Haywire

Our protagonist is a street illusionist, but one whose illusionism is true magic: she can really make people see things that don’t exist or not see things that do. It’s not entirely clear (a) how she gets away with this in the world of ubiquitous smartphones, given that her illusions probably don’t show up on film, and (b) why she is living in abject poverty, given the strength of her powers. But living in abject poverty she is, and one of the first choices offered by the game is whether we should try to get some fast food or illusion ourselves into a posh restaurant.

Doing the latter leads to (Spoiler - click to show)a near disaster, as we apparently manage to kill and then resurrect everyone. Or maybe this was an illusion we played on ourselves? We then meet a girl who we can either trust, in which case we learn that she is a superhero with the powers of telekinesis and so are we, or we meet an insane killer who is very resistant to our illusions, in which case we learn that we are a superhero with the power to shoot lightning bolts. The narrative isn’t very coherent either on one or on multiple playthroughs, and I was left wondering what the point of the story really was.

Haywire is well-written and I enjoyed my time with it, but it feels like a small fragment of what should have been a much larger story.

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