Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha

This game was submitted to the 2024 Queer Vampire Jam, and while on the surface it’s not about queerness at all, vampirism is a clear metaphor for queerness in the story. It centers on a family gathering, where the Vietnamese protagonist’s parents, grandparents, aunt, and uncle have all come together for the yearly Tết celebration. The topic of vampirism comes up at the dinner table, and when the relatives begin to disparage this disruptive new “cult”, your options are to laugh along, stay silent, or try to push back. Efforts to do the latter are brushed off, and sentiments like “Just imagine if that happened in this family!” and “I wouldn’t mind it if only they would just be quiet about it” continue.

It’s soon revealed that the protagonist, Nha, is herself a vampire—and that her parents are aware of this, but rather than defend their daughter, they’d prefer to maintain a charade of being normal, respectable people in order to avoid any embarrassment. This comes to the fore when Nha, called out for not eating anything, is coerced into taking a few bites and immediately feels sick and retreats to the bathroom. Her father comes to the door and reminds her that he and her mother just want what’s best for the family, that everyone has to compromise and make sacrifices and this is no different, that Nha owes this to her relatives because of all they’ve done for her.

Internally, Nha acknowledges how much it hurts to have the people she loves be unknowingly bigoted toward her, and how unfair the situation is. She pushes back on her dad’s demands, but is only met with more of the same arguments. Ultimately, she gives up and gives in, ending the game by yanking out her fangs with pliers. Her painful, bloody removal of this vital yet socially undesirable part of herself is a painfully visceral image that echoes the real-world pressure some queer people face to change who they are for the sake of others.

I played this one a few weeks ago now, and I’m not going to talk about the puzzles or gameplay or implementation at all, because I know other people will cover them and they aren’t what stuck with me. What I remember about this game is the sense of inevitability; you will progress, you will go onward (you don’t navigate with directional commands, just “forward”), deeper into this cave system, closer to your fate.

What is the fate that awaits you at the end, and why are you being compelled toward it? These are questions that arise early on, as I wondered why the PC, accompanied by two guards as well as someone called “the heir” who seems to be their lover, was being brought to this place with no say in the matter. There’s clearly a purpose to it, one the heir fully believes in; we don’t know what the PC thinks.

The guards start out derisive, disgusted by the PC (again for reasons unknown), but as you progress, a transformation begins. (Spoiler - click to show)You start falling apart, skin peeling away, fluids oozing out—and your companions transform too, in their attitude toward you, the guards becoming fawning and worshipful, wanting to taste your leavings, while the heir grows near-ecstatic. We’re leading up to something, to a conclusion, a revelation… except not, because the game ends before bringing any of this together; it’s another “Part 1” situation, weirdly common in this comp, but this one didn’t warn about that in the front matter, so I had no idea that it wasn’t a complete work in itself (okay, looking back at the comp page just now, there is a “Part 1: The Descent” subtitle [which here on IFDB is part of the blurb, making it even clearer], but in my defense the placement and formatting of the subtitles on that page has led my eyes to skip over them, so I hadn’t noticed it before). So while there’s certainly an interesting setup here, sadly it doesn’t go anywhere in this piece.

An edited version of a review originally posted at intfiction.org on September 24, 2025

I... did not enjoy this game, for multiple reasons. One was that it's buggy; it frequently referenced choices I hadn’t made and items I didn’t have with me. But much more significant was that it’s gross toward its female characters, including playing the idea of sexual assault for laughs.

BERT: Who has the gold?
SEWARD: The King. It is well-guarded, in the castle.
CICILIA: As is my sister. [...] I guess she was the beautiful one.

Cicilia later elaborates, "Every maiden, when she comes of age, must present herself at the castle. Some never return." And later we get very explicit clarification:

BERT: Is she being violated, there?
CICILIA: Of course.

However, Cicilia is not actually particularly concerned about her sister; she's more focused on aggressively flirting with the PC and fretting that she wasn't being beautiful enough to be taken. Besides the cavalier treatment of the sister being kidnapped, this is a case of a female character being written shallowly to prop up the male protagonist (who, frankly, has done nothing to deserve her attention except... be from the 21st century).

She winks. Is she flirting or suggesting that…
CICILIA: She’s the most beautiful girl in the village, you know. And unmarried. Unsullied. We think. A Wizard for a husband! What girl should be so lucky?
BERT: Are you trying to seduce me on behalf of your…
CICILIA: Legs like this!
CICILIA lifts her skirts.

Overall, I found the story and the main character actively unpleasant. His attitude made sense at the beginning, while he was being treated like crap at a miserable retail job, but he's also a total asshole to his mom and friends. He then gets rewarded with the opportunity to become a hero in a poorly-realized version of the medieval era. Very much not a game for me.

The opening of this one had me intrigued, with the PC waking up with amnesia on a boat surrounded by five shadow-selves. You have to travel to five islands to get back your memories, which for the player means gaining more and more of an understanding of this world and what led the protagonist to be in this situation. Sadly, I can't say I fully enjoyed this process--the PC is a pretty unpleasant person, and unluckily for me, the first island I picked had gameplay that fell afoul of Brian Rushton's “a perfect simulation of a boring or annoying situation is boring or annoying” wisdom. Made to complete a series of repetitive tasks, the PC becomes angry at the NPC giving the orders; meanwhile, I became frustrated at the game for simulating tedium too well.

I'm not sure if I was meant to empathize with the PC once I got the full story. (Spoiler - click to show)Basically, the presence of gods and spirits in the human world started giving people a nasty illness that makes them deteriorate and fall apart... and the PC decided that the best way to do that was to defeat and drive them out forever. I had a lot of questions, though, like--did anyone try talking to the spirits about this? Did anyone investigate to learn why this was happening and if anything less drastic could be done about it? Because of my lack of conviction that the PC's course of action was the right one, I didn't feel aligned with his goals during the climactic ending section(Spoiler - click to show), and certainly wasn't happy when he inevitably triumphed.

It is very possible that I missed or overlooked some crucial piece of the story; after encountering that tedious section, I was somewhat disengaged from the rest of the game. I'm interested in reading more reviews to see what others make of this one.