Sophia & The Inaugural Review-a-thon

[sophia (Sophia de Augustine)]

(Above is a predominantly pink banner, reading ‘review-a-thon, Sophia, 2024.’ It is decorated as a collage, prominently featuring a central pair of sunglasses, dried floral accents, and kittens.)

Tabitha has organized the inaugural Review-a-Thon, (more information here). I was pretty excited to see some familiar faces, and games, even, in the assortment up for our perusal. As a reminder, it’s for a charitable cause- so feel free to hop in and join the fun as a reviewer, or perhaps generously sponsor some of the meowmeows volunteering their time to the effort.

INDEX

• How to Make Eggplant Lasagna (With Cats!)
• Kiss of Beth
• Remembrance

[sophia (Sophia de Augustine)]

How To Make Eggplant Lasagna (With Cats!)

I don’t think anyone who knows me is particularly surprised that this would be the first game on the list that I would gravitate towards. I’ve generally quite enjoyed games by this talented duo, and was excited to see that this game would have mention of cute little cats- the occasional pictures and updates of which we sometimes receive, happily.

It’s a very cute premise. I liked the thoughtful addition of the About page, as it’s often helpful when examining games past their initial release, to see the context of the events they were made for. And it’s good to know that those sweet, silly little kitties don’t actually get into too much trouble in the kitchen- that could be rather dangerous, after all!

The UI is straightforward enough, and ugly-cute in the ketchup and mustard-esque color choices in a way that doesn’t make me immediately grimace as a less muted selection of red/yellow might’ve. The handwriting font was a very cute touch- that with the way the passages are set up brings to mind recipe cards, which is perfectly suited for the game.

The writing is sweet, and gently irreverent, in the casually exasperated manner all pet owners are sure to be familiar with- we love our little creatures, but they certainly can be a bit of a handful sometimes, even if they are the cutest most precious little babies in the whole wide world ever. I was charmed from the get go with the prose, and I can think of exactly the kind of cat that Boris is, from his description as “the bigger (and dumber) of your two cats, but despite having the body of a black fuzzy cinder block he also has the soul of a small Victorian orphan.” What a sweetie.

I love both of the cats, and their owner’s love for them clearly shines through, but I do have to admit, I have a particular fondness for Boris. “You should have remembered that despite being an obligate carnivore, he’s an absolute fiend for carbs!” Me too buddy, me too. It’s a fun, silly little romp, with a bit of replay value- though I got a good ending on my first whirl when it first came out, despite finding it difficult to not simply give in to their adorable feline shenanigans.

I thought this at the time, and it still stands, that playing the game reminded me quite a lot of herding around a small baby/clumsy little toddler underfoot while cooking: chaotic, difficult to resist their cute charm, and needing to know when to cut your losses or drive a hard bargain for the sake of their safety. Seriously, kids have the darnedest habit of ramming into trouble face first at the slightest opportunity- and while I’ve never had a pet cat, the game makes me feel like there might be more overlap between shepherding a baby and shepherding some kitties than I thought at first!

The game gives you sensible options, that make sense for the obstacles the kitties throw up, (so there isn’t any issue of moon logic or not feeling as if it would be realistic for the player, or character, to do), and the scoring system behind the scenes was well done, in that I did feel like it posed just enough of a challenge to get a good ending that it wasn’t too easy, but wasn’t too difficult that I was unwilling to attempt, or theoretically retry it. It has a very gentle, pleasant quality to the writing, and is a lovely way to spend a small bite of time: it feels precisely the size it needs to be for what it sets out to achieve.

[sophia (Sophia de Augustine)]

Kiss of Beth

Charm Cochran is one of my favourite authors in the interactive fiction scene, and this is yet another game I had originally played some time ago. Their particular penchant for body horror, and delving into a headspace of reluctant complicity in the vile acts on screen, are nauseating, in the most complimentary way possible. It’s always exciting to see that Charm has released something.

While Martyr Me was the first Charm title I played, I had actually been curious about Kiss of Beth, since it’s fun to see how an author’s voice can develop over time, and how stylistic choices or repeated themes and motifs might simmer in their body of work as a whole. Kiss of Beth feels very much so like a Charm Cochran work- gut wrenching unease, immersing the reader as both unwilling participant and horrified voyeur, done very stylishly in a somewhat conversational way.

What really resonates with me and Charm’s work is the feeling as if you’ve just been a witness to a very terrible thing confessed to you by a dear friend- whose desperation and fear is infectiously radiating off of the page. The first inklings of Charm’s style were firmly rooted in this piece, and it’s cool to reflect back on how they’ve both grown, and stayed true to what I’ve come to feel are hallmarks of their style.

Kiss of Beth makes me feel slimy, when I play it. Beth is inscrutable, and terrifying in the way of an unpredictable, wild animal: while your mind boggles at even the idea of what comes to her as easily as second nature, there’s a very palpable, tense feeling of being in abject danger of being the next to meet a grisly fate at her hands. The tension in the uneasy deal Beth and her roommate have made is fragile, and in its fragility, is far more scary than it would be, if Beth were to attack the player on screen in gruesome terror.

Like many of Charm’s works, while they don’t shy away from the physicality of horror, (as Martyr Me certainly demonstrates), the most stomach turning quality is the psychological, the complicity- forcing the reader to confront what they’ve participated in, driven the characters to do: by your hand, so the story unfolds, and reluctant as you are, you can’t help but race along to read, hoping desperately, and futilely, that there will be a happier ending. Much of Charm’s works are bleak, but in nearly a mundane take on dystopia: the worst has come to pass, and yet you persist, and yet you must go on: to endure the horrors and still be expected to continue as if nothing at all is out of the ordinary.

Sure, being responsible for feeding the abomination that is your roommate is scary. Your roommate is scary, some supernatural man eater that is this close to munching on your legs instead of whatever hapless sod you feed her to save your own skin. But the true horror is in realizing the kind of person you are defining yourself as, through your (in)action: that you did have choices, even if they were miserable choices, even if they were still bad choices, and yet you took the easier way out, at the selfish expense of others.

In a grim sort of way, your instinct for survival can be compared to Beth’s compulsion to feed, both brutal, both selfish, and you two are entangled in a horrid dance: she lets you live so long as you continue to ensure she’s fed, while pieces of your sense of self wither away, flaking rot. Alive, but at what cost? Are you who you were before this happened? Would the you before Beth be able to look at you with anything other than dawning recognition of a very different, but equally monstrous person?

I would definitely suggest playing this alongside Martyr Me to enjoy two adjacent flavours of the same source of horror. Kiss of Beth, for the terror of inaction, and Martyr Me, for the terror of action: both of which ask- are you made equally monstrous, by what you’ve done?

Charm doesn’t disappoint.

[OverThinking (Charm Cochran)]

Thank you so much for this, Sophia! It’s an honor.

[sophia (Sophia de Augustine)]

Remembrance

Remembrance is a straightforward game, and delivers its premise well: your mother is dead, and you only have room to take one keepsake with you. It walks you through the various options, the significance that they hold for you, though what exactly your mother had intended when passing them along- you can only speculate on. Fragments of your life bubble up in recall as you handle them, trying to make what feels like an impossible decision.

Ultimately, any of them will serve their intended function just fine, but the lingering questions that you will never quite know the answer to- what did your mother mean to impart with each gift? What were her expectations wound up in them- on how they would be used, on the kind of person you would become if you lived up to them or not? How would things differ, if you had made a different choice?

Does any of it matter? Does it really matter if you’re tormenting yourself with the what-ifs and could-bes, if ultimately, she’s still dead? Even from beyond the grave, she picks and picks and picks at your confidence, your ability to trust in yourself: that no matter how badly things go, you will persist: that if you fuck up, at least the mistakes were yours to make, alone.

That powerful sense of ownership is precariously in the balance, as the protagonist grapples with a profound disconnect between their mother and themselves: struggling to even know in what image their mother would have had them made, if they have the capacity to even strive towards it- or if they were always doomed to disappoint her, even in her funerary rites.

The protagonist is alone- left only with the phantom of her mother’s words haunting them, the snarled threads of their relationship to in turn fuss and nitpick over, trying desperately to find answers when there are none: whatever did exist, died with their mother. Whatever relationship they had, or might have had: it’s all over, now. What’s been said and been done has come to pass.

They have to live with the aftermath now: it’s all up to them, profoundly alone- and yet free, of the weight of the complexities of their maternal relationship. There is still life to live, once the immediacy of grief isn’t quite as crushing. They can still figure out the kind of person they want to be, and already are.

The game ends on what is ultimately a hopeful note, and it felt like a really beautiful tie to end the story. Whatever comes, the protagonist is ready, even if they’re still unsure if they really are. Science fiction is, to me, often at its best, when it abstracts the everyday far enough away from our experiences so that we’re able to confront it without reflexively shying away. A little distance makes it easier to face. The story is constructed with all the usual expectations- space travel, space ships, but ultimately, is a story about a very human, fraught relationship, and the future the protagonist is moving towards. Very bittersweet. Well worth a play.