The end of an obsession

It gets so lonely here was so good that it got me into ebi-hime's games in general, fast making her one of my favorite indie solo-developers. When The end of obsession was announced, I eagerly added it to my To Play list. While I didn't enjoy this sequel as much as the original, ebi-hime's second foray into yandere witches and princesses is worth playing.

The end of obsession has a much more straightforward take of the yandere archetype, and is a lot more dismal and depressing for it. Chains, cages, torture, mental deterioration, knives: it runs the gamut. As an epilogue for It gets so lonely here, it seems to ask: what if the yandere's victim didn't get better? What if, after going through all the cycles of trauma, the victim calcified the hurt, sloughing off all human compassion until a brittle construction remained? What if they just got worse. There's no cathartic triumph and reclaiming at the end of this game. Like Rapunzel in her tower, everyone's simply stuck.

Speaking of Rapunzel, the game borrows from that fairy tale with its setting and towering premise. Maybe because I was raised on feminist fairy tales and studied the Grimm's, I kept thinking that the POV character would (Spoiler - click to show)cut or make a rope of her hair, jump, find out everything was an illusion, or discover some inner magic. Something besides the tedium of sitting in the tower and yet another cryptic visit from the witch. As is, the point-of-view character is so passive that I felt myself scrabbling at the walls—though these feelings might have been relieved if I'd realized sooner that the Skip button automatically stopped at any new narration. What is advertised as a 20-60 minute game took me a full three hours. What I think is supposed to keep the player going is the overall mystery of the witch's identity. This mystery didn't work out in my favor, because I'd guessed the solution so early.

In the Notes section, ebi-hime says the first kernel of inspiration for The end of obsession is what if the yandere got tired of their victim. This question is sort of answered. Loneliness and boredom will eat a person alive and change her reactions in a desperate hope that something else will change. The music matches perfectly with the mechanics and themes of the game. The art is cutesy and fantastical—the witch's outfit is an especially remarkable work. Between the music and the vivid narration, the atmosphere tenses the stomach, despite the lack of plot. I think The end of obsession achieves the minimum of what it set out to do, but my frustration with the POV character and the lack of catharsis caused me to enjoy it less than its predecessor.