Yancy At The End Of The World!

What if the world ended and everything more or less went on just as it did before? Yancy at the End of the World puts a unique spin on the zombie apocalypse story, starting with a stereotypical oh-no-the-dead-are-rising premise and then seemingly not doing much with it: characters worry about their anxiety and overall mental health, get annoyed by slanted news coverage of the disaster, and gripe about having to come back into the office when there are packs of the walking dead still roving around out there, but don’t seem especially worried about getting their faces eaten off or anything. Still, there are some things that change, even if they’re small: Yancy finally takes up photography, against their mom’s advice, and reconnects with some old friends. And then just when the apocalypse feels like an anticlimax, it turns out Yancy’s world does end after all – which might actually be a good thing, though they’ll still mourn it.

The game can be disorienting for reasons that go beyond the undead plague and the nonstandard narrative emphases, too. About ten minutes in, it nonchalantly revealed that the couple I was talking to were “a colorful snow leopard” and “a literal cat-fish” (the “literal” doesn’t really help, I can still think of like three different things that could mean); while still digesting that, I went into my apartment and was greeted by my adorable pet, who’s a sort of cyclops-fox-cat kinda thing. And indeed when you take photos of the other characters, it’s clear that most of them are anthropomorphic animals of one sort or another.

There’s a clear gameplay structure that helped me maintain my bearings even as I was getting to grips with the world, though. After an introductory sequence that briskly establishes the zombie threat, reintroduces Yancy to their childhood best friend, and sees them deciding to buy a camera and take some photos while the world is still a going concern, each day runs on a pleasingly predictable rhythm. First, you choose someplace to go – visiting friends or family, heading to the café or bookstore, going for a walk in nature – which leads to a small vignette where you might encounter a member of the game’s medium-sized supporting cast, have a few conversational choices, and then take a picture. In the evening, you check in with some friends on a chat server, which is usually where the game catches you up on the state of the world; at that point, you’ve got an opportunity to DM with one of the online characters, and then head into a voice chat with the aforementioned best friend, Nekoni. Then you go to bed and the pattern repeats.

I found this approach struck a good balance between novelty and familiarity; the number of choices doesn’t feel overwhelming, but the game runs for only nine days, and you’ve generally got about half a dozen options for places to visit or friends to DM, which means that it’s hard to get too deep into any particular story or relationship strand but it’s also hard to feel like any of them have worn out their welcomes. And while the overall vibe is pretty chill – most of the people you encounter are supportive as you explore your new hobby and try to weather the zombie threat together – there are some sequences that effectively raise the stakes, and where your choices feel significant, like a scene where your best friend reacts badly to you coming out as aromantic and asexual.

Working through issues like this is where the game’s heart really lies, with the zombie stuff quickly revealing itself as a close-to-the-surface allegory for issues around queer identity and acceptance rather than an excuse for action-horror or anything like that. And in keeping with that, even when members of the friend group put their feet wrong or get wrapped up in themselves, the game keeps the focus on healing and working together; Yancy isn’t required to always forgive people, but does always keep talking and providing an opportunity for others to prove that they’ve changed after they’ve made a mistake, which makes for a nice, positive vibe while still making clear that their life isn’t always a bed of roses.

The one character who sticks out from this generally well-meaning love-fest is Yancy’s mom. She’s the one person who’s definitively human rather than a furry, and though she insists she love’s Yancy, she’s also invariably misgendering them, and spends most of her time watching the Fox News analogue and letting its misinformation erode her mental and physical health. On the flip side, while Yancy finds spending time with her actively painful, and is increasingly clear on the ways that her expectations and prejudices have created challenges for them, still feels a connection to her beyond a mere sense of familial obligation.

There are a lot of different strands here, in other words, but I feel like Yancy at the End of the World cohered for me in a way that something like String Theory didn’t. There is a clear narrative climax, for one thing, and even though it’s a bit of a swerve from what the opening seems to set up, it nonetheless is an entirely reasonable place for the story to go, and one that’s got strong thematic resonance with everything else that’s going on. And there’s a strong sense of how humanly messy relationships can get, even when you tax sex and romance out of the equation, with lived-in prose and gently funny dialogue keeping things grounded. This is a game that didn’t play out as I expected it would based on the first twenty minutes and my knowledge of genre tropes, but the surprises here were good ones.