Vulse

I found this game frustrating. It seemed to suggest a lot of depth hidden beneath the layers of my protagonists self-hate and self-disgust, but I didn't ever experience a pay-off.

The game gives clear indications--either in mis-labelling days or contradicting itself, or openly telling you--that you can't trust the narrator.

In a way, the game felt a little like a murder ballad--a body is floating down the river in a small town, and at times I think my character has committed the crime. At times, I think he killed a woman--at other times, a man--and then I wondered if it was my body in the river.

Although all three seemed vaguely possible, none seemed particularly plausible. There is a disjointed mention of hanging another person at another point, but no clear connection between the hanging and the body floating.

There are multiple endings, but I couldn't see a real relationship between what I was doing and what led to those, so it felt random.

The writing didn't always make sense to me. I had a hard time parsing the meaning in several sentences, and found myself trying to entertain the perspective of the character. Instead of telling me what happened, or what my character experienced, the game told me how my character felt. Without more context to make this meaningful, however, I felt a little pushed. I suspect if I lived in a despised small town I might have a little more perspective to appreciate the view point, but as it was, I felt like the feelings and emotions were being pushed on me instead of shared.