Fascism - Off Topic

Adapted from an IFCOMP25 Review

There is a danger in digesting any comedy work that has even a hint of provocation or social commentary. The danger is that its intent can be horribly misread by the baggage that provocation carries with it. Now, this is not a ‘rabid bear in area’ danger, just one of pouring so many wasted and misguided words onto a page that reader and reviewer alike will never get those minutes of their lives back. The whole endeavor is fraught with interpreting intent and meaning. Even super well controlled satire is subject to misunderstanding, nevermind less focused efforts. Humor in particular can defuse or contradict satirical intent by simply bringing the warm feeling of funny to topics that are really best served cold.

This is a self-proclaimed satire. We are a white male of suspect politics, riding a subway with people with no social boundaries. It is competently and amusingly rendered, with a small coterie of fellow passengers who have no problem verbalizing their thoughts to the car. Not INconsistent with my experiences on public transit. Other than looking around, the main point of the game is to (Spoiler - click to show)interject a take on fascism into a couple’s loud argument.

On first playthrough, even this spoilered goal is unclear. Like most parsers, I tried to interact with most of the environment and NPCs, to be rebuffed in ways that felt inelegant if not broken. Efforts to engage anything BUT the loud argument were rejected, often in clumsy and unconvincing ways. Then it ended. And here I made a crucial decision. Via its ending, I decided I understood what the goal of the game was meant to be. This choice recast what felt ‘broken’ earlier as pure gameplay-focus choice. Once you tumble this way, the peripheral elements of the game kind of vanish into goal-focused trial-and-error work. The amusing but shallow environment (which does seem to randomize on repeat plays, but not in a way that justifies the time to read the new content) really fades to a count: last time I tried N. Let’s try N+1. Just hammer that keyboard until I get there. Over and over again until you get to a different ending. Whatever light bemusement the environment elicited on first pass is just so much blurred, barely-read words, whizzing by until the next restart iteration. You are not listening to the car anymore, just waiting to pounce with your insights.

I will confess once I finally got the different ending I did chuckle. Not because it somehow paid off my diligence in replaying (over 20 times!). But because it emphatically did NOT. The game was trolling me, and while deeply UNentertaining in the moment, really the most mechanical experience I can recall since I first started calling things ‘Mechanical,’ the meta narrative it built was kind of hilarious.

The Satire is in the gameplay here, belligerently so, and in a very inspired way. See, by letting the player ‘discover’ the goal of the game, at the end of the first pass there is a choice. Restart to pursue the goal you (probably) failed to achieve, or don’t. If not, fine, this game has nothing to say to you. If you DO restart, you have committed yourself to its goal. At this point, everything about the gameplay is satirizing THIS COMMITMENT. The text that becomes a blur of unread/skimmed and ignored input? The frantic reassertion of your goals, essentially independent of the dialogue and events around you? The increasing urgency after each repetition to make yourself heard? Then, the final coup de’ grace when you ARE heard? All of this is a sublime evocation then puncturing of our political preoccupations, and righteous self-importance. The gameplay creates in us, the player, an urgency to inflict BIG TOPICS on an audience whose immediate concerns want nothing to do with them. And frames this impulse as (social) (Spoiler - click to show)failure! This is EVERY OUTRAGED PARTY GUEST YOU KNOW, THE GAME.

The ludonarrative IS the satire here, and that is a truly next level use of IF. The playing of game was decidedly NOT engaging. In fact it was annoyingly mechanical. But the satire in that gameplay was simply Delicious. I award that a Spark AND a bonus point for innovative ludosatire. I ain’t afraid of no bears.

Played: 11/6/25
Playtime: 20m, 20+ playthroughs, all endings?
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless with some headfaked Notable Gaps, bonus point for ludotroll
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

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