Despite being Asian, I've never gone out of my way to actively consume diasporic works or those that capture the Asian experience (whatever that means) or Asian generational trauma etc... . I understand the function of those works and their value to others, I just find so much of it personally boring, since I prefer batshit vision, hyper-entertainment, insanity, and escapism in the media I consume.
1000xResist is one of the few works that achieves all of that madness while still having its fair share of sad gay/sapphic asian fuck-the-world type anime shit & socially important generational trauma + HK protest stuff. It's neither too realistically heavy nor too flippantly quirky (e.g. many post-Undertale indie games out there), knows when to take its shit seriously, knows when to go mad, and achieves all of this while looking like a cross between a PS2-era Killer7 fangame and a Wong Kar Wai film. It reaches a level of concision and condensation many other games hope to hit, probably thanks to the devs' background in experimental theatre- every chapter contains the same level of conversational-thematic density & punchiness as something like a Caryl Churchill or Sarah Kane or Tom Stoppard play, and even the most offhanded jokes or dialogues can have thematic and symbolic resonances that reverberate throughout the whole structure. One could think of it as the stylistic opposite to Disco Elysium's poetic maximalist approach, yet the overall effects are potent in their own way, even if lacking the breadth and flourish of ZA/UM's masterwork.
This work proves that in today's media landscape there really needs to be more weird-as-fuck, creatively-deranged, nutso devs with important shit to say (and who are not just content with only having important shit to say). Thank you Sunset Visitor for figuring out a way combine Evangelion, Nier Automata, teenage anime melodrama, and HK-China politics and blowing my mind. Hekki Allmo.
1000xResist is one of the few works that achieves all of that madness while still having its fair share of sad gay/sapphic asian fuck-the-world type anime shit & socially important generational trauma + HK protest stuff. It's neither too realistically heavy nor too flippantly quirky (e.g. many post-Undertale indie games out there), knows when to take its shit seriously, knows when to go mad, and achieves all of this while looking like a cross between a PS2-era Killer7 fangame and a Wong Kar Wai film. It reaches a level of concision and condensation many other games hope to hit, probably thanks to the devs' background in experimental theatre- every chapter contains the same level of conversational-thematic density & punchiness as something like a Caryl Churchill or Sarah Kane or Tom Stoppard play, and even the most offhanded jokes or dialogues can have thematic and symbolic resonances that reverberate throughout the whole structure. One could think of it as the stylistic opposite to Disco Elysium's poetic maximalist approach, yet the overall effects are potent in their own way, even if lacking the breadth and flourish of ZA/UM's masterwork.
This work proves that in today's media landscape there really needs to be more weird-as-fuck, creatively-deranged, nutso devs with important shit to say (and who are not just content with only having important shit to say). Thank you Sunset Visitor for figuring out a way combine Evangelion, Nier Automata, teenage anime melodrama, and HK-China politics and blowing my mind. Hekki Allmo.