Reviews by cgasquid

The base game consists of watching a snobbish, affected character reminisce about their past experiences as a womanizer and (Spoiler - click to show)serial killer. That, by itself, is a perfectly fine secret for the game to hide, even if it hides it VERY badly. (It's self-evident if you're paying attention, but there's also an item hidden in the scenery that, (Spoiler - click to show)if picked up just before the ending and brought along, reveals it beyond all doubt.)

The problem is that you will end the game with a score of 3/10. In order to get the full 10 points you need to identify the character's minority by using every opportunity to examine the possibility, no matter how little sense the actions make in context. (Spoiler - click to show)In the biz, we call this "transvestigation," and it's a hateful, reviled practice. What's more, if you pay VERY close attention, there's a very strong implication that (Spoiler - click to show)being a transgender man has a Freudian connection to their murders.

Vile. Very well-written, but vile.

I suppose I also should point out disambiguation problems with the towel/towel rack, too many potentially useful commands (like trying to examine parts of a room) routed back to LOOK, but just ... after that revelation my heart's just not in it. Can't a girl just enjoy some sleazy horror without having to deal with this garbage?

Coming at this from 18 years of being polyamorous and year 15 of a committed polyamorous relationship.

Okay. I'm not giving this game one star because it's badly coded, or because it doesn't work. I'm giving it one star because it is portraying a relationship type that many people, including myself, find to be a functional, stable, enriching environment -- and it's portraying it in an incredibly destructive way.

NUMBER ONE! Polyamory is not something everyone can do! It is not a "better" or "more enlightened" kind of relationship, it's just a different one. For Sarai to drag a person unsure about polyamory and hurl them into the middle of a complicated, adversarial relationship is absolutely unconscionable; these are things that need to be decided carefully and experimented with, and everyone has to be on board. And it's very clear that not everyone was, not that Sarai particularly seemed to care.

NUMBER TWO! Polyamory is not transitive! If I'm dating Alice, and I'm dating Bob, that does NOT mean that either Alice or Bob is in any way obligated to date each other! (I mean, for one thing sexual orientations are going to interfere; I could be a bi man dating a straight woman and a gay man.) This expectation is one of the biggest RED FLAGS in polyamorous relationships.

The fact that Sarai just DECLARED a change in the composition of the relationship without sitting everyone down in open communication and discussing the addition of a partner isn't polyamory, it's tyranny.

NUMBER THREE! Polyamory is all about communication! One of the very first things that happens is that Sarai tosses you together with one of her partners without saying the slightest thing about what you're expected to do. You and the other partner have to figure it out on your own. That is not something that should ever, ever happen.

In my playthrough, the relationship exploded (just as it inevitably would in real life). But it didn't feel like this was being portrayed as inevitable ... it felt like this was a losing condition in a game I was expected to win.

Sarai isn't the center of a polycule. She's an arrogant egomaniac who takes advantage of a friend's homelessness to drag her into her personal harem. It was absolutely transactional -- Jerri gets to stay with Sarai only if she accepts a sexual relationship not only with Sarai but also with several complete strangers. There are words for that.

Now, if this were just a story that happened to be about a destructive pseudo-polyamorous relationship, that would be one thing. But I really don't get that feeling; this is represented as an example.

Polyamorous people are a small minority that most people only have false, negative ideas about ... if you're going to write a work about a small minority that confirms everything false and negative that's said about that minority ... you bally well need a DISCLAIMER at the front that you're not trying to represent that community accurately! Again ... if you don't ... there's a word for that, too.

Urgh. This story made me feel so strongly I resorted to capital letters.