Deliquescence

I found this game deeply moving on multiple playthroughs (including the one where I accidentally left the menu open too long without clicking anything). Writing which concerns grief always has a special place in my heart, as do interactive fiction works that encourage you to play through a single moment over and over again, whether or not you can change the outcome. This is the kind of game I'm just glad exists.

This is a very short conversational game in which you spend time with your best friend in her last moments before she melts into goo. The writing is sharp and nostalgic, and the friend is a well-realized character who I became attached to as I replayed the game over and over, trying out all the options. The custom web implementation is beautiful, and enhances the mood of the game a lot. The background dot pixel grid made me think of a grid of molecules lined up in order, in contrast to your friend's sickness.

Unfortunately, in the approximately fifteen minutes I spent playing Deliquescence, I encountered two different major glitches that blocked the game from continuing. For such a short game, it's no hassle to restart and just play options that don't lead to glitches, but I really wish my experience with this game had been less buggy.

I got pretty emotional playing this one because it made me think of a close friend of mine who died very suddenly a few years ago- I sent her some messages when I learned she was going to the hospital but by the time she got there she wasn't in a state to read them, and I often think about what I would've liked to have said if I had the chance. Instead our last conversation was about something totally mundane. In Deliquescence, the most mundane conversation options seem to comfort your friend the most. This game really encourages you to be a thoughtful friend and cherish every conversation.

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)I’m torn on this one. It’s like a bleaker Queers in Love at the End of the World—you only have a brief amount of time left with someone close to you, and you have to choose how to spend it. Both play out in real time, with a clock far too short to exhaust your myriad options. In this one, though, only one of you will die when the clock runs out, which brings an entirely different (grimmer) mood.

There were moments where I really felt the emotional weight of the situation, but also moments where I was thrown out of it and felt very disconnected. The game starts in media res; the PC is already here with their friend, both of them knowing these will be the friend’s final moments. But the game didn’t fully sell that; the range of options you’re given includes things like “do research” and “ask if she ever learned why this is happening, neither of which makes sense when she’s literally dying in front of you. There was a tension between “let the player try all the things” and “these two people know each other and have history together and would naturally already have exhausted some of these options.”

Going along with this, on my initial playthrough I felt a bit overwhelmed at how many options there were and wanted to know more about the situation, which immediately put me at odds with the PC, who would already know all the things I was curious about. Instead of roleplaying as a good friend, at first I was just seeking out information to give me more context for the present moment.

In general, there’s a feeling of coldness and remove, which contrasts with the horror of the situation. In the friend’s final moments, as her death is actually described, you can no longer act at all; she melts away and all you can do is sit back and watch. Over and over if you replay, which I did, wanting to try different options, and seeing her die repeatedly left me desensitized to it. Replaying also made me very aware that while the game is about trying to comfort the friend, the emphasis is very much on the PC. They’re the the only one with agency; the friend has no last requests unless you prompt them (e.g., if you bring up her family, she asks you to keep an eye on her brother after she’s gone, but she won’t mention that otherwise).

But then, there are some excellently written, emotionally hard-hitting details that convey so much in just a few lines. If you take her hand:

"You hold it lightly. There is a shocking amount of give to it. You could squeeze, and her whole hand would gush out from between your fingers. It wouldn’t even be a hand anymore."

In response to this gesture, she tells you, “My mom wouldn’t hug me, wouldn’t even touch me, the last time I visited. She said the ‘goop’ I left would stain her sweater… she said to keep off the rugs.” Damn. No wonder she values my simple company so much. The line that hit me the most with its pure evocative horror was: “You listen to the steady drip of her toes and feet along the rim of the drain.”

And in all my replays, I managed to find some options that felt the most right, the most meaningful. There aren’t any wrong choices—even if you do absolutely nothing, just let the clock run out, she’ll still say she’s glad you were there—but my favorites were the things that made her smile or laugh (dancing, and drawing in the goop of her melting body). Like in QiLatEotW, seeing those moments of joy in the midst of horrible circumstances made me feel something.