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Review
Played: 7/11/24
Playtime: 15min
Let’s say I gave you infinite monkeys, y’know, as a birthday gift. Following year, I gave you infinite IF workstations. Never mind the HARROWING year you just suffered. In the even more bedeviling year that followed, let’s say those infinite IF monkeys submitted to infinite IF Jams and I reviewed every one of them. See, it’s not just you suffering!
So after those three years, math tells us YWAtaSW would be produced by that ill-considered simian gift army of mine. I call BS. There is no universe, irrational number based or not, where the conceit of this work is replicated, never mind its execution. Redo the math. If it tells you it could, the math is wrong. We made a fundamental error somewhere in history and are stranded down an untenable path, prisoners of our bad calculus. This explains quantum entanglement and energy teleportation too.
So yeah, YWAtaSW has a pretty singular premise - that you are playing a work of IF created by an entity you briefly swapped consciousness with, expressing their experience back to you. The identity of the swapper is not exactly a secret, but it is delightfully, bafflingly, bonkers as hell. I am torn between just outing the interloper’s identity and not. It is not a secret at all, but the implementation is so daffy I am reluctant to color it with any interpretation of my own.
If I had a wish, it would be that the work committed to its premise MORE. Most of it is a delightful ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ ‘fish out of water’ look at the prosaic corners of human life. The mundane object inventories are particularly welcome. Like each artifact, however trivial to us, is worthy of deep marvel. Its ruminations on green and grass made me snort aloud. It is so good natured and pie-eyed about it, it is overtly winning. I had a nagging feeling though that the specifics of your timeshare partner could be more foregrounded. When the specifics show up they are clever and winning, but as often it feels more generic? Like any arbitrary alien identity’s experience? I don’t want to be too down on this, it is super successful in the general, wanting more specifics is just me being greedy. I particularly liked the sexual politics guilelessly left behind for the protagonist to untangle. Hey if I didn’t know what sex was, I’d sure be curious too. Not that my curiosity is COMPLETELY sated by full knowledge.
A totally bananas conceit, in a very fun, very funny implementation. Not the work’s fault I am fascinated with gifted equine denture.
Also, a REAL friend would have included infinite bags of monkey chow that first birthday. That’s on me.
