Red Strings Club is a two-part story. In the first, you play as a barman in the future who requires information as payment from customers for their drinks. He uses this information to find out more about a corrupt mega corporation, while using the drinks he serves customers to alter their emotions to provoke them into providing the information he desires. It’s a fantastic concept which makes for a fascinating story, meaningful dialogue options and ensures the player always pays attention to what is going on, even if the gameplay side of things is a bit simplistic.

Unfortunately, the second part of the story is a bit less engaging. You break into the corporation’s HQ at night with a different character to try and stop an event happening. This character uses fake voices and insights he’s gained from the barman, along with items in the HQ, to phone employees and extract the information he needs from them. It sounds interesting on paper, but the trial and error process of ringing different employees and seeing whether they have information you require is tedious, especially considering how long this section of the game lasts for. If this portion of the game was streamlined and the bar making section was fleshed out further, especially in terms of gameplay, I would’ve had a more positive overall experience. Don’t get me wrong, I still recommend this game to anyone whose interest is piqued by what I’ve described, its just this game was close to being something truly special. As it is, for me personally, its just good.

2018 Ranked

I like anti-capitalist stories, I love seeing myself and other lgbt given proper representation in art. Hell, sometimes I'm really into the neon aesthetic and cyberpunk vibes too.

Unfortunately, Red Strings Club messily fucks up mental health issues, and is so overbearingly anti-corporation that it reads more like an awful deliberating of friends close to me as well as a professor strictly and roughly talking down on the reader in prose that very well had me tune out in the first hour. The characters don't really pick up the slack either, toiling in their archtypes and never bleeding off the screen or bringing anything new to the table. It's so up its own ass at times, that by the time I decided enough was enough, it took a long while to get rid of the bile, especially when it uses a deadname as a fucking puzzle answer.

Likely, it'll reinforce your values you already hold, rather than offer much of challenge.

isso n é uma visual novel, não é uma mensagem rasa anticorporativista, as mecânicas não são "mal aproveitadas" e o romance tem um viés simbólico demais pra considerar forçado

é algo empírico, variando o humor e os sentimentos, tonalizado muito bem por seus mini-games, transformando cada pequena linha de diálogo em algo maleável e interessante de acompanhar

The Red Strings Club foi uma das experiências mais agudas que tive, como se fosse um rodízio de emoções intercalando entre si e questionando de forma bem introspectiva o conceito de felicidade, com seu final absurdamente bem escrito e redondo - suas escolhas e decisões não afetam para que fins elas foram propostas, mas afetam a bendita experiência por qual você passa na busca constante por uma resolução feliz - e por isso o pretexto do "anti-corporativismo" é muito bem-vindo aqui.

Really thought I might have a "pour drinks and converse with customers" game I actually liked (a genre I've been trying for years now). Nope!

Like, I dunno, its not deep but its engaging for most of it. The final climax sucks shit and involves the twist villain deciding she'll murder the black main character, who can be gay if you so choose, and ranting about how much she loves the cool white protagonist. The puzzle near it requires learning a trans woman's dead name for some reason.

I dunno, there were some interesting ways it tried to challenge my beliefs but then it crumbled apart at the end. I just don't think straight people should make cyberpunk is where I'm falling on this, I think.

Edit: yeah okay, I did learn just now that the main artist is trans and that does recolor my view of the game in a poor positive way but even although I understand its coming from a more genuine place, that specific puzzle really put me in a bad mood.

Lately I've noticed a pattern in the type of stories I like - genuine, honest protagonists trying their best in a cynical, uncaring world. Arcane, The Boys, and this game - they all have this framework in common.

The thing is, The Red Strings Club goes full-in with this theme, putting empathy and ethics as its focus. Because yes, most of the time, you're using them as a weapon, as a tool... manipulating your clients to fish out information, and controlling their emotions to let their tongues slip.

But amidst its grandiose plot involving megacorporations, cyber-hackers and mind control... there are these small, intimate moments, when the game just asks: "What do you think of this? What is actually important to you, specifically?"

Because yeah, in the end, the city is fucked. It was fucked from the beginning. But are you going to give up, even despite that? When the moment counts, is that what truly matters?

Ethics, politics, emotions, relationships - it all comes crashing down. How right are we, really?

Play this game.

fiz minha primeira run agora e simplesmente to abismado, que jogo incrivel, te bota pra pensar de diversas formas, acho o final "decepcionante" mas não deixa de ser bom também, todo dialogo nesse jogo pesa de uma forma muito boa, gostei demais das demais escolhas que fizemos durante a gameplay, a gameplay é divertida e diferente, gostei muito de ficar misturando drinks e fazendo coquetéis para obter as respostas certas no jogo

a trilha sonora é perfeita e te faz relaxar absurdos, tambem temos uma arte super bem feita

o roteiro do jogo é excelente, e como disse, toda opção que tu escolhe afeta e muito o jogo, até a ordem dos drinks que tu faz pode afetar

4h de jogo, da pra jogar em uma noite tediosa porque esse jogo vai te entreter bastante

8/10, recomendo bastante a quem curte jogos de escolha e que tem bastante relacionamentos pessoais sendo discutidos

The one and a half stars taken off is mainly because this game is a tough nut to crack to make it run well; you either have to open the game at a different resolution and play in a small window, or you have to use Borderless Gaming after making it run window mode and hope it doesn't crash before you set it up with Borderless Gaming. As is, the game also instantly crashes if you alt tab out at any point.

Now, having said my piece about the technical issues, this game is surprisingly compelling in how it manages to weave its narrative about fate and the limits and ethics of technology. It doesn't overstay its welcome either; it leads you comfortably through the plot and its questions with virtually no gaping plot holes, and then sends you on your way. I didn't feel it was overly preachy either; the game gives you a lot of leeway on how to interpret its philosophy, and I appreciate that. It's definitely worth a playthrough if you're into a more introspective and short title.

EDIT: Looking back at this a year later, hasn't aged as well as I'd thought due to its depiction of mental health struggles...

The Red Strings Club se passa num universo cyberpunk onde as corporações concedem a possibilidade de chips que inibem a tristeza das pessoas. Você joga na pele do barman, que esta tentando derrubar essas mega corporações e utiliza dos seus drinks para adquirir informações que serão importantes para tal. O jogo explora uma visão filosófica de como a tristeza também é fundamental para as pessoas, os sentimentos ''ruins'' são tão importantes quanto os ''bons''.

O jogo tem diversas vertentes, que mudam o rumo da história, uma experiência reflexiva que nos levanta muitos questionamentos.

With how long the ending sequence is, it feels like there are two games here, and I really love the idea of both of them. Both the "bartending and conversation" portion and the social engineering portion are really interesting, and with a less strange ending I'd probably rate this a full star higher. I can't say it "comes out of nowhere" but it really makes me wish they went in a different direction with all this momentum they'd built up, because as things stand I'm left reflecting on the other sour moments - moments where I was stuck doing the drink-pouring minigame for slightly too long, the moment where a trans character's deadname is a puzzle answer (even knowing this was a thing going in, it still feels... very weird and unnecessary), etc. When this game is at its strongest it creates those moments that your mind just latches onto, a powerful vignette that you just want to capture forever in amber, but with such prominent shortcomings for its short runtime I'm left wishing we got a slightly different product instead.

I don't want to write this review. Words are difficult, limited. They can dilute experiences, rob them of their inapprehensible qualities. Writing often forces me to coagulate my emotions, my thoughts, stops them in time when I am mercurial, ethereal; here and not here. But I am haunted by the fear of not saying anything. I am compelled to express, no matter how vulnerable the form that expression takes. That is the scariest part of writing: being vulnerable against overwhelming violence.

And that's okay.

The Red Strings Club is a refuge for that vulnerability. You will feel shame, you will get hurt, you will feel alone at times, even helpless, but that's OK. People who are like you who are here now and those who have come before you, have felt it too. In loneliness is togetherness. It's what we can do against overwhelming violence.

That isn't to say that it's a game about unbridled optimism -- the exact opposite. It's the darkest interpretation of Capitalism as recuperative violence that I've ever seen in any video game (haven't played Disco Elysium yet, sorry). This game terrifies me. It came out of nowhere like a demon and took over my thoughts for what will most likely be a very long time.

It's a horrible feeling. What do we do with it? I don't know, and maybe the game doesn't either. Its only solution is the simplest: love and be loved. What has been commodified into the cliche has metamorphosed here into devastating, ugly-sobbing beauty through painful sincerity. Perhaps that is the power you and I have. The power that's in all of these awful, oppressive systems that seem impossible to destroy is in us too. Not as a message of uncritical hope, but one of poignant endurance. We will always love in the end and find love in the end. Till the end, we have us.

That can take us so far, but it can also fell us a great height. But the fall is worth the climb. At least I think so.

Atrociously designed by bodyless brains skunked in jars, written by gawking filigrees rolling twitter's stock through high heavens. All interaction is superficial and fictively constructed without organ to the form or commentary on action inherent to the genre or medium; every spit of dialogue is without characterization, euphony, assonance, or syntactic complexity. These characters don't have any personalities of composited or conflicting traits to define them nor histories or foibles finding them out, and what they do to the effect of personal conviction or action is canned, archaic, and terminally enriched in the soil of a library populated only by tumblr illiteracy and twitter reaction.

The essence of cyberpunk has always been to ask questions about the current state of society; even more so, it is a radical, anti-capitalist genre. Despite its very muted style, The Red Strings Club draws from this heritage, as the fight against Supercontinent directly announces. An experimental mix of visual-novel and point-and-click, with a hint of exotic gameplay, the title seeks to tell an open-ended story about the control of emotions: are they the basis of human identity? The game never really provides easy answers, but rather lets the player experiment. As an ethical problem, each position Donovan chooses – and thus we, through him – comes with its own justification. Towards the end of the game, an excellent sequence features Akara postulating the nature of the ideal world: it is then possible for the player to choose to eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia and the like, but our AI advisor quite rightly points out that accepting this but not the mirror-neuron algorithm is hypocritical. Throughout the title, the metaphysical answer is revealed that it is the difficulties and overcoming of obstacles – even if created by humanity itself – that is at the heart of human identity. The lesson is well and truly embedded in the few hours that make up this title. The Red Strings Club doesn't revolutionise anything: its pixel-art is nothing new, despite its exquisite direction; the dialogues are not deafeningly stylish and the gameplay is not exceptional, although it has the immense merit of leaving a lot of agency to the player. But there is a particular conjunction that makes it a very ethereal and particularly pleasant title. Without a doubt, it's a fresh game that will inspire others.

A cyberpunk bartending game (with some scenes outside of the bar), similar in some ways to VA-11 Hall-A but with the drinks you mix and questions you ask having a larger effect on the narrative as you effect their emotional state, and focusing more on typical cyberpunk themes and conspiracy rather than more focus on your clients, friends, and their and your place in the world. Nice art, good writing. Short, different choices don't change much making more involved gameplay not mean much and doesn't give you time to make any kind of connections with anybody or them with each other.

A pretty short, but interesting narrative-driven game; set in a cyberpunk world where a sinister corporation is planning to eliminate human emotion for their nefarious needs... or are they?

Moved forward by what are essentially mini-games, the narrative around Red Strings Club is essentially that of clumsy dialogue on morality, mental health and LGBTQ+ topics. Not normally my cup of tea, but it does a good enough job of making you take inventory of some views you hold.

Definitely worth a play, but don't pay more than a few pounds/dollars.