Doppeljobs by Lei
Last year’s For the Cats was a pleasant surprise. I expected it to be a perhaps slightly nauseating game about how cute cats are, but it turned out to be a brief but intriguing exploration of a strange society. Lei had clearly understood the technique of painting such a society through small details and brief hints, which I massively prefer over huge chunks of exposition.
This strength of Lei’s writing is once again shown off, perhaps to even greater effect, by Doppeljobs. The basic idea – a doppelgänger taking on human form so they can perform boring or humiliating tasks for their clients – is already kind of ‘out there’, but as we play we slowly start to realise that this is not our society. Instead, it’s a city built on an infinite fountain of sand probably connected to a mythical serpent; farm animals are made of stone; people watch snake races; and so on. The intriguing game world is one of the two strengths of the game.
The other strength is the tone of the writing. The basic premise is in some ways problematic: how could anyone volunteer to go through boring or humiliating experiences? And if they get paid for it, isn’t it just exploitation? So Lei made a shrewd choice in making our protagonist somebody who, first, doesn’t need money (as he comes from a non-capitalist society that he can always return to) and, second, just infatuated with experiencing all around him. This comes out in the tone of the writing, which is full of an overenthusiastic but disarming appreciation of everything that human life has to offer.
Perhaps the most obvious weakness of the piece is the sloppy editing: the prose is marred by numerous small mistakes, which I found distracting. I hope the author manages to fix this, possibly already during the competition. The choice structure of the game is also somewhat obscure. Your stats change as you perform different jobs, but sometimes there are so many stat changes that it is hard to keep track of them. And I found it hard to understand how to get to different endings. I played pretty cautious the first time and got an ending called “Humanologist”, or something; then I played with wild abandon the second time, exploring everything and attempting to find the sand serpent… and got the same ending.
Overall, though, I found this very enjoyable.