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Vespertines Review, August 21, 2023What first attracted me to this game as I browsed through the interactive fiction tag on itch was the banner art. It's dynamic--the color palette is sumptuous, excellent composition, killer style and a person engaging in the oft-taboo act of smoking. (I adore cigarettes, aesthetically and actually. If they didn't destroy my meatsack I'd engage them like a hobby. Fictional characters aren't burdened meatsacks. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em!)
"But Laurie," the fictional audience in my head says. "Isn't this a text-based IF game? What does great art have to do with anything?" And to that I tip my sunglasses down my nose, light a fictional cigarette and say, "Vibes."
This game has a great start, setting the player in a clear time and place that guides, but does not stifle, the imagination. You play as a fully customizable PC on the run from a nebulous past. Details unfold in this story gently and enticingly, inviting you to invest more of your imagination in exchange for a rich story. A fair trade.
"Skyscrapers loom like cold cliffs around you, riddled with fluorescence, hemming you in and stealing real-estate from the stars." *chef kiss*
This was the first IF game I played that allowed for gender-selectable ROs. I wasn't sure how I felt about the concept at first--I worried that it would affect the authenticity of the characters if they weren't written with a specific gender lens in mind. Then, the more I thought about my thoughts, it seemed like they were generated by some old, baked-in terfy nonsense from my conservative upbringing. The customization empowers the player to have more control over their experience of the narrative and further invest themselves in the story. That's a positive for everyone.
Vespertines allows for what I think of as "personality tone" for the playable character. There's a couple of binary gauges to help give you a sense of the mechanics being checked in-game. I'm really enjoying these games that let me play as a softer, more vulnerable character. When I was younger, all I wanted were characters that were bad-ass, take on the world, chew their problems and spit them at their enemies type of heroes. I wanted to play as someone confident and disgustingly capable because I wanted to believe I could be those things. Lately, I find myself drawn to characters that have space to feel, that are frightened because the world is frightening, that can cry and still face the challenge ahead of them because I want to believe I can be those things. And I love Vespertines because in my heart there's a frightened girl waiting for the monsters to save her from humanity.
Another thing I loved. I got to be a vegetarian in the game. <3 Little ties to my real life add such specialness to a game