WHOM I SHOULD LOVE ABOVE ALL THINGS

The first thing I wrote in my notes for this game was that the presentation is really nice; it looks like a book or (better) screenplay, with a clean white background, text in a lovely, readable font, and a horizontal line across the bottom with the title beneath. So I goggled when I scrolled down a bit on the itch page and saw this was an entry in the Bare Bones Jam, which prevents authors from doing any UI customization at all. I assume this must be some obscure Twine format – it’s definitely not the familiar, endearingly ugly Harlowe or Sugarcube – but good lord, why isn’t everybody using this?

Speaking of Jesus (…yes, I’m going to hell for that segue), this piece of dynamic fiction – a single short scene excerpted from a longer work-in-progress, entitled Anchorite which per the author’s note at the end is sadly a place and not a job description – centers on a Catholic priest whose ex-lover has just slid into his confessional. Most pages consist of a short paragraph of physical business describing what’s happening, before shifting into screenplay mode to display the dialogue, in which the pair run through their recriminations and hopes. Andrey, the ex, is the wittier, invoking bits of Catholic ritual to fondly needle the priest, Joel, who seems earnestly and perpetually flummoxed. It’s a fun dynamic – you can see how they would have worked when they were an item – and they’ve each got distinct voices that come through clearly in the writing; I keep saying “screenplay” because you could see this working if shot as a film.

Those initial paragraphs go well beyond the relatively terse stage directions you typically see in a script, though. There’s some good stuff here too, but I found that I experienced a bit of a disconnect between what the characters were saying and what they were doing. Take, for example, the moment where Joel “places his cross between his teeth, biting into the soft gold.” This is an incredible image, obviously a weighty, symbolic act that communicates torment and desire in equal measure. But it comes not at the climax of the scene, but in the middle, and didn’t seem to me to be clearly precipitated by anything that had just been said, nor is it acknowledged by either character in the dialogue. A talented director and well-trained actors could sell the moment nonetheless, but on the page it felt like the different pieces of writing added up to less than the sum of their parts.

Ironically after just saying that I might have liked NYX better if it hadn’t had any choices, I also found myself wishing there was a choice or two embedded in this. I don’t think anything as vulgar as branching would fit the story, but I did feel like I wanted a little more interiority for the characters: why was Andrey coming back now, what would rekindling the relationship mean to Joel? Choices would have slowed down the momentum of the story so that I had to think about these questions more deeply, and displaying different options could have helped convey internal conflict.

Of course, it may be the case that in the full game, there’s context and backstory to this scene that addresses these dynamics – and for all that there are aspects of the game that didn’t fully land for me, it still worked as an effective teaser for that larger project. Operatic relationship-drama in a Catholic milieu is a delicious premise (to me, at least – why yes I was raised Catholic), and I definitely found myself curious about how Joel and Andrey had first gotten together, and where the story was going from here, since it very much ends on an emotional cliff-hanger. And similarly, even though it didn’t fully land, that cross-biting image will stick with me.