You

I’m pretty ecumenical in my IF tastes, I think, but I admit I sometimes stifle a groan when I see an entry in that most challenging of genres, the allegorical game, coming up in the queue. Possibly that’s just down to personal preference, but I do think it’s a hard nut to crack: how do you come up with a scenario that’s comprehensible to the player, but obscure enough not to be obvious? How do you engender connection to the material when the plot might not be happening in a literal sense? How do you take advantage of the freedom allegory offers while retaining enough cause-and-effect logic to establish stakes?

Well. You know that saying about how every hard problem, there’s a solution that’s simple, elegant, and wrong? At the risk of running afoul of the adage, let me speculate a way to resolve the many issues raised by this vexed genre: don’t worry about being too simple or too obvious, pick something nice and straightforward, and concentrate on building enough texture into your allegory so that it doesn’t feel glib.

If that’s not a fully generalizable answer, don’t blame me, blame You, because that’s the tack it takes and it’s an entirely successful one. It doesn’t take much chin-scratching to understand what the game is getting at – you leave school only to find yourself lost in an unfamiliar forest, and finding that you feel curiously alien to yourself, a sense of disconnection that’s tied to the pronouns you use for yourself not feeling right. This could apply to many an adolescent identity crisis, but the conflict here clearly has a lot to do with gender, which is reinforced by the central action of the game: casting about for a way home, you come across a crow and goat who offer to help you if you assist them with gathering the items they need for the wedding (something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…)

This is all accomplished via a light parserlike interface; there’s compass navigation around a small map, all handled with inline links, and a modest inventory available through a backpack link in the sidebar. There’s pretty much just a general “use” verb, but You has an additional cool narrative-mechanical gimmick up its sleeve: many of the actions you take or items you use alter your pronouns. You’re always “you”, but the font can be bigger or smaller, or boast an underline or an accent, or be subject to other transformations, and while some of the puzzles involve straightforward inventory manipulation, most of them require mastering these typographical manipulations, and understanding how they’ll translate narratively. I won’t spoil the specifics, since I don’t want to ruin any of the surprises given the game’s short running time, but there are at least two or three puzzles that I found both entirely intuitive, and entirely delightful.

I also found the writing as satisfying as the design. The fantasy world isn’t especially memorable by itself, but again, it’s got neat little details that lend it just enough weight – the aforementioned crow/goat couple are especially charming:

“Not feeling quite yourself lately?” One nods. “One understands. It was barely a month ago that one’s own self was lost down a waterfall.”

Zhe laughs at the memory. “It’s true,” zhe adds. “Had to go down to the mud flats with a net. But it got back where it needed to be in short order.” Zhe taps a talon against zher chin thoughtfully. “THEY helped greatly with the task. THEY might be able to help you too, if you ask THEM.”

THEY do indeed wind up helping, once you’re able to get the pair what they need, in a climactic sequence that does a lovely job of presenting the player with a no-wrong-answers choice that nonetheless has real weight – I wound up stopping to think for two or three minutes before I finally selected how I wanted to go about creating my new self.

So yes, as allegories go, this one is quite straightforward but that doesn’t make it any less effective. You presents a dilemma that’s admittedly not especially novel in IF these days, even for a boring old cis guy like myself, but uses its fantastical conceit to present the situation from a bit of an angle, which somehow makes it come through more clearly. That’s the power of allegory when done well, and You does it well enough that I really do think it’s something of a blueprint.