itâs not âquit experiencing the story and scream into a pillow because of how insulting it is to me and people I knowâ levels. I guess thatâs a low bar! And maybe for other people it doesnât actually pass that bar, but Iâm definitely biased in its favor because of all that nostalgic shine.
Now, why do I think itâs ableist? To be clear, I donât think that stories set in mental institutions, even Bedlam, are inherently going to be ableist. If you think critically about the stereotypes regarding people who get thrown in said institutions (such as schizophrenic people - a comparison explicitly drawn by the game) and eschew them in favor of depicting mental disabilities in a sympathetic and nuanced light; If youâre mindful of both your portrayals of disabilities and the people in your audience who might have those same disabilities; and If youâre drawing from a knowledge base of personal experience, a lot of research, and/or sensitivity editors to taste, a mental institution could be a great way for you to explore powerful themes about disability and how itâs treated.
Slouching Toward BedlamâŚdoes not really do that. Sure, the PC donât actually have schizophrenia, they just have a magical God-touched affliction that looks exactly like stereotypical schizophrenia. And they (and Cleve) have most of the same symptoms you can find in the DSM criteria for the disorder. And several endings require them to become an erratic and unpredictable murderer, one of the biggest, most harmful stereotypes about schizophrenic people out there. Hell, the murders are so erratic that often first-time players donât realize that theyâre killing some dude until the deed is done!
I do think that the PC and Cleve are depicted sympathetically. Their reasons for what happened are understandable, their vain attempts not to spread the Logos are admirable and for me at least, had me invested in their tragedy. But depicting a person sympathetically is different from depicting a person with a mental disability sympathetically. When the Logos overtakes them, theyâre seen as horrifying, repulsive, not even human anymore. If you have the Logos, youâre supposed to either lock yourself away in an institution or kill yourself-- to save humanity, you know. Commit suicide, person-with-something-that-looks-identical-to-psychosis! For the greater good!
It still was replayable and enjoyable for me despite this egregious issue, but I donât have schizophrenia, and I am sure if I did, I would think differently.
The Other ism
The uh, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life thing isnât great? Then again, this is a story centered around a poem from Yeats, the guy who was part of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, so it is in flavor. Just wanted to note that.
The Gameplay
The other problem with this game is that wow does it show its age with regards to design sensibilities. People have spoken on how unpolished and even unfinished it seems nowadays, with sort of tossed in puzzles, so I wonât belabor this point, but hereâs some design issues I encountered on this replay:
- I think I figured it out the first time I played, but this time I couldnât figure out in fiction what words I was supposed to say to the cabbie to get him to take me anywhere. The hint system lists two other locations, Newgate and Smithfield, so I used that metaknowledge, but I had no idea how I was supposed to find their names or that I should go to them out in game.
- Thereâs no impetus to go anywhere or do anything when you start up in the office. Youâre just supposed toâŚexplore? Because thatâs what you do in parsers, I guess?
- James mentions that you put the Cleve file away yourself. Why do you spend a chunk of the game trying to solve a puzzle to retrieve it then? Shouldnât you know how to do that? A lot of the game is learning things that the PC already knew, for some reason. You could say, âoh, well, maybe itâs not the PC anymore, itâs just The Logos and thatâs why youâve got no memoriesâ, but in return I would say, thatâs contradicted by some of the Appendixes and I would think that playing The Logos would result in a very different game. This felt like a big structural issue and bothered me a lot; it didnât seem to be considering the fictional conceit in earnest.
And a few bugs:
- Thereâs nothing at all written for the brief mode for the Walkway or Circular Chamber in Bedlam so I spent like 2 hours thinking the game was broken for those rooms and trying to find a build that wasnât messed up.
- The game crashed multiple times on attempting to type âx viewerâ in the Circular Chamber.
- The game spells W.B. Yeatsâ name as Yeates. Weird when thatâs the guy who wrote the poem the game is named after!
- The PC gets in the cab automatically but not out of the cab automatically. That was annoying.
What I like about it, even now
Iâll admit, I still have a fondness for this game, if at least for the sake of 13ish y/o me, starry-eyed and full of wonder at what it showed me. I think that its world is evocative and haunting in its descriptions. The usage of The Second Coming for dramatic and aesthetic effect is *chefâs kiss* and as I said, I was moved by the PCâs and Cleveâs futile efforts to contain the Logos in both the gameplay and the Appendixes. The little human touches revealed only after your murders, like Jamesâ letter opener being engraved with his name, hurt my heart. And the thing that really got my brain churning when I first replayed it, the usage of metafictional elements like >undo and >restart as secretly part of the plot, I still find incredibly brilliant in both idea and execution.
After I replayed, I discussed with some people (who had more or less played it) and I couldnât stop thinking about what a Slouching Toward Bedlam game would look like with modern design sensibilities and more polish. Would there be less random amnesia and more interesting choice regarding whether to use The Logos? What would more compelling goals be than âTo get the best ending, kill yourself instantlyâ? How could those metafictional plot elements be pushed in an even more interesting way? Ultimately, obviously, itâs better to let sleeping sphinxes lie, but it feels poetic that the game that helped get me on this IFiction design path in the first place has inspired my design brain again (even idly).
Though Iâm sad that itâs lost most of its lustre for me now, I ultimately think it was good to replay it. And Iâm thankful for what it did for me, all those years ago.