A Chinese Room

Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review

I had been low-key looking forward to this one for a while - both due to the philosophical connotations of the title (originally posited to refute the concept of ‘sentient AI,’ there is some nice resonance to IF design itself) and because as a former Cold Warrior… Russophile is not the right word. I need a suffix for “morbid fascination with.” How about Russophiliasis (second ‘i’ is long)? What I’m saying is I have an unhealthy fascination with modern Russian culture, especially the more Kafka-esque aspects of it.

I was faintly disappointed when I once again encountered the black/blue/white Twine formatting. If ever a game was crying out for all-greys, with an occasional splash of impactful color this was it. That superficial reaction was quickly dispelled when I noticed it was a double game, of interlocking IF stories. That’s a cool conceit. And it can be simultaneously played by two players? Loving the ambition. Checked in as Caroline first (as advised) and off to the races!

Caroline is a housewife, mother of two near-adult children, married to a minor politician. Her life is one of quiet burden that she shoulders matter-of-factly. This part I found really nicely painted. Here the use of interactivity, specifically lack of choice, really resonated when contrasted to her undramatic acceptance. The husband is obliviously self-absorbed but not an absolute dick. She ekes out joys for herself with cooking and her kids. This table setting for me was super impactful to what follows. It so cleverly aligned me with the protagonist: both my sympathies and my wearied acceptance of the-way-things-are. The latter is challenging to pull off. As game players, a natural impulse is to be WAY more action-hero than real life would support. This first section defuses that impulse in an impressively successful way.

I think this is going to end up being more spoiler-y than most of my reviews, let’s see if I can keep it coherent. It’s after the protagonist gets involved in a political job that a some serious cracks intrude. To this point in the game, I am basically welded to the protagonist - kudos for that! Then choices start presenting themselves that do not resonate, specifically (Spoiler - click to show)possibly flirting, then pursuing an affair with your ‘boss’. For me this failed on two counts: 1) the object of these decisions is not compelling. Like at all. So much so that even the presence of the options felt jarringly wrong. At best the character in question is an amiable blowhard which sure, maybe better than a self-important blowhard but really not a sufficient upgrade. 2) there is text that portrays the protagonist as reacting much more strongly to this character than any of my decisions and attendant prior text suggested. It felt unjustified and contrary to the protagonist we had carefully crafted to that point and I kind of rejected it. This showed me the second edge of the IF sword. While a traditional narrative can sometimes get away with “I don’t get what they’re doing… but whatever, I guess the plot needs it” if you have invested the energy and skill to get the IF player aligned with the protagonist, those disconnects suddenly become personal.

So that was a sour note. Conversely, there is some dramatic business with the kids late in the story that landed like gangbusters. It had everything to do with how real-feeling the interactions with the kids (and husband!) were prior to that point. Whether the text actively accommodated prior player choices, or was at least deft enough not to contradict them, it was so, so much more successful.

Then there’s the matter of the ending. I should make clear at this point I was playing solo. Shite, I guess I just need to… (Spoiler - click to show)Ok, throughout the middle of the game, you are periodically ushered to a mysterious room, have a colored light flash at you, then given the option to match or not-match the light. There’s no rhyme or reason to this, but it is faintly sinister. Cool. Turns out you were torturing people somehow?!?!? At least, that’s what the government said about you in court. Nevermind that it was a government(?) functionary that coerced you to do it (probably deniably so, to be fair). The court scene kind of fell apart for me, top to bottom, and not because I rebelled at the premise. (Spoiler - click to show)A totalitarian government politically prosecuting an individual on absurd charges is absolutely believable and horrifying which was almost certainly the aim of the piece. The implementation details just torpedoed it for me. Up until this point, the narrative employed precise use of no-choice interactivity. It’s super-effective! Here, as the protagonist is (Spoiler - click to show)literally battling for her life, the ‘no choice’ takes the form of adhering to advice from her lawyer. Yet that lawyer came across as kind of hapless at best, and a possible prosecution functionary at worst. At one point the game even rubs this decision in your face by headfaking a choice that doesn’t exist. The equation had shifted and acquiescence suddenly became a mimesis liability, not a feature. It was further exacerbated when (Spoiler - click to show)the options I chose in the mystery room were not used against me. To the contrary, the state seemed to imply I took actions I decidedly did not. Now they can lie, sure, but at that point why even bother with the mystery room? How much more effective would it have been to map (Spoiler - click to show)my ‘crimes’ to actions I had actually taken? And the decision to only obliquely allude to (Spoiler - click to show)the horrors my oblivious button-pushing caused, that was an opportunity to drive home some personal horror just forfeited.

I think the game makes one final small mistake with a disproportionate impact: it spends a lot of time detailing (Spoiler - click to show)the ‘strategies’ being used in the court room. This has the effect of underlining again and again the absurd nonsensicality of the prosecution argument, and to a lesser extent the ineptitude of the defense. (Also, I’m not sure I agreed with how the Chinese Box problem was employed in these arguments, but I’d need to look at it closer.) None of this is the problem, it actually could be parlayed into a strength, (Spoiler - click to show)showing how hollow the prosecution is. But it isn’t, because (Spoiler - click to show)the text also alludes to actual humans in the audience being persuaded. It’s almost a throwaway scenic element but it does so much damage to the reality of the scene I didn’t recover. How much more effective would the horror have been, if it was clear the audience saw it too?

Above, I burned two and a half small paragraphs on what I liked, and three large paragraphs on what didn’t work for me. This is deeply unfair. I actually liked what those two and a half paragraphs describe SO INCREDIBLY MUCH, I think that caused me to take the subsequent shortfall way too personal. What it did right were white hot Sparks of Joy straight out of Flashdance. Those two crucial misfires though kept it from breaching into Engaging. I can’t help but wonder how the interlocking second story is going to play out, and whether that ultimately overcomes some of this or not.

Yeah, I’m definitely playing that other half. Also I kind of dig the thematically appropriate (Spoiler - click to show)‘redacted’ feel this review took on.


Played: 11/3/22
Playtime: 1.5hr, finished 1/2 stories
Artistic/Technical rankings: Sparks of Joy/Seamless
Would Play Again? Of course. When your Russophiliasis flares up, its best to let it run its course.

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless