The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer

This game is well-written, engaging in its action, and has nice twists and a strong story format.

This is a choice-based game with some use of graphics (noticeably, a turtle) and animation and a lot of styling like darkening screens and so on.

You play as Lorenzo, who, with your brother Marco, have been sent by a video game company to kidnap Kenji Eno (a developer who lived in real life) and force him to let your company sell his unreleased magnum opus.

Your brother does most of the hard work, duct taping Kenji and interrogating him. Your main leverage over him is his pet turtle, which you have to watch over. Unfortunately it keeps escaping over and over again.

And that's the cycle that play settles into. You find the turtle in increasingly bizarre situations that require more and more elaborate responses, return to hear your brother narrate some exposition about Kenji's background and the games he developed, one at a time, with cover images.

All to lead up to one major joke, which I didn't see coming even though the game doled out numerous hints. My slow realization that the company in question is [spoiler]Nintendo.[/spoiler] My laugh at this funny text, thinking 'that's just like [spoiler]Mario![/spoiler]': [spoiler]Your supple, Italian middle-aged body fat is coated with years of grease from maintenance work, allowing you to slide down the toilet drain with ease.[/spoiler] The final realization that [spoiler]You are Italian brothers with M and L names that work for Nintendo and have to fight against a turtle while you also slip through sewer pipes.[/spoiler] That was pretty great.

The Kenji Eno stuff is very earnest and lionizes him. I found myself feeling skeptical at this. He was a real man, just a person. My dad ran a video game company called Saffire in the 90's and 2000's and ended up meeting a lot of leading industry people and celebrities. He would tell stories about the wild and often terrible things they did and regrets they had; it was a very misogynistic and exploitative culture. Kenji Eno was an outsider and so maybe he wasn't like that, I thought, but this game is kind of like constructing a parasocial identity for Kenji, imagining his existence entirely based on what his games are like.

Then it hit me like a brick: PB Parjeter is to me what Kenji Eno is to Marco. Do I really know PB Parjeter? Does he know me? If I told my son a story about PB Parjeter, I would say 'one of my internet friends did this...'. I would call him that because I've played many of his games, reviewed them, and participated in several internet forum posts with him and communicated with him in my capacity as event organizer for a few events. If I search my email inbox (I never delete emails), the name Parjeter happens 32 times. But almost everything I know about him is through games. I remember the first game of his I played, Doctor Sourpuss, where I thought he might be furkle under a pseudonym. From his games I assume he likes vintage and/or surreal media, is introspective and philosophical, Francophone, and would be excited to hear about a Cannes film that was 8 hours of unedited trailcam footage (I mean this in a positive way). I would think him a good person overall. And what do I share of myself online? I deliberately avoid forming close friendships with people in the IF world (in the form of DMs, messages, etc.) because I like to use the IF world for escapism and not have it integrated into my reality. So I present a front of myself, and Parjeter presents a front of himself. So, that's what this game makes me think of. Is the Kenji Eno in the game anything at all like the real one was? Why does it matter, if the Brian Rushton you all imagine while reading this isn't really like the real one I am, and the small cluster of people I just pictured when I wrote that don't really exist or map to real individuals in real life?

A fun game, and a lot to think about.