Lilac Song

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 26 Review

Style: Choice-Select
Played: 7/2/26
Playtime: 10m

Hollandspiele is a pretty singular boardgame company. Contrary to what its name might suggest, it is an American studio whose owners are deeply concerned with historical injustice. (And dinosaurs, not relevant here.) They produced a game about slavery in America. About resisting (and overcoming resistance to) women’s suffrage. About cigarette manufacture and marketing. About the politics behind the Nicaean council and religious orthodoxy. Really heady stuff, with clever and evocative mechanisms whose main tripping point might be that someone has to sign on to be just the worst villains history has to offer. And then maybe ‘win’ the game as them.

Our own Autumn Chen might have solved this dilemma with the Social Democracy series, offloading the reprehensible side of gameplay to an unfeeling machine. (A choice that… could it be more poetic?)

Playing those games is pretty cool, but I hear you asking, “What would be it be like to BE those game developers? IN NAZI GERMANY???” Enter Lilac Song. The protag of this short work is a game developer, modeling social transformation as the Nazi party is starting its ascendance. Their mentor is a seasoned humanist with a long history of struggle for social justice, who is watching their good work regress before their eyes.

It is kind of a fascinating lens to view this dynamic through. Your humble reviewer is not going to pretend this is not a fraught acknowledgement of the horrific political ascendance of fascism across the globe, and especially in my own home country. Here, we get to see two facets of resistance: a seasoned warrior watching hard-won progress being reversed in blindingly short time, and an intellectual grappling with the new order via the most innocuous of pursuits, deluding themselves into thinking that grappling will somehow give them power over it. The former’s disillusion and resignation is more immediately powerful, while the latter’s relatable immersion in invention is more subtle. Both are ultimately tragic.

I can be accused of reading too much into things. Let me embrace that here! Given the deep mechanics of the Social Democracy series, isn’t there a read of this work as the author’s critical self-analysis? Of reflecting creative pursuits against social upheaval and finding them ultimately wanting? But of recognizing that IGNORING the encroaching hellscape is also not an option? I find both of the characters painfully sympathetic here, even if the work is ultimately kind of pessimistic and distressing. Yes, there are more obvious paths of resistance unaddressed here, but in their omission the work kind of obliquely wonders if those are any more effective. Dear God, I hope so. I don’t particularly want to die in jail.