The pale desert of this moon curves towards an empty horizon.
...
Clouds of gray dust swirl in your wake.
The wind is howling a language that you do not understand.
...
Moonlight is shining through the stained glass window, painting a rose of rainbows on the floor.
She is still waiting.
What I liked: Music + headphones is great. Styling and writing is on point. Aesthetics are gold. Really love the image of the one girl leaving the monastery as it's frozen in time, opening the gates which stand still like an "open ribcage". And other imagery like the selection of weapons the first girl can choose from, which are revealed to be (Spoiler - click to show)the same as the second girl's selection of weapons, in a stunning symmetry. One girl has antlers, an odd detail which is never explained, but combined with the antler-shaped chapter transitions I think it becomes charming.
It's been a while since I played any of Porpentine's games, so while I could vaguely appreciate the resemblance, what I really thought of was Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring. The dark fantasy landscape with moonlight and angel blades and scarred women and crumbling cathedrals evoked that for me. Cool stuff.
What I didn't like: I think it might be too aestheticized. There's a lack of specificity that nags at me--little is explained about these characters or the greater world they inhabit. And the evil nuns and monastery feel a bit too on-the-nose, maybe? I think more details about the setting would help flesh it out more, and flesh out the characters, by extension. Speaking of the characters - without a richer background world to ground them in, their interactions feel too simple. They grow apart because of the book, they leave each other, they have a final encounter that ends, depending on the retelling, in bloodshed or a final conversation or nothing. That's all.
That's another thing: I'm not sure how I feel about the "multiple versions of their final encounter" structure. On the one hand, it's nice to see variations on how things might have played out, but I feel like they confuse the overall story. Especially that section where one actually kills the other, guided by "sacred algorithms". The inability to change your choices there was a nice touch, but it felt out of place since it didn't add much to the story as a whole.
What I'd change: My favorite moment came towards the end. It was where the first girl, the one who stays, reveals that she stayed more out of fear than faith--that she learned the gods view them as "punctuation", nothing more, and can no longer believe in anything. I felt like this revelation added a lot to her character, and wish it was explored more, or referenced more in different ways across the various chapters. Without it, she becomes a more two-dimensional "the original god is the best god and you are a heretic so I must kill you" character, which I can't find sympathy for. With it, I found her much more compelling, and it adds a lot to the world as well, knowing that these gods with so many devotees don't care about them in any way.
I really wish there was more built on that, about losing your faith and entire foundations of your worldview. About the gods and how their presence or lack thereof has influenced this strange desert world with its crumbling golems and cathedrals. But the way the story is told, passing quickly through time via small vignettes, tends towards summarizing and simplifying what must have been complex revelations for its characters in the moment. If we really saw more of the characters grappling with their faiths (or lack thereof) and with themselves, I think that'd add a lot.
Personally, I would remove the extraneous endings that don't seem to contribute to the overall story and the dynamic of the main characters (especially the "sacred algorithms" one where one girl kills another). Then I would expand on the particular dynamic between the two main characters that is described in the last ending, especially the first girl's realization that the gods don't care about mortal specks of dust. So instead of "good deity vs. bad deity", it becomes "a deity you can believe in vs. the inability to believe in any faith".
Middle school bodies are like crappy NYC apartments: nothing seems to fit right, the smells never go away, and the general experience makes you wonder how growing up was ever considered a good idea.
Regardless, the young adult body is a universal conundrum that everyone must confront at some point. (Don't get discouraged. Studies from The New York Times tell you these feelings are permanent and leave ever-lasting damage to your psyche.)
This game has two kinds of passages. The first are these extremely dry descriptions of a nonexistent sociologist named Jacob Balamer, and his research, which seems to be about how humans can best exercise empathy and connect to each other. Interspersed with those are a far more interesting "life simulator" game, of the kind I really liked playing in middle school. I'd link to more examples, but can't seem to find any on IFDB. I'm thinking about games where you control a human protagonist from birth to death. It happens in this life simulator, which sees you playing through various vignettes seemingly based on Balamer's real life (you're presumably a white American guy), with a hefty dash of surreal humor thrown in.
Eventually the two threads connect and (Spoiler - click to show)you realize that Balamer made the life simulator, as an attempt to teach other people about his research. It turns out the game's reception is poor and he disowns his entire body of research, deeming it (and himself) a fraud. The actual game ends up a somewhat strange but uplifting note describing the choices you've made throughout the story and what they say about you. Here's a little sliver of your life, and there are the little slivers of Balamer's life that you've gotten through first reading about his body of work, and playing the game that he created. Even if his research was dry, boring, pointless, and didn't say much about humanity (that was the impression I got from the writing), he still wanted to connect with people, and that's been accomplished via the actual game you just played.
The writer definitely has chops. There's only one error in the entire game I could find ("Space, in it's purest form" instead of "Space, in its purest form"). The game is full of great one-liners and zany snippets, like the below line:
You’ve been instructed to write a short essay on the topic “Should kids have homework?” for English class. While you are glad your teacher is interested in hearing about topics actually relevant to your life (unlike last week’s discussion climate change), you’re not quite sure where to start.
You reach down in the deep well of ideas swirling inside your brain. Homework good… but also bad?
There are a lot of humorous asides: a random survey you can take, a funny clown encounter, etc. One passage is "placeholder text for an unfinished story section that will be added in a future update". I'm 90% certain this is a joke that was done on purpose, but I honestly can't be sure.
The funniest thing that happened to me while playing is that at one point a message came up saying something like: "An update has been released. Would you like to install it now?" and I clicked yes. I was given a ridiculously long loading bar and below that, a message saying: "Please do not close the window while installing".
You'll never guess what I did.
It was an accident, okay.
Anyway, I reopened the game, and through the power of expedient clicking managed to get back to where I was without much time wasted. I didn't even change any of my answers! (Well, except the survey answer. I tried to skip the survey. Didn't work.)
Thoughts overall... The game is well-written, but despite that didn't entirely gel with me. There are moments that made me laugh and moments that made me feel contemplative, but I think the ending came on too suddenly and the descriptions of Balamer's work were ultimately too dry and full of meaningless academic babble for me to really connect with them, or Balamer as a character. Not great, considering he's such a large part of the story. I also think the story undercuts itself in parts with the humorous asides--not that I hated them, but maybe I would like more focus on the serious, contemplative parts to give them space to breathe apart from the comedy? Because when the game gets serious, it's good, but the parts that are serious feel too short and insubstantial to have any real weight.
That's just me, though. At any rate, this story has pizzazz, and I can appreciate that.
Quotes:
You look where the sky should be only to see a river. You reach for the current. It's warm.
I’m going to sink. I always knew that, but I thought my boat would hold water. None of you know what it’s like to plant a seed by hand. You fix weights to ships, and you tell them the water's fine.
I’m an arduous process, arboreous labor. My bones are the dirt the ground came from, my trees the gift of broken hands. I want you to find the coastline. But none of you see it, none of you do.
---
It is empty. The world around you is creaks and bones, the hardwood floor a muted fretboard. No one else is around. The universe is quiet, a silent denouement for an inevitable ending. You see it on the skin, the distance. Your time is drawing to a close.
