today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games ft. a major character who dies (this is not a spoiler)
Deliquescence by Not-Only But-Also Riley
Playtime: 8 minutes (3 min to first ending)
The one with a: deathbed vigil
(Not tagging spoilers, it’s a very short game if you haven’t played!)
Oof. This game tackles a heavy subject—watching something bad happen to a loved one. You can offer comfort in various ways but you can’t change the outcome.
There’s a strong horror element, focusing on the visceral disturbingness of watching the human body fall apart—a “luminous being” (I’m with Yoda on this one thing) becoming a sack of malfunctioning proteins etc.:
Although, as that pull quote demonstrates, we’re maybe two ticks off from maximum body horror. There is a certain wateriness (as opposed to other bodily fluids) that makes things seem more sanitary than they might otherwise.
There’s also some, err, societal horror beats:
The game is bleak but not in a way that I found soul-destroying, if that makes sense. Your friend seems to have reached a point of grace, and your efforts will let you be present for her in a way that seems to be what she’s asking for.
Nor did the topic feel gratuitous, it felt like it’s reflecting an essential truth: On the day my ticket gets punched I doubt it will be precisely this scenario, but decent odds it will be unpleasant, disgusting, and lonelier than I’d like (quick, where’s the “tell a joke” option? I need to bring up the mood of this review).
As others have noted, good design choice to contrast the length of the available options with the futility of the set-up (sure, you can make conversation on ten different topics, but it’s not going to change the endpoint). I noticed that at least some of the options have multiple possible responses. I will also say there is a lot I didn’t try / wouldn’t want to try—at least for me, “friend’s last 3 minutes” is a scenario where I’m not going to be trying things just to see what happens and there’s a somewhat narrow range of things I want to do. So in that sense the author’s effort in writing responses to a lot of options wasn’t seen by me.
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
Big fan of the title.
Overall, this was definitely an experience–a bite to chew and try to swallow despite the bitterness—and it stirred some thinking. That said it felt a bit short/stubby as an experience and wasn’t quite a “game."