Emma the Trust Fund Baby

As the title suggests, this game is about Emma, a generically-named child of a rich family. Her sole defining characteristic is that she's a "trust fund baby", a tycoon's daughter. What she would be called in Chinese can be literally translated as "thousand pieces of gold".

For all that, the game feels colourless, populated as it is with stock phrases and characters. Emma herself has barely any background and a scant personality; she might as well be a machine. The writing is relentlessly expository, sometimes going to the extent of explaining common phrases. Even the conflicts and seamy underbelly of Emma's surroundings are neatly summarised.

It doesn't quite read as a satire. It reads more like one of those TV serials - the type that goes on for two hundred episodes, which makes you painfully aware of the actors trying to show you that they're angry, but never quite succeeding.

It doesn't help that this game is almost entirely linear, despite the fact that Emma’s extraordinary privilege gives her an unusual amount of choice of what she could do with her life. Even the choices play on gross stereotypes instead of investing the player in Emma's development. There is little sense of development, growth or humanity… and whether or not that’s part of the point is up to you, dear reader, to decide.