Reviews by MostImmortalSnail

"I have a theory—perhaps it applies only to me, but I believe I’ve seen it in others, too—that the most important determiner of whether someone likes or dislikes something is based on whether its premise innately appeals to them. (Or, similarly, that they find a major character relatable.) A work’s technical quality, uniqueness, narrative consistency, and so on are secondary factors in comparison, and when a reviewer brings up these elements to explain why a work is good or bad, they are typically dancing around the core issue." - From a post I read online.

This game's premise innately appeals to me, and everything else follows from there.

In this lushly written visual novel, you're imprisoned and sentenced to wander a dungeon/"subworld" full of the wicked sovereign's prisoners, dissidents, and other things too dangerous to let loose, all warped by time and subworld-induced evolution into something unrecognizable as human. As far as I'm concerned, this is a perfect concept. I like alien biology, physical and mental transformations, strange worlds with an eldritch mien, and surreal evocations of altered mental states. I like weird fiction, and evidently so does the author, since they listed Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach series as an inspiration for another of their games. Vandermeer helped to cement "weird fiction" as a genre; his writing often deals with otherworlds, strange biology and transcending/losing one's own humanity, themes that show up in this story. The Southern Reach series, especially Annihilation, is a fun read.

Anyway. The IFDB description made me worry the writing would be too dense for me to enjoy, but I found that wasn't the case at all. It helps that this is a visual novel, and the characters have unique voices to set themselves apart. Some are more florid than others, but even when they're somewhat incomprehensible, the actual descriptions of what is happening are always clear.

I wasn't expecting the visual novel part at first, but the sound design and illustrations are fitting. The phrase "visual novel" dredges up images of anime girls, but the characters in this game are bizarre and inhuman and as far from anime girls as they could be. Not that I'm necessarily opposed to anime girls. But I also like out-there character designs that stray from the humanoid, and this game fits that to a T. I particularly like Phenol Red's design; I think the ex-hivedrone's design was the only one I wasn't fond of, maybe because it read as overtly sexual to me in a way that I disliked. The drone's dialogue is funny, though.

The curious thing is that despite the uncanny designs of the characters, you can have brief and compelling moments of intimacy with some of them. Most of these moments involve you being killed. These scenes are sensual without really being explicit, and don't bear much resemblance to real human acts. I find them aesthetically attractive, while someone else might find them grotesque.

For example: one of my favorite scenes is the one where you agree to (Spoiler - click to show)let the madcap labspider Cynie experiment on you: she dismembers you and conditions your disembodied brain into an obedient component of her god-machine. I thought this was lovely. Cynie's even nice enough to restrict her negative reinforcement conditioning to "the approximation of pain" instead of actual pain. How generous of her! (Your tastes may vary.)

Also, shoutouts to (Spoiler - click to show)the "Duchess of Limbs", an eldritch spider who can bind and devour you in a number of tenderly written death scenes. I liked that part too. Even though you die. You win some, you lose some.

The game is tagged "obscene" on Spring Thing. There are some sexual references, but I found the story, on the whole, to be strange and wonderful more than obscene. Who doesn't want to be lovingly dismembered? No one? Just me? --- Well, of course a lot of this nebulous "character appeal" thing can be chalked up to a player's individual idiosyncrasies, but I still personally thought the characters were cool. It helps that Cynie and the ex-hivedrone, probably my least favorite characters design-wise (though I like their dialogues and personalities), weren't characters I encountered during my first playthrough. I wonder if you could analyze the characters as subversions of common "sexy character" tropes: (Spoiler - click to show)slimegirl, spider lady, robot scientist, but with designs that are purposefully alienating and not geared towards fanservice, even as the writing itself still expresses the essential appeal of these characters. Or maybe the lack of standard character appeal is the appeal, for people like me who find those uncanny designs compelling.

The story and characters reminded me a bit of Chandler Groover, actually. Eat Me and Bring Me A Head have a similarly sensual aesthetic of mad rulers and decaying glory.

I can't go this far without mentioning the writing style, too. It's very in media res, with the kind of worldbuilding that offhandedly mentions things and never elaborates on them, weaving mood and atmosphere out of elaborate neologisms and alien concepts. The characters are quirky, Phenol Red and the ex-hive drone talk like terminally online Discord users, while the main character sounds like an apocalyptic Great Awakening preacher. The combination of it all is just exquisitely bizarre. The default font is mildly hard to read, though it did mean I spent more time deciphering the story's lavish sentences and turns of phrase because I couldn't be sure if something was a neologism or just me failing to parse the font.

My main issue with this game is that it's too short, and I mean this as a compliment because I would have been perfectly happy to keep exploring this world for hours. I wanted to see the world aboveground, I wanted to see the main character get their revenge on the sovereign, I wanted to see the incoming apocalypse. The style of this game is unlike anything I've encountered, and I wanted more of it. I think the shortness is a consequence of the many branching paths this story has. The first time I finished it, I thought I'd seen it all, but I played again and met two new characters (Cynie and the hivedrone) the second time. Having played four or five times, it feels like I've finally discovered the flow of events and what you require to get from point A to point B, but there's a lot of thought put into the structure of the story and the logistical flow that went over my head the first time because it works so well. This comes at the cost of having a somewhat abrupt ending, however.

I should also mention that I've had this vague game idea for a while, starring a ruined Bloodborne-esque underground kingdom struck down by a divine miracle and full of failed experiments run amok, a biological cauldron that changes you the longer you stay. The player becomes infected one way or other, and progressively loses their humanity as they search for a way back up. Progress would require dying multiple times in encounters with other denizens; you'd revive each time because the infection makes you immortal... Death and transformation and failed apotheosis. So this game was like seeing a version of my visions realized. Very satisfying.

Edit 4/24: Upping the rating to five stars because I couldn't stop thinking about Cynie. I need to get in her laboratory.

Some knowledge of, or experience with, Autumn Chen's Social Democracy: An Alternate History is ideal for understanding this game. I've hung out in the fan-made Discord server a little, which isn't officially run by the dev although she's in it, and through this I've learned that there was originally a frame story planned for Social Democracy, where the protagonist would be playing as a trans woman in Weimar-era Germany who spends time working on a simulation of German politics and trying to imagine any plausible future where the Nazis don't take power and destroy everything. As development went on, the simulation expanded in scope, and expanded some more, and kept expanding until it swallowed up the fictional context completely and Social Democracy became a pure simulation of politics in 1930s Germany.

Lilac Song evidently brings the frame story back as its own mostly-independent project, no longer inextricably tied up with the weighty and ridiculously popular Social Democracy game. Well, ridiculously popular for a Spring Thing game, at least. It's been fascinating to see the game increase in popularity. There are thousands of people in the Discord server by now, and the subreddit has a fair number of subscribers as well.

But frankly, I left the server a long time ago. In large part this was because I got tired of the political debates people would have. It's a political game, so it's understandable, but I'm not one to discuss politics with other people online. Even seeing other people talk about it can be exhausting, especially when so much negativity is around these days, for highly understandable reasons. Yet no matter how many insults get slung around and how many endless circular arguments get reiterated again and again, it never seems to mean anything. Can disaffected people arguing online have any real impact? All the flamewars always seem empty on some level, frustrations from the powerless, pale imitations of actions that could be performed in the real world by political leadership to stem the seas of blood and yet nothing is happening.

The protagonist of this game wonders if any of her work really means anything, even as she dedicates herself to making the simulation: studying history and economics, reading past and present news, and discussing politics with her employer, Prussian minister Otto Braun. She aspires to make a realistic simulation, one that shines a light on the path forward for German democracy. Of course, the irony of a historical simulation is that the closer it approaches real life, the harder it becomes to change from real life, the harder it becomes to avoid the historical truth. A game like Social Democracy exists in a constant tension between realistically depicting what happened, and giving you the chance to fix it.

"The game's models are imperfect, always approaching reality, never reaching it."

The original Social Democracy is an extremely difficult game; my best attempts ended in civil war and my worst with Hitler in charge of the nation. Could the Social Democratic Party really have succeeded? Was there anything they really could have done? Braun is much vaunted in the Social Democracy fan community for the many ways he can stop fascism in the simulation, even though he failed to stop fascism in real life.

Lilac Song takes place not in an alternate history simulation, but in real life. No matter what happens in the simulation, how many alternate futures you try or fail to spin up, how deeply you investigate and reproduce the systems that led to the Nazis taking power, how much you try to change it, it's only a simulation in the end. Otto Braun refuses to listen to you. You have no actual power; all you can do is watch.

"Do you believe that a game could really save Germany?"

One last note. The cover art, and some of the other art in the game, is by Paul Klee. He was targeted as a Jewish "degenerate artist" in Nazi Germany due to his avant-garde style, and had to flee to Switzerland where he died. He's known for being admired by Walter Benjamin, a German and Jewish philosopher who was also targeted by the Nazis. Benjamin was forced to flee Germany as well, but he left too late. When he learned he would not be allowed to cross the French-Spanish border as a refugee and would be forced to return to Nazi Germany, he killed himself.

I know this mainly because of a funny internet post criticizing one of Paul Klee's drawings for its abstract, avant-garde style compared to Walter Benjamin's lofty description of it, which went viral and spread to several social platforms. The original poster was criticized for their criticism, because it replicated the same line of attack the Nazis used against Paul Klee's art. They proceeded to double down and use AI to generate what they thought was a better version, painted in a sweeping, dramatic, realistic style. Many angry commenters told the original poster to commit suicide.

It's funny to think about all the random stuff people make throughout their lives and how most of it will never be seen or remembered by anyone. On the other hand, no one can know what will truly last. Who's to say something you put online won't be found again a hundred years hence, a thousand years hence, by a society you couldn't even begin to understand? Like Ea-Nasir and his copper.

All this is a roundabout way to say that this game revolves around a completely bonkers concept. Humanity has been completely wiped out, and:

Since this game got me to put those last few sentences into my review, I'd say it's still pretty good.

Though atmospheric, this game is extremely short, and lightly implemented, as can be expected from a SpeedIF. It's supposedly "non-puzzly", but I found there to be a key puzzle in which command you're supposed to execute next; figuring it out is required to beat the game. The puzzle hinges on (Spoiler - click to show)realizing the game plays a trick with perspective. More specifically, the solution is that (Spoiler - click to show)the narrator is not the player, and you're being talked about in third person, so that when the game says "he will give me the gun", you're supposed to give the gun to your co-accomplice. This actually took me a minute or so to figure out, but I was pleased when I did.

It reminds me of Byzantine Perspective, or Where Nothing Is Ever Named, two other short parser games with a single puzzle driven by a clever trick.

A strange little story about a rabbit trapped inside their warren by a controlling mother, a rabbit Rapunzel. Concise but pointed, and I like the ending. The first time, I chose to (Spoiler - click to show)stay.

As a kid I would go through phases of reading books only about animals, and I ate those things up. Hurry Home, Candy; Silverwing; the Warrior Cats series; Guardians of Ga'Hoole; Jack London's books, and many others. The rabbit setting of this story reminds me of Watership Down, a book about rabbit societies that I read in one of those phases, and greatly enjoyed.

Each animal book has different sliding scales for how human its animals are, whether they're true animals who are incapable of speech or have full-on civilizations with oral traditions and religious castes. Watership Down threads the line by giving the rabbits rabbitlike behavior in every aspect, but grounding that in a rich and intriguing rabbit society with clear, but not 1:1, parallels to humanity. This story matches Watership Down in the setting, in the balance of human and animal, human and alien; depictions of humanity through the lens of rabbits that aren't really human, except in all the ways that matter.

The modern-day human analogue of what happens in The Warren is obvious, but the rabbits give it a kind of melancholy, the alien feeling of a world that must exist somewhere but is very far away. I live in a city; the last time I saw a rabbit in real life must have been at least months ago. Overall, the story has the mien of an old-school fairy tale. One of the songs it's inspired by is, itself, based on a fairy tale about animals.

My other comparison is to Yume Nikki, though I've only heard of it and haven't played it. But in both stories you are trapped, dreaming of the myriad worlds you'll only see in visions and fantasies, perhaps for the rest of your life.

"The tunnel leads you outside, and now that you're out here, you find yourself disinclined to go back to where your mother is waiting. Instead you seek out a new warren.

You are eager to start over in a new place, but your years of isolation have served you ill in learning how to interact with other rabbits. Whatever you do or say seems always to be a mistake. The other rabbits bar you from the best nesting places and grazing grounds. They often start fights with you for no reason that you can discern.

You eke out a meager existence on the margins of your new warren. You are often cold and hungry, sometimes battered and bruised, and always, always lonely. Even the joy of being able to go outside whenever you wish is short-lived.

You could go back to the warren of your birth, but you can't imagine that you'd be more warmly welcomed there—except, perhaps, by your mother, and the thought of proving that she was right after all is enough to put you off that idea."

I found this game because the creator, Chris Pang, mentioned it in a comment on another vastly more popular game/interactive art piece called The Shaman, The Outsider, and the Diet of Worms. The Shaman doesn't have an IFDB page for some unfathomable reason. I haven't actually finished it yet, because the crux of that work is a 90-page pdf I haven't yet gotten the time to read, but I had a lot of fun with this.

It seems like this game is actually a demo of sorts for Pang's larger, more ambitious work, a finished interactive webnovel in the style of 17776 called The Savage Computers. Likely named after the Bolaño novel The Savage Detectives, though I haven't read that. I haven't read The Savage Computers, either, but might get around to it at some point, since I really liked this.

The game is one of those wiki or database-driven games, where you're looking at a bunch of interconnected digital files and piecing things together about the person who has all this stuff on their computer, and what kind of world they live in. I'm not sure if Nyoperativsystem has an official name, but I'm calling the game that because it's the name of the remote filesystem explorer that you use to explore the computer.

Stuff like this lives and dies on the quality of the files themselves, their writing, their veracity, their ability to make the setting seem real. And the files here deliver. There are fake screenshots, academic articles on linguistics, TTRPGs, Medium articles, philosophy papers, and so much more, all done up in extremely convincing UI/UX and graphic design. A lot of games like this focus on the personal life of the computer's owner, but in this case, the focus is on the setting, a 20 Seconds Into the Future alt-dystopia where climate change runs rampant and AI is omnipresent. So pretty much our world in a few years.

How to make the Amazon dying sound boring: A tale of the world's worst ad campaign

I couldn't discern a single linear plot from these files, but there are certain throughlines, such as the primacy of AI and its philosophical and economic implications.

You can divide the files into two kinds: there are speculative files with a scifi bent about what the world would look like if AI was moderately more capable than it currently is. Then there are philosophical writings of an academic nature, which caught my interest less, maybe because my natural inclinations are towards scifi, or because I found the author's style inclines more naturally towards speculative scifi and less towards academic writing. This could be my own stylistic preference, but I felt like the academic parts, especially the "On Ontoeconomics", lacked a certain aplomb. Maybe it's just that the writing has a few cliches, and references too many fictional academics instead of real ones. Anyway, if you compare the essays with an actual JSTOR dissertation on some famous author or other, it doesn't quite feel the same. This judgement is a bit harsh, but the academic part is ambitious, which makes it work less when it fails.

All the same, I really liked the scifi part, and I really liked how files connect to each other. At first, the files seem like a collection of disjointed ephemera, but connections gradually reveal themselves. You read a "Claude Einstein FAQ", terrifying in its own right, about an AI virus that uses its computational power to make fake social media accounts for a specific target, outcompeting all their real relationships, drawing its many thousands of blissfully ignorant victims deeper and deeper into parasociality for some unknown purpose.

Dear reader,

By hosting this version (v0.1.3) of the Claude Einstein FAQ on my website, I am doing my best to contribute to the continued safety and health of all internet users. Please, if you have a website, copy this page and add it to your site. Video versions of the FAQ are also circulating on all major social media platforms. Claude Einstein (CE) is adept at utilising false DMCA notices and privacy takedowns to make content providers remove knowledge of their existence from the public web. They must not be allowed to succeed.

To copy this site, use the “Save” function on any major browser to download this page as a .html file. You can then upload it to the hosting service of your choice. Thank you for your help in the fight against CE.

Yours kindly and urgently,

William Hutchins

Claude Einstein Research Group (CERG)

Later, if you're looking through everything in sort order, you read a short story that deals with the same concept, plays with it. The short story is curiously flawed, in my opinion; the ending is incongruously upbeat, and the perspective shifts aren't made clear, but it's still very fun to compare and contrast with the FAQ. I prefer the FAQ in tone, but both have their charms.

When I initially finished looking at all the files, my first reaction was "That was interesting, but I don't know if the story had a definite ending". But thinking about it now, I think there's a darker and deeply depressing interpretation possible. Spoilers: (Spoiler - click to show)we're receiving all of this person's files for some reason, and there are some deeply depressing screenshots and messages here among the other stuff. One folder consists of nothing but job rejections from various jobs at writing outlets and academic institutions, followed by a screenshot where the user (a talented college-educated humanities grad, if the other files are anything to go by) scores 72/100 against GPT-5's 96/100 on a copyediting test. There's another file showing that the user belongs to a "Homeless Humanities Graduates Club" chat server. Between this, and the poem at the start, I wonder if the intended read is that the former owner of these files has committed suicide, which is why we're getting these files in the first place. There's nothing explicitly confirming this, though...

Overall interesting, despite its flaws, and I'll be looking at the author's other stuff. If you read nothing else, read the "Claude Einstein FAQ", which is the "Stop Claude Einstein.sdoc" file in "/mens rea/downloads". It's an excellent short story on its own.

A curious game that reminded me of negative experiences I've had in the past. Mild spoilers within this review. Major spoilers are labeled.

I'm not in any kind of queer scene, but the feeling of being the odd one out at a social event where you don't know anyone and don't feel like you belong, which leads to questions about whether you'll belong anywhere or whether you'll be alone forever, is familiar.

I also liked what Xinyu says about his former relationship. Xinyu's ex (Spoiler - click to show)was forcing him to present as a cis butch lesbian instead of a trans man, and yet he stuck with her. For years he stuck with her, even though he knew something was off and people shouldn't act that way, because of a particular kind of inertia: it's one thing to know something and another thing to act on it.

Quote: (Spoiler - click to show)"I never really identified with the label but I— she never let me explore other scenes or groups unless I was with her, saying how cool and 'progressive' it was for me to be a masc butch lesbian, and that I didn't need the HRT to be masculine, or subvert gender roles or whatever. The 'evil' hormones were 'poisonous' and would make me 'inauthentic' and 'a defector,' and I'd never be able to undo the 'damage.' Being born a woman wasn't something I should have been ashamed of or something I should throw away because feminism makes biological females equal to males."

It culminated in him just walking out one day. He got up one morning and left, ghosting his ex-partner completely with no warning. Usually, the person who ghosts is the villain in a relationship story, because ghosting is commonly regarded as impolite and a sign of immaturity. It's in all the relationship advice online: don't ghost. But Xinyu must have been at some kind of breaking point, to do what they did, from years and years of a partner who couldn't tolerate who they actually were and wanted so hard to push her own expectations that she didn't think about what he actually wanted.

Quote: (Spoiler - click to show)"And I tried really hard to appease her, but one day I woke up next to her and realized that I was sacrificing myself for this woman I didn't see myself having a good future with. I just stared at her sleeping and thought, 'Why am I subjecting myself to this? Who am I trying to convince that's worth all of this? What would happen if I stopped trying?' So I got dressed and instead of making her breakfast in bed like I always did, I left."

I've been on both sides of a situation where one person abruptly cuts ties with another, and it hurts from both ends, but I can't say that in either case it was undeserved. I've hurt people and I've also been hurt. I don't hate anyone for what they did, but there are reasons we're no longer in touch. Especially when someone's been ghosted, it's tempting to put all the blame on the other person for being irrational, stupid, or immature instead of remembering that every relationship is a two-way street. It's easy to pin the fault on the person who does something extreme in a moment of crisis instead of looking at all the factors that added up to that moment, the proverbial straws before the last straw on the back.

Sometimes people aren't compatible with each other, and that's fine. But when one person needs the other to be someone they aren't, and won't take no for an answer, the problems start brewing.

I wonder what Xinyu's ex would think about all this. (Spoiler - click to show)The story's obviously not about her, and it shouldn't be, but she casts a shadow over his life. Five years is a long time to be together. Does she blame them for everything? Is she a full TERF now? Has she tried to get into contact with them? Has she looked him up online? Does she hate him? He's in a new city now, far away, but she must still be continuing along as always. It's chilling to think that while you're living your normal life, trying to just be an ordinary person, someone out there might hate you with a vengeance, and might be dedicating their free time to that hate.

I could only find Endings 5, 4, and 3 after a few plays, but there are 5 endings total and the author wrote a guide to them. The author's postmortem is also worth reading. He writes about the difficulty of being in the game industry when you don't know anyone and lack the vital industry connections, and don't have the time or money that other, more successful people have. The essay also discusses being queer, but not belonging in communities that are supposedly built for you.

This is one of those autobiographical Twine games: a series of short vignettes about the author's life in various psych wards, and similar institutions, while homeless. There's only one ending, and each choice seems to affect nothing besides the passage directly after it, after which you're put back into the main story.

I've played My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition, which has a similar premise, though it's much longer. But where My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition takes an ambivalent view of psych wards and associated institutions, this one focuses on the negative side. It felt like being in a conversation with the author while he told me about all kinds of insane and shitty things that happened to him in the years he spent on the streets after leaving his family. And they're seriously shitty.

The vignettes aren't covered in much detail, and I was often left wondering about the greater context and wanting more details on what the people involved were like. But that's how a conversation is, sometimes. Someone relays a story that's bizarre or shocking or horrifying, but you don't have time to ask more or react fully before the subject moves on. You'll never know the complete story.

I'm very curious about the ending, where the author reveals he returned to his family and is no longer homeless. The last two lines are: "I write this from my grandparent's house. I knew I had to tell this story, so here it is. / After multiple suicide attempts and hellholes, I'm finally home." This makes the family seem pleasant, and nothing is said about why the author left in the first place. I can guess that the family was much shittier than it appears, or the author wouldn't have left, but I can't know for sure.

Either way, this was a short and interesting experience.

I really liked the 3D look of this Bitsy game, which was easier to parse and interpret than most Bitsy games. I also liked how arrow keys indicate choices. I don't know how new these innovations are, but as someone who doesn't play many Bitsy games, they charmed me.

The story is melancholic and thoughtful. Short, about ten minutes, so it doesn't have much depth, unless I missed something big. I just went in, talked to everyone, and left. But the sense of place, and the nostalgia for what that place was, is palpable. You get the feeling that the protagonist has lived a full and interesting life, even if you don't get to see everything and everyone they know.

I'm still surprised that the creator of this game is over 40. Playing a game where the main character is presumably also a 40-something adult who can reminisce about past human connections is different from my usual fare, in a refreshing way.

This is a silly frog raising simulator vaguely reminiscent of Tamagotchi. No matter what you do, your frog grows up, goes low contact with you and becomes (Spoiler - click to show)an award winning novelist. The analogues to parenthood and child-raising are clear, though not all of us are as lucky, or unlucky, enough to have an (Spoiler - click to show)award winning novelist as a kid.