Thanks, but I don’t remember asking by Mea Murukutla
I found this game disorienting at first, to the point that I almost stopped playing. I was confused about both the situation and the location (and still am about the latter to some degree, even after re-reading—I’m not sure where the chapel, school, and volleyball courts all are in relation to each other… or why there’s a stage outside?). So initially I was more frustrated than intrigued—but when I read on I discovered that there’s a good reason for the disorientation, and suddenly it became quite compelling.
Unfortunately, the story didn’t live up to its promise for me; I never got enough of a sense of the wider world to understand the stakes for the NPCs, and they weren’t developed enough for me to be invested in their fates. I didn’t understand why they became fixated on the PC after discovering the journals; there was an escalation there that I couldn’t see a reason for. I also never felt much for/about the PC. Her circumstances reminded me of the film Memento, but what makes that movie so good IMO is that the protagonist has a goal that he’s deeply passionate about. Here, the PC has no goal beyond maintaining her status quo—and she is able to achieve that very easily.
I also had some quibbles about the writing; the dialogue was stilted at times, and the tense randomly switched between past and present. Finally, it would be nice if there was a “restart” button at the end; as-is, in order to replay you have to close and re-open the game.
I do feel like there’s something interesting to be said about gender in the game—the PC is a woman, as was her former lover, and the sole female NPC in the story has a different fate than the two male ones. Unfortunately, I’m too tired right now to articulate anything intelligent on that front. 