*OVER*

*OVER* is a long, sprawling game about a large family at what is obviously Disney World, although it is carefully not named, in the ‘90s. There are three main narrative threads, following a player-nameable college student with much younger siblings, awkward closeted lesbian aunt Lou, and cool grandma Phil. These plotlines all entwine around the walkie-talkies that the family uses to keep up with each other, sometimes also overhearing other families who have had the same bright idea.

I’m also from a large family and have been on Disney trips reminiscent of this, although by the time I was 20 we, unlike the family in *OVER*, had cell phones, Fastpass, and normalized sunscreen use. But that only does so much to alleviate the chaos of a sufficiently large family vacation, represented here in a cavalcade of sensory detail and busy descriptions of what everyone in the family is doing even if it doesn’t matter much. These are cut with the occasional biting observation: “Equality and fairness for a family vacation is oftentimes choosing the option that makes everyone equally upset.”

When I reached the end of the game’s first day, I was exhausted on the protagonists’ behalf—“Damn,” I thought, “all of that was only one day? And we have how many days left again?” (Which is exactly how I feel whenever I go on vacation with my family, even now that there are fewer small children involved.) Yet the prose has a compelling, even hypnotic quality that made me want to keep going.

If the game has one major flaw, it’s that although there are three protagonists and the college student seems intended to be the PC as much as there is one, it’s really Lou’s story that gets the most focus and is the most fleshed-out. I was a little disappointed—I wanted to dig more into those eldest-sibling woes—but Lou’s story is nevertheless very good. Its eventual (Spoiler - click to show)descent into a surrealist or magical-realist mode, as Lou becomes trapped in a time loop and then bursts through a mirror into a parallel universe, might feel disjointed or unconvincing to some, but it worked for me: the frenetic fever dream of the family vacation having finally reached such a pitch as to become divorced from reality entirely.