Wayfarers by Gina Isabel Rodriguez
Playtime: 48 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
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Wow, the writing in this piece is really a standout. The author is a very skilled prose stylist (excellent at putting together sentences, paragraphs, pages).
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This game is dealing with the aftermath (and duringmath?) of war, with a good serving of real versus virtual worlds and the nature of memory and identity.
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the cast is really well-described and packs emotional punches, from the pal who is initially referred to as “Duracell” (who we later learn does nothing but move flailing and send “aaaaaaaaaaaa,” which, I mean, very dark implications there), to salty Ada (“no trigger warnings needed, sweetheart. we know all about evil”)
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I’m not sure I totally understood some of the plot points, although that could certainly either be a flaw in my reading or the intended effect. One reveal is that the sister programmed Ada as a bit of herself to help people envision a future outside the military? But if so, why would Ada be programmed to mysteriously vanish in a way that makes the PC consider seeking her out by re-upping with the military?
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OK, tangent alert, but I’m fascinated by poetry translation (all the same challenges as prose translation but even more so, because each word is doing so much). I’d read the Machado poem before, and I think I’ve seen the addressee (in Spanish “caminante”) translated variously as wayfarer, wanderer, and traveler. It’s just interesting to consider those—I don’t know nearly enough about Spanish to have an opinion, but I think if the game-within-the-game here were called “Travelers” or “Wanderers” it would give me a different vibe.
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I enjoyed the scene with the sky background.
Notable line:
My one fervent wish:
I wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion from others to make saving / loading / undoing / trying all of the paths easier, but in the interest of throwing something new out there:
. . . what if I could play all of the minigames O_o (they have such great titles!)
Overall, a beautifully written, magic-meets-sci-fi story about the effects of war
Gameplay tips / typos
Somewhat ironically, the instructions for restoring from a save trail off “If you would like to continue from a previous save, you can ”