Pageant

Pageant follows Qiuyi (Karen) Zhao (mentioned as Karen below), a Chinese teenager living in the US, as she navigates through school and extra-curriculars, relationships and identity, family expectations and community, and the pageant her parents signed up for. Through limited storylets choice, you can carve Karen's priorities and relationships.

Pageant was created with Dendry, a storylet narrative program, where the player get to experience linear side-stories in fragmented way. Every week, the player can pick up to three options from the storylet lists to start or continue a path. As the list is often longer than three options, the player is forced to make choices and prioritise a certain path (a recurring gameplay type in Autumn's games). This makes for great and interesting replayability!

The story start with Karen being summoned by her parents, revealing that they signed her up for a pageant, happening in three months. There is no bargaining no quitting (it's good for college apps!). In three months, Karen will be on that podium*. During that prep period, she still needs to balance school (a full AP curriculum), the Science Olympiad, doing an understudy with a college professor (also set up by your parents), having dinner with your family, going to bible study on the weekend, and etc... Doesn't this sound like too much for a high school student? And was it yet mentioned that Karen is a socially awkward mess, who has trouble making relationships, is full of anxiety and self-loathing, struggling with her identity as a Chinese teenager in the US (her used name not being her birthname, and having the option to butcher your name's pronunciation) and a closeted lesbian (or something like that says the game).
*well, there is a way.

Along the way you are introduced to a handful of characters: Emily, a trans woman still in the closet, Aubrey, a girl Karen had a crush on also part of the Science Olympiad team, and Miri, Karen's only friend. There is also Karen's parents and her little brother, Kevin; Professor Chen and his grad student; the rest of the Science Olympiad Team; and the other families attending the Church. Through out the game (and your choices) you get to learn more about these characters, like how Emily deals with her family's trans/homophobia, or Miri's feelings towards you, your family's history...* The storylets really shine here, giving you crumbles here and there, forcing you to piece those back together (and forces you down a certain path to learn everything).
*Even after playing multiple times, I have yet to found all variations.

And at the centre of it all, Karen, the very flawed teenager. Yet, even with her self-deprecation and anxious spirals, with the awkward way she interacts with other people, with dealing with different cultural values and expectations about her life, or with her inability to stand up to herself (partly because of her guilt of "having it easy" compared to older generations), Karen stays a character you want to root for. You want to help her win that pageant and be more sure of herself. You want her to be more confident in her identity (and get a girlfriend). You want her to find her passions (in science?) and win accolades. You want to pluck her from her stressful world, wrap her in a blanket, kiss her on her forehead, and tell her that everything will be ok.

The whole game is filled with such genuine interactions, with teenagers blurting out their deepest secrets to strangers, declaring their love to one another even after but a few meetings, being self-loathing with a self they don't recognise or don't want to be anymore but unable to leave that shell, trying to handle the stress and anxiety of the expectations of others and not being able to reach those. And those are made all the more vibrant through Karen's inability to react "properly". Faced with bad and worse choices, you get to experience that anxiety of what would happen if I say or do the wrong thing. It feels genuine, because it feels real and lived through.

As the ending came around, and you get the rundown of Karen's actions, it felt like, while winning the pageant is definitely one/the goal, the journey was much sweeter than the destination. And that's what keeps making me want to come back to it...