Tales of Nivea: GRIP

Tales of Nivea: GRIP

I had a long emotional journey playing this game.

I at first worried it would be a boring AI game, given its well-made UI and its use of M-dashes, but as I played I found it had a fairly solid plot arc and escalation and continuity, and that characters were well-defined and interesting.

It's a game designed to make you question 'just following orders'. You live in a society with scarcity issues where people can be born with magical powers of different elemental types and strengths. Your job is to process ones flagged as dangerous or interesting to either send them to military conscription, permanent home arrest, or death.

There are criteria for each three, though I forgot them early on (it may be worth writing them down). Two are clear, but conscription was harder for me to know.

The game tracks your choices. I found it compelling to try to decide between them.

Less compelling was the rather opaque interface. I thought I had been a complying toady the whole time only to discover I received the 'rebellious' ending. Looking at the code, apparently every time you question the children at all, you gain 'doubt' points. So getting more content from the game hurts you without it alerting you to that fact. Other aspects are confusing at times; I kept getting notices at the end of cases that I hadn't compared two facts. I thought that was because I had selected the wrong messages to transcribe in my notebook, but apparently I was meant to click on that message and that would resolve it (I don't know if clicking on that message increases any counter).

Sometimes I felt the game was a bit too strong with the emotions, but other times it did a great job of selling powerful moments through understated text, which I liked. I think the author is talented at writing.

It reminded me of jury duty I had this year. The defendant was a young adult man. We found out that he was on trial for child molesting. A lot of us were thinking about how many years to give him (he had pleaded guilty and it could not be overturned, this was just a sentencing trial). Many of us at first seemed disposed to give him what felt like a large amount, like 20 or more years. As the trial progressed, it turned out he had abused numerous children, even infants, and had been on trial before and found guilty, and had gone to therapy but skipped out on most of the meetings, and then had signed up as a church youth counselor. He testified (against counsel) and said that he would likely do it again and it was something he did to relax when tense.

Even then, the jurors were split. I advocated that he be in jail long enough that even with parole he wouldn't get out while his victims were still children. One man said he'd only do life. Several people refused to do life or anything over 60 years, since it meant this guy's entire life would be gone by the time he went out.

We had restrictions. We were instructed to follow the law. We could assign a fine. Asked who the fine would be paid by and to, we were told that 'the law is before you, follow it' and were not given further instructions.

So, it was exactly the scenarios in these files. You have people, often repeat offenders, who are a hazard to the community. Do you deal with them as the law requires? Even if you feel the law is unjust?

Anyway, the memories of the trial came up during the game (I know this is heavy, but I'm making the connection of my own free will, so I hope the author doesn't feel obliged to step in and say 'that was awful!' or 'I'm sorry it made you remember that' because I think one of fiction's best uses is presenting our minds with unusual scenarios that help us process our thoughts, memories and emotions).

I do think some of the mechanics could be made more clear, and sometimes I felt the story expected me to remember more of earlier incidents than I did. Overall though I found this a thoughtful, well-constructed and worthwhile game.