Maybe you'll respect this dead person instead

I suppose this exposes me as a person of limited imagination, but before I played Maybe you’ll respect this dead person instead, I’d never really contemplated the broad advantages – to one’s social life, career, and general psychological well-being – of being able to summon a giant hermit crab to wreak havoc at your merest whim. Christmas party running long? GIANT HERMIT CRAB. Frustratingly vague performance review? GIANT HERMIT CRAB. Seasonal affective disorder? GIANT HERMIT CRAB. Truly, self-actualization via enormous crustacean is an idea whose time has come – get this crab a podcast and an Instagram account.

Admittedly, the protagonist of Maybe you’ll respect… has more legitimate reasons for letting a hermit crab do the talking than the generalized anomie of modern life. As a mute spirit-summoner in a fantasy milieu, he must rely on a quartet of ethereal allies not only to defeat the powerful monsters trying to destroy the world but also for basic communication, not to mention to push back against the institutionalized sexism of the all-female Hunter’s Guild he wants to join. And players with more restraint than me might lean more heavily on the other three inhabitants of the censer he uses to call forth the spirits: a diminutive sword-saint, a giant ogre warrior, and a duelist as deadly as she is conceited (this last one does double duty as the game’s narrator – she’s almost as fun as the crab).

(Almost).

The plot here is very basic – our hero is snubbed by the powers that be and takes on a dangerous mission to prove himself, accompanied by a plucky ally who provides the exposition that’s tricky for a mute character to deliver. As well, the game’s got the kind of hazy fantasy worldbuilding where the guild of monster-hunters has property and casualty insurance for their headquarters (it’s not clear this is meant to be a joke), and the prose is evocative but occasionally tends to adjectivitis:

"The perpetual lava falls on the cliff face backlight the marble white city in the evening light of the setting sun and the planet’s orbiting rings."

It feels churlish to complain about these slight rough edges when the main business of the game is so entertaining, though. The gameplay revolves entirely around choosing which of your four summons to lean on from moment to moment, through two major setpieces: first, trying to persuade the guild to let you join, and second, the aforementioned adventure to bring back trophies from some defeated monsters. You can’t always summon anybody, and the author does a good job of imposing restrictions to help the player internalize the fancy anime-style names (at least as long as you’re playing; I’ve completely forgotten them one day on) and get familiar with their capabilities. The choice of two radically different scenes also highlights the importance of versatility – contra my intro, the crab isn’t always the optimal choice. And speaking of optimal choices, while I think you can get to a good ending no matter what, the game does keep track of stuff like how many times you and your partner get hurt in the fight, awarding fun achievements at the end, which feels like the right level of consequences (I didn’t get many of these, because again, any time I could introduce my opponents to the power of my Crab Style Kung Fu, I did).

Maybe you’ll respect… makes good use of this simple but novel gameplay structure, then, and the straightforward story does resonate with positive values of representation and belonging. And, as the “to be continued” at the end indicates, this might only be the introduction to a larger saga, in which case keeping things comparatively simple before proceedings get more complex is entirely understandable. And as long as “that’s an interesting point, why don’t you repeat it to my GIANT HERMIT CRAB” remains an always-available option, bring on the sequel.

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made.

The game initially shipped without a blurb at all, until it was added a day after the Thing opened for public consumption. The lack of a description, a wordy title, and what looked like a chocolate dessert on the cover art served to pique my interest.

As the description says, your character is a mute summoner who calls up a spirit to speak, or fight, or do whatever the situation demands. In the tradition of all aspiring fantasy adventurers everywhere, you go to the guild of violent monster hunters for work and to prove yourself. One of the things I found interesting is that the narrator is one of the summoner’s spirits. The narrative voice is non-intrusive (unless you consistently summon Cathareen, which I understand the appeal of), with the occasional cutting comment or inclusion of the pronoun “I” to signify that it’s not a usual second-person point-of-view.

Your choices are basically deciding which of your four spirits to summon. They have a few things they excel at and a few things they don’t, and you have to remember what they were like in their introductory scenes, and what the situation calls for, to get a good outcome. At the beginning and middle of the game, most of the choices seem to be for flavor text, with the exception of a (Spoiler - click to show)climactic fight, which acts as a final exam where you summon the appropriate spirit in response to an enemy’s attack. I managed to come out unscathed in my first try, though after using the back button to click as many “wrong” choices as I could, the outcome isn’t too different, just changes your score a bit.

I liked the pacing and could clearly visualize the action scenes from the writing. A valiant first effort, and if the author gets the urge to write the continuing adventures of the summoner, origin stories for the spirits, or other stories set in this world, it would be interesting.

A fun concept well suited to its medium. There are a lot of fun moments, a clever use of narrator perspective, but it feels like a proof of concept more than a full game. I hope the author comes back to this concept for future works!

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/7/26
Playtime: 15min, joined Guild

I’m kind of 0-2 when invoking unfamiliar (to me) pop culture properties during reviews. You would think that kind of record would make me slow to employ that particular tool again. But no! I am an equus ferus, untameable and answering to no man! You cannot bridle me with your concepts of “humility” and “lessons learned”!

My usual employment of pop culture comparison comes spontaneously, unfairly, and colors my engagement with the work to some degree thereafter, at least until the work provides something ELSE to latch on to. To MYRTDPI’s credit, this time the comparison was achingly slow in manifesting, until it did so all at once, very late in the game. It is fair to say that this either points to me going 0-3 on these things, or to the BEST possible pop culture riffing - where the initial source is merely the springboard for deeply personal and creative works that ultimately owe little more than inspiration itself. And in some sense, given that there is nothing new under the sun, isn’t that really ALL art?

MYRTDPI plops us, very in media res, into a fantasy world we will struggle to keep up with. Cultures, Institutions, Geography, Biodiversity, all completely alien to the player with no real effort to provide purchase or explanation by the protag. If I’m going to get dunked into High Fantasy (which is not my chosen genre), this is the way I prefer it. Trust me to catch up, don’t spoon feed me. “WTF is going on here?” is a very effective way to batter aside any genre-resistance I might cling to. It helps, I think, that the world building is very aggressive. Almost nothing is taken for Medieval-Europe-granted, to its great credit. We seem to be in a matriarchal world (or at least city-state), where female power is the norm and males are tolerated intruders. Swirling around this, there is magic and swordplay and wondrous, dangerous beings.

It emerges that the protag is attempting to join a Guild, an only quasi-welcoming space of playful aggression and bruises. To do so, he must establish his credentials by satisfying a quest utilizing only his unique magical gifts. With the help of a new friend. From there, the quest is comically abrupt - go underground, fight monsters, win! The work’s brevity is well considered, as this seems intended as a prologue for one or more longer games in the same mythos. By game’s end we have effectively been introduced to the world, the protag, his specific abilities, and some NPCs.

Much like the work itself does, I have shaded the pop culture reference I am about to make. See, the protag owns a magic brazier, from which he can conjure (Spoiler - click to show)one of four fancifully-named spirits to aid him, most especially in fighting monsters. In service of his quest to join a (Spoiler - click to show)combative athletic club of sorts. Would it make it more clear if you envision the brazier as a sphere of red and white? The comparison is limited, in the sense that the brazier has no particular effect after foes are defeated. It is entirely possible that I am imposing a comparison unintended by the author. As counter-argument, I offer the mid-combat text, reporting on damage to your partner. It is a sly echo of “It’s super effective!” Once this pop culture resonance landed I giggled to myself uncontrollably. If in fact this parallel has any grounding, its employment was masterful - shaded until so late in the game it felt like a mini-revelation. Not so much cheapening the work (as such comparisons can sometimes do) but enriching it.

The difference is the dense, specific lore inundating the experience prior. After long beats of struggling to keep up with offhand strangeness while the plot steamed forward, this hit like a moment of clarity. Quite a feat in only 15 minutes of gameplay!

As a prologue, how did the complete work settle? I’m not sure? The fact that I’m not sure is probably a big win for this work. Given how far it is from my default interests, the fact that you are not hearing “great fun but not for me” is no small achievement. Its confident, thoroughly foreign setting, pervasive wry wit and what I perceive as a subversive, clowning reference, coupled with the controlled but frenetic pacing of it all are kind of winning. Certainly winning enough to engage its successor.

Spaceship: Tardis
Vibe: “Spooky Ghost Fighter, I choose you!”
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my work, I think I would try to pack in just one more sly reference - maybe casually drop that the protag’s name is “Bash Ketchup” or somesuch. Just so overconfident reviewers are not left twisting over whether the reference was intended or not.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

I don't know why, but as I review this I am struck by a strong memory of the game Gallery Gal, where you can, at any point in the narrative, turn into an art gallery, thus permanently ending the game (and destroying any structures in the area).

This game has you play as a summoner who cannot talk and, instead, summons one of four people: a fairy general, a giant, a huge beast (who, much like gallery gal, destroys the area), and a 3.5th-wall breaking magical character.

Essentially all gameplay is choosing between these 4, which is a fun mechanism. There's not really anything wrong with the game, but somehow it felt like something was missing, almost like it was an early access game or a trailer for a game.

I didn't play the games during Spring Thing (wanting to preserve some neutrality) and didn't read most reviews, so I thought the whole time this was a thoughtful slice of life game about someone who had passed on and it was a funeral or something with a message beyond the grave to shame the living. I liked this, though!