Ratings and Reviews by Cerfeuil

"...the new confessionals proliferated. They assign penance through complex and unknowable mechanisms, utilizing the latest advancements in computational theology. To many, confession whispered through a handset feels closer to God. Machines, after all, are humanity's bridge to the divine."

Really liked this game. Intimate, heartfelt, and true to life. Quite beautiful too.

The concept of coin-operated confessional booth is wonderful. It's the unity of man, machine, and divinity that gets me, the idea of God living in the wires and responding, in God's unknowable way, to what you have to say. And I love the concept of anonymous messages whispered in the dark, where you don't know who or what will ever hear you. Messages offered to anyone out there, if anyone's there at all.

It reminds me of websites out there where you can read anonymously-sourced confessions (https://loneliness.one/confession and https://postsecret.com/ come to mind, though a brief web search reveals dozens of sites like them). An alt-universe Internet, of sorts.

I thought you might be playing as someone offering a confession to one of these booths, but you're actually playing as the machine. Which is a killer concept, cherry on the cake really. There's only a limited amount of interaction you're allowed with people, because you can only interface with them through the machine. They can confess their deepest, darkest secrets to you and your only way to respond is through the perfectly mechanical choice of whether you accept the confession or not, and if you do, how many Our Fathers and Hail Marys you assign to them. You can't respond, you can't comfort or criticize them, you can't let them know you're there, even though you are. Yet the confession is only given because the interaction is so mechanical and impersonal that it's almost like nobody is there at all.

I'm also a fan of the setting: an alternate world much like our own, with comparable technology but a new history and new countries that imply a beautifully strange world beyond the confines of the tiny place we see. Reminds me of Disco Elysium a bit. And I gotta mention the sound and visual design, which sells the "just another night in a strange city almost but not quite like our own" ambiance. You see the city sleep, and you see it wake up again. Incredibly immersive. This game is great.

A nice slice-of-life story about family. The protagonist and their father go on a fishing trip together - the stuff of an old-timey family tale - but towards the end it's gradually revealed (Spoiler - click to show)the fishing takes place in OUTER SPACE and this is a science fiction story, hence the title. But despite the grandiose backdrop, the story focuses on the minutiae of everyday life, the intricacies of father-child relationships. The other stuff, really, is just a backdrop. (Spoiler - click to show)Even though humans have advanced to the outer boundaries of the solar system, family and all the complicated emotions that come with it still hold strong.

I wish there was less linearity in the story. You can make choices, but they don't influence much and some are never brought up again after you make them. There were also a few grammatical errors, which at times made it hard to parse what was happening. But I liked the overall atmosphere, especially the Twine theming. Blue-grey color scheme goes hard.

Finished in ~10 minutes.

It starts with one of those classic "you wake up confused and bound in an empty room" openings, but things quickly go haywire from there. As you eventually find out, your job is (Spoiler - click to show)containing demons for a temple by serving as their human vessel. All you have to do is let yourself be bound, then sleep in peace. Easy, right? But something's set the temple on fire, and the voices in your head are getting louder...

The game makes good use of its situation - at the start your past is uncertain, your identity is in flux, and there's multiple confusing voices in your head telling you what they think you should do. But as you play, you realize what your situation is and that makes the "right" choices more clear. In other words, this is one of those games that benefits hugely from repeat playthroughs. I played it four times and got, I think, all the endings. I think I can safely say (Spoiler - click to show)the voices in your head are supposed to be some degree of ambiguously evil. After I realized this I stopped murdering people, though to my disappointment it didn't seem to impact the endings at all.

(Spoiler - click to show)Demonic possession is kind of overplayed, and there are slightly unfortunate implications with the whole "people who hear voices are psychotic murderers" thing, but I'm personally fond of "voice in your head" narratives, and it did work well with the song.

Took me maybe ten minutes to get all the endings (lots of repeat text between the different paths). Having more story differences between the paths, or more elaboration on the world in general/what exactly are the voices in your head? could make the game feel more substantial. It was fun nonetheless.

You're a 26-year-old NEET who starts hearing strange music in the house where you've been living depressed and friendless for many years. Shortly after, you find a lens that lets you see messages from extradimensional entities when you look through it. Things progress from there...

Absolutely love the surreal, disturbing atmosphere. Was a bit disappointed that the nameless entities you encounter basically boil down to (Spoiler - click to show)'things that kill everyone' in the end, though. I wanted something weirder to happen, and that was a letdown. Oh well.

Despite the disappointment of the ending, there's a lot of stuff in this game to be stunned by and incredible detail put into things. Besides the odd lens, there's also the black-and-white music video on the computer, the interactive fridge magnets, the interactive Walkman, the interactive piano... Loads of cool point-and-click interactivity here. Then there's the writing itself - the person you play as, Linus, has a wry sense of despair. Their (his?) "yeah whatever" response to all the weird stuff that happens really sells the vibe. And the writing's great. Lots of pithy, darkly ironic one-liners.

Excerpts:

- On a waste bin in the laundry room: "It's a graveyard for socks with holes in them and socks that have lost their twins. It's a good thing we don't treat humans the same way."
- On entering the kitchen: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for the rest of his life. Give him a fridge, he'll become sedentary, forget his survival instinct, and be satisfied eating parmersan straight from the package."
- On coloring books: "These are my old coloring books. My mother kept them all, because she thought it was impressive that I managed to stay within the frame when coloring. My only talent: I never go overboard."
- On a window: "The glass has been fitted for over a year, but the frame has never been installed. It's a window that can't be opened. Just like my life."

If any of that resonates with you, go do yourself a favor and play this game!

Playtime: ~20 minutes

[Review initially written January 2024, edited April 2024]

This one didn't resonate with me as much as it did for some other people, maybe because I've never had a relationship like Kai and Caspian's. (The protagonist's name and gender is customizable, but I'll leave them as "Kai" for simplicity's sake.) I've never fallen in love with one of my friends, and I've never had a friend I've talked to consistently for more than a few years, actually. Which is kind of sad if you think about it.

But hold up, this isn't supposed to be about me! The game itself is pleasantly nostalgic, it rides the "childhood summers by the beach" vibe hard and does it well. My favorite part, though, is the endings. I found three different endings you can get, based on your choices - either (Spoiler - click to show)Kai doesn't meet Caspian and sells the house, doesn't meet Caspian but keeps the house, or meets Caspian and gets taken underwater by Caspian where presumably Caspian reveals that (le gasp) he was a merman all along! And then they live happily ever after.

The happy ending's fine, but the sad endings attract me more because that doesn't happen. Count on me to like the depressing stuff. They're made even more melancholy in context, when you realize everything Kai has lost forever by giving up on their dreams and succumbing to the dreariness of daily life. Abandoning their dreams of music to get a "real" job, moving away from their childhood beach home because their grandparents are dead. The ending I got first, where they just stare out at the ocean while thinking about everything they've lost, was a good one. There's no resolution there, just a friendship that ended on a sour note and a person they'll never meet again. Lost childhood memories you won't get back.

I dunno. The thing about the past is that you can't relive it, no matter how hard you try. So in this regard the happy ending feels like a fantasy to me and the tragic ones are more true-to-life. But maybe I'm just depressed.

Playtime: ~15 minutes