Drag Star!

I have mixed feelings about Drag Star. I'm probably not the target demographic for it, and when I first finished it... my feelings were along the lines of 'somewhat entertaining'.

You are a contestant on a reality TV drag competition, along with a dozen other characters. While they all pack interesting names and backstories to hit you with that TV star vibe, the huge cast didn't allow much room for individual character depth, and none of the characters felt memorable when all was said and done, although the author probably had fun coming up with all those different character names. The stat page does have a section allowing you to keep track of everyone, for what it's worth, but I didn't really pay much attention to it as none of the characters caught my eye after the flashy introductions.

The games does explore plenty of LGBTQ themes within the story. If you're here because of that tag, you'll get what you seek.

You get a lot of choices for character creation, along with pronouns, body type and the like. There are also plenty of (I suspect) fake choices during the game where you pick what you wear or what you think (with free text options). Still, these sorts of things are useful to set the mood, and picking another flamboyant and racy costume did help to immerse me and help me pretend I was really a contestant in a crazy TV show.

Gameplay consists of surviving episode after episode, completing all sorts of reality TV show challenges, watching other contestants getting eliminated and praying that you're not the next to drop. It's the bog standard CoG system of picking your best stats and running them through a gauntlet of stat challenges, hoping you've picked the right ones. I focused mainly on confidence and humor for my latest playthrough, and I think it saw me through a good number of stat challenges.

The writing is another interesting beast. At the start, the narrator uses plenty of slang and terminology from drag, showbiz and who knows where else, although it gave me the feeling of someone trying too hard to sound like one of the cool kids. Interestingly, as the story continued on, the writing style became more dry and run-of-the-mill, as if the narrator decided that the excessively cool kid vibe was too hard to maintain. That aside, the writing is technically competent all around, and I didn't see any mistakes.

All in all, this genre wasn't quite my thing, so you'll probably enjoy it more if the drag star TV show genre is more your style. Try not to get eliminated!