Just Two Wishes

I don’t think I’m especially atypical in finding that it’s increasingly hard to steer clear of revenge fantasies. The rise of authoritarian regimes in what are notionally democracies means that every day, we’re confronted with the latest antics of amoral grifters, who put on a paper-thin veil of piety while committing crime after crime to line their pockets and save their skins. How can you not occasionally give in to the temptation to imagine that some form of divine justice could be realized in this world, not the next one, and redeem our debased reality? And of course I’m talking here of Trump and his cronies, but also of the Netanyahu regime, which even as I’m writing this is launching another ground offensive in Gaza, targeting already-starving civilians because two years of genocide apparently isn’t enough to satiate their bloodlust.

Just Two Wishes is a revenge fantasy, though to its credit it’s a lot less vicious than mine tend to be. It doesn’t reveal this at first, because it’s told backwards: there aren’t really any puzzles in this parser game except for piecing together the meaning. As a result, I can’t really talk about it without getting into that meaning, so fair warning: if you haven’t played it yet and don’t want the experience spoiled any more than I already have, it’s time to bounce.

OK, now it’s just us chickens. So yeah, this is the game that depicts the aftermath of a Palestinian child’s birthday wishes: that Bibi and Trump turn into the frayed teddy-bear she’s playing with, and that a giant black bowl like the one she’s got clapped over a bunch of beetles seal off Israel from the outside world. Because it is played backwards, the Tel Aviv segment feels like a disquieting mystery, with the disappearance of the sun and sky a horrifying bit of magical realism – admittedly, on my first go I missed seeing the Netanyahu speech, which would have broken up the somber mood, but that did mean that the jump to Mar-a-Lago was even more ridiculous, as the smash-cut to Trump in bed with a Hitler Youth and suddenly sprouting fur left me enjoyably discombobulated. I sometimes like not knowing what the heck I’m playing!

As a parser-game experience, it works well enough – design-wise, it’s all about moving through space until you get to the climactic cut-scenes that trigger the next sequence. With that said, the implementation is pretty thin; the menu-based conversation is slickly done, but you only ever have one or two choices, and the characters don’t have any depth, largely two-dimensional villains, heroic victims, or background players there to help the machinery of plot move along (though Zulaija has an understandable, and appealing, nasty streak). Meanwhile, the use of PunyInform means that there’s a bit more fussing about with doors than fits the game’s story, and the persistence of default Inform responses makes for some inadvertent comedy, especially in the Trump section (being told that, after JD Vance informs you that he’s taking over the presidency, “you politely end the conversation” beggars belief, as does the “violence isn’t the answer to this one” when you subsequently try to tear him limb from limb). But this isn’t exactly a game that lives and dies by its simulation – a parser presentation is a good fit for a story where you’re wandering around confused.

As politics, well, it’s not exactly trenchant. The caricatures of the bad guys are just that, and the fantasy being played out is satisfying but woefully incomplete (in particular, while I’m definitely a voting-for-the-Democrat-is-necessary-but-not-sufficient liberal, it’s hard to overlook the fact that the genocide started in the Biden administration – it’s obviously gotten worse since Trump took over, of course!) On the flip side, some of the characterization of ordinary Israelis made me uncomfortable: while I can’t fully disagree with the statement that “what Israel’s voters want is the eradication of Palestine, genocide pure and simple”, at least in terms of revealed preferences, it’s worth noting that there’s a large contingent of Israelis deeply unhappy with Netanyahu. Along similar lines, there’s a magazine described as featuring “Zionist beauties” Gal Gadot and Natalie Portman; I don’t follow the political views of celebrities all that closely, but while Gadot was famously in the IDF and has repeatedly stuck her foot in her mouth criticizing people who support Palestinians, I wasn’t aware of Portman doing anything in particular that would open her up to an implication of complicity with war crimes — and a quick Google left me no better informed since it turned up reasonably high-profile opposition to Netanyahu and some support for Gazans. And the reference to the elevator in the Tel Aviv apartment building being a “Schindler” feels like an awkward Holocaust reference, though per the author's later comments this is just a meaningless coincidence. There's nothing out of bounds here by any means, I don't think, but since collective punishment is so central to what's happening to Gaza, a work engaging with it necessarily is going to invite heightened scrutiny about its portrayals of collective guilt.

Calling a revenge fantasy occasionally tasteless isn’t exactly a criticism, though – that’s kind of the point. Nuance isn’t the order of the day, emotional catharsis to help manage the day to day stress of living in an unjust world is. By that standard Just Two Wishes does what it’s supposed to, I have to admit – I’m just not sure whether that daydream is completely healthy, or one that’s appropriate for me as an American to indulge in. And in fairness, the game seems to share that ambivalence to at least a certain degree – its subtitle is “a triptych on anger”, which at least implicitly passes judgment on little Zulaija’s dreams of vengeance. Some degree of retribution will be needed if we’re ever to live in decent societies again, but finding the right degree without going too far will take more than an idle daydream.