Andromeda Chained

Played: 7/6/24
Playtime: 13min, 8 playthroughs

GONNA DISCUSS WITH BIG SPOILERS, LIKE NOTHING BUT
it’s pretty short, go ahead and play first

Is there anything more dispiriting than social impotence? Is dispiriting the right word? It feels like it is, but it also feels like it isn’t… big enough? That your life exists only in the minds of those around you and no amount of cleverness, resistance, will or empathy, nothing actually of you makes the slightest difference in that. History is choked with marginalized peoples and genders that exist as outright property of others. Vast swaths of modern life still carry these impulses, usually applied to people whose lives and agendas are inconvenient to our own narratives. It is the worst kind of dehumanizing. I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t try to rank those kinds of things. It’s pretty bad though.

This is a work that uses a heroic narrative from Greek mythology to drive that point home. The packaging is super attractive, opening with classic art, then a story-appropriate background painting of roiling seas under translucent text box. As a player, you are making a series of choices as Andromeda during her attempted sacrifice and subsequent rescue. An amusing variety of responses from ‘sweep me away broad shoulders’ to ‘back off entitled ass’ are available to you. The inability of any of those choices to alter your path are the crux of the work. You can be sassy, reasonable, unreasonable, compliant or enthusiastic, and none of it gives you initiative in your own life. Depending on a particular runthrough, this can vary the experience from spineless surrender to despairing defeat.

It is worth noting that “nothing you do will change anything” is one of the emergent staples of IF-as-narrative. Its theme-to-implementation-difficulty equation has an off the charts ratio, especially in shorter works. It is one of the easiest things to implement, no? No branching narrative, maybe a state variable or two, just the one path with some alternate text. The success or failure of a work like this depends pretty definitively on how convincing and/or entertaining that message is, relative the theme of the piece.

It is pretty perfect against a theme of social impotence.

Is it fun? I mean, does that SOUND fun to you? This is not a piece aimed at entertainment per se (though some branches to have a wry wit to them). It has a point of view, a message, and is super effective at delivering it. As a short work of interactive art, AC accomplishes a vivid, crushing evocation. This f@%#ing sucks. Remember that, sez the work.