Fascism - Off Topic
You need some inside knowledge to get this joke. I at first didn’t have the inside knowledge, but then I searched the forum for other reviews of this game… and that gave me the inside knowledge that I lacked! Because there is no way that it is a coincidence that on this forum, there is a thread called Fascism - Off Topic. Our author must have been tickled by that title. When, exactly, is fascism off-topic? When is it on-topic? What about some guy who is tormented by this question? Who is sitting there, just dying to talk about fascism, but unfortunately the conversation around him is about something else, and so his interjections about far-right politics are always off-topic?
Friend: “This Indian restaurant serves some pretty good vegetarian food!”
Guy: “You know who also was vegetarian?”
Friend: “Oh no, here we go again…”
This, but then as a Glulx game! Irresistible, of course. I fully understand the desire, nay, the necessity to make a game about a dude who is sitting in the metro listening in to an unknown couple having a fairly disastrous fight about infidelity, and wondering at which moment it could be just, just conceivably on-topic to inform them about the nature of fascism! Turns out that there’s no right moment. There are moments when it is on-topic, but, you know, it’s still not the right moment. There is no right moment for lecturing unknown people in the middle of a life crisis about the nature of fascism.
It’s a funny joke. The game is sloppy, with many obvious commands not understood (including ‘sit’ and ‘stand’). But look, it’s a throwaway joke. It’s one of those old games that you could only understand if you had been spending most of your free time on IFMud and the newsgroups, and which otherwise meant nothing. I’m glad it got made.