"should there be puzzles in tomorrow won't come?" - the greatest thread in the history of backloggd, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,
This review contains spoilers
i wonder what the first rationalization was, for the finding of a young corpse inside a closet, killed at hands puppeteered by the violence of parents, family, church, school, science. what story did they tell themselves, to explain what they found in there? were they saved, or damned? were they a tragedy, or a warning, or - depressingly common in stories throughout history - was the murder of this young life, so full of potential stories to enrich all of our visions - a comedy?
these stories - these parables - are tools used to build our children - don't do this or ██████, do this and you'll ██████. they are stories wielded in violent ways towards violent ends: to cut us into shapes that they deem good, that they deem right. don't paint your nails, say your prayers, stay out of the woods, and you won't be a ██████, you'll be good little boys and girls and you'll be Saved.
tomorrow won't come for those without ██████ communicates this strongly. and if that was all it did, it would be a fine experience. but it does more than that. it cuts deeper than that. this knife has two edges. it doesn't offer simply the familiar story of people sanded down and lost to religious violence. it also shows us the other side of the coin.
because to simply say that religious parables and thoughts are tools of violence and social control is also a story we tell ourselves, with a specific purpose. it is a truth, yes, but not the only truth, and not the whole truth.
religion and faith have brought immense joy to many. i am not one of those people, but it would be churlish and insensitive for me to deny the immensity of my grandfather's faith and the strength he derives from it, from the faith of so many good people who follow religions that I am not a part of. are those thoughts evil? are these bad people, because the words they hold so dear are used as violent weapons against people? these stories have inspired people to kindness and warmth that means something, and that comes from a framework that, for some, left them unable to think of pokemon cards as anything other than categorizations of demonic entities.
here's another truth: humans tell stories about everything. we can't help it. while I am loath to say that any part of a human being is fundamentally true it is an often agreed-upon scientific assertion that human beings survival instincts in the early days of our existence operated like miniature storytelling: the recognition of a berry that made us sick, so we should not eat that, is a kind of story. our entire world is one enormous meta-narrative, everything given a name, categorized, introduced, developed, and concluded. the scientific process is telling ourselves a story of what we believe the world to be.
but that's another edge to all this, isn't it? reason, science, the thing we often put opposite faith, is a religion in itself, no more infallible than the Bible or the Quran. terrible violence has indeed been done to queer people in the name of religion, but has science been any better? for how long were gay people considered mentally ill or broken? how long are trans people still going to be considered as such? science called us ██████ for years, how is that any better than what religion has done for us?
religion and reason and everything else is all an ouroboros: each one feeding into another, each one determining how we see the world. christianity has shaped the world, and the world has shaped us. science has changed us, and many of us have changed science. neither of those things are good or evil inherently, but they are stories can be wielded or told in ways that have done good and done evil. they are the stories we have created, and the stories that created us. which is not to say we all turn out exactly the same. we've all come from our own choirs, ran off into our own woods, and come back changed...but never entirely.
i was raised catholic, and found a deeply catholic resonance in much that was in this game. but to say that I was raised to be catholic is not as revelatory as it may seem, because what it means to be raised catholic where I live, in Northern ██████, is very different from what it means to be raised catholic in the united states, or even different from what it means to be raised catholic in the republic of ██████. just like Rem and Ori, we can stand in the same place - the same religion, and see different things.
catholic families here are, predominately, working-class, poorer than protestant families, and (at least in my own admittedly limited experience of only having been raised once) operating within a strange kind of puritanical socially conservative leftism. that uniquely northern ██████ catholic upbringing is undoubtedly a key part of why i'm a communist today: my parents and grandparents were some of the first people to talk to me seriously about capital in terms that I could understand - but they were also homophobic, transphobic, sometimes casually racist and sometimes outright racist, and those stories affected me just as deeply as ones about what Thatcher did to them. that manifested in my past as me being a little shit uncritically regurgitating homophobia and transphobia, and manifests now as sheer terror at the day my family discovers my transness.
some of the things my upbringing - my faith - have offered me are valuable. some of them are not. but all of them form the framework with which i view the world. all of it is entangled together, cutting into each other, an enormous frankensteined mass of viewpoints, ideologies - stories. these frameworks are inherently a part of us, and we are a part of them, constructing and reconstructing and deconstructing stories for ourselves and those around us every time we speak.
this is not to say that bad ideas and bad stories should not be argued against or denied or rejected - there is a fundamental need to interrogate assumed truths, imo - but that any critique we make, every idea we raise, it all comes from within that framework, and is fundamentally shaped by it's opportunities and limitations. everything we believe to be true or false, it all comes the human perspective, not a celestial one: even fundamental maths and other "pure science" concepts are constructed from the stories that we tell: it's entirely possible - almost certain in fact - that a hypothetical alien would not comprehend this framework, and have a different one that is so outside of our perspective that we cannot even imagine it. a ██████.
we need a story in order to survive. just like our ancestors needed to know which berries were safe to eat and which ones were not, to interact with anything, to have meaning in anything, we need to tell stories about them, otherwise, we're just floundering in the dark, blind and deaf and dead.
so, if all we can do is trapped by this perspective, these stories, are we doomed to just perpetuate them over and over? i don't think so. i think we have some creativity, some possibility space, afforded by ██████ perspectives, to make games like this one. games that offer no easy answers or simple resolutions, games that force us to push against it's and our own sharp edges and can cause violent reactions, but things that can change or expand our stories. we can make beautiful things out of rough stones.
one of the things I found most affecting about this game personally - as someone who has made awful rpgmaker games before - is how this game wears the limitations of rpgmaker core toolset through it's "puzzles" and user interface. to say such thoughtful things so beautifully out of the same fundamental building blocks i used to make my shitty vagrant story knockoff affected me more than I dared expect. others in the backloggd discord game club were not enthused by these puzzles but for this reason they were one of the most affecting parts of the experience for me. i guess that's my story bleeding through.
tommorow won't come for those without ██████ is a difficult game, abrasive and unwelcoming. i found it to be an emotionally upsetting and violent experience. but that's why I loved it. because just like religion or science or anything else, violence means different things depending on where you stand. a knife can hurt us, cut into our flesh, make us bleed and kill us...but it can also cut at the net that surrounds us.
it can cut us ████.
these stories - these parables - are tools used to build our children - don't do this or ██████, do this and you'll ██████. they are stories wielded in violent ways towards violent ends: to cut us into shapes that they deem good, that they deem right. don't paint your nails, say your prayers, stay out of the woods, and you won't be a ██████, you'll be good little boys and girls and you'll be Saved.
tomorrow won't come for those without ██████ communicates this strongly. and if that was all it did, it would be a fine experience. but it does more than that. it cuts deeper than that. this knife has two edges. it doesn't offer simply the familiar story of people sanded down and lost to religious violence. it also shows us the other side of the coin.
because to simply say that religious parables and thoughts are tools of violence and social control is also a story we tell ourselves, with a specific purpose. it is a truth, yes, but not the only truth, and not the whole truth.
religion and faith have brought immense joy to many. i am not one of those people, but it would be churlish and insensitive for me to deny the immensity of my grandfather's faith and the strength he derives from it, from the faith of so many good people who follow religions that I am not a part of. are those thoughts evil? are these bad people, because the words they hold so dear are used as violent weapons against people? these stories have inspired people to kindness and warmth that means something, and that comes from a framework that, for some, left them unable to think of pokemon cards as anything other than categorizations of demonic entities.
here's another truth: humans tell stories about everything. we can't help it. while I am loath to say that any part of a human being is fundamentally true it is an often agreed-upon scientific assertion that human beings survival instincts in the early days of our existence operated like miniature storytelling: the recognition of a berry that made us sick, so we should not eat that, is a kind of story. our entire world is one enormous meta-narrative, everything given a name, categorized, introduced, developed, and concluded. the scientific process is telling ourselves a story of what we believe the world to be.
but that's another edge to all this, isn't it? reason, science, the thing we often put opposite faith, is a religion in itself, no more infallible than the Bible or the Quran. terrible violence has indeed been done to queer people in the name of religion, but has science been any better? for how long were gay people considered mentally ill or broken? how long are trans people still going to be considered as such? science called us ██████ for years, how is that any better than what religion has done for us?
religion and reason and everything else is all an ouroboros: each one feeding into another, each one determining how we see the world. christianity has shaped the world, and the world has shaped us. science has changed us, and many of us have changed science. neither of those things are good or evil inherently, but they are stories can be wielded or told in ways that have done good and done evil. they are the stories we have created, and the stories that created us. which is not to say we all turn out exactly the same. we've all come from our own choirs, ran off into our own woods, and come back changed...but never entirely.
i was raised catholic, and found a deeply catholic resonance in much that was in this game. but to say that I was raised to be catholic is not as revelatory as it may seem, because what it means to be raised catholic where I live, in Northern ██████, is very different from what it means to be raised catholic in the united states, or even different from what it means to be raised catholic in the republic of ██████. just like Rem and Ori, we can stand in the same place - the same religion, and see different things.
catholic families here are, predominately, working-class, poorer than protestant families, and (at least in my own admittedly limited experience of only having been raised once) operating within a strange kind of puritanical socially conservative leftism. that uniquely northern ██████ catholic upbringing is undoubtedly a key part of why i'm a communist today: my parents and grandparents were some of the first people to talk to me seriously about capital in terms that I could understand - but they were also homophobic, transphobic, sometimes casually racist and sometimes outright racist, and those stories affected me just as deeply as ones about what Thatcher did to them. that manifested in my past as me being a little shit uncritically regurgitating homophobia and transphobia, and manifests now as sheer terror at the day my family discovers my transness.
some of the things my upbringing - my faith - have offered me are valuable. some of them are not. but all of them form the framework with which i view the world. all of it is entangled together, cutting into each other, an enormous frankensteined mass of viewpoints, ideologies - stories. these frameworks are inherently a part of us, and we are a part of them, constructing and reconstructing and deconstructing stories for ourselves and those around us every time we speak.
this is not to say that bad ideas and bad stories should not be argued against or denied or rejected - there is a fundamental need to interrogate assumed truths, imo - but that any critique we make, every idea we raise, it all comes from within that framework, and is fundamentally shaped by it's opportunities and limitations. everything we believe to be true or false, it all comes the human perspective, not a celestial one: even fundamental maths and other "pure science" concepts are constructed from the stories that we tell: it's entirely possible - almost certain in fact - that a hypothetical alien would not comprehend this framework, and have a different one that is so outside of our perspective that we cannot even imagine it. a ██████.
we need a story in order to survive. just like our ancestors needed to know which berries were safe to eat and which ones were not, to interact with anything, to have meaning in anything, we need to tell stories about them, otherwise, we're just floundering in the dark, blind and deaf and dead.
so, if all we can do is trapped by this perspective, these stories, are we doomed to just perpetuate them over and over? i don't think so. i think we have some creativity, some possibility space, afforded by ██████ perspectives, to make games like this one. games that offer no easy answers or simple resolutions, games that force us to push against it's and our own sharp edges and can cause violent reactions, but things that can change or expand our stories. we can make beautiful things out of rough stones.
one of the things I found most affecting about this game personally - as someone who has made awful rpgmaker games before - is how this game wears the limitations of rpgmaker core toolset through it's "puzzles" and user interface. to say such thoughtful things so beautifully out of the same fundamental building blocks i used to make my shitty vagrant story knockoff affected me more than I dared expect. others in the backloggd discord game club were not enthused by these puzzles but for this reason they were one of the most affecting parts of the experience for me. i guess that's my story bleeding through.
tommorow won't come for those without ██████ is a difficult game, abrasive and unwelcoming. i found it to be an emotionally upsetting and violent experience. but that's why I loved it. because just like religion or science or anything else, violence means different things depending on where you stand. a knife can hurt us, cut into our flesh, make us bleed and kill us...but it can also cut at the net that surrounds us.
it can cut us ████.
i really enjoyed to see etherane draw the relationships between the individual self and the collective one (which is already portrayed in some of their other works) with a violet religion-tinted quill for this game from the lens of two different characters subjected by their society's expectations. it doesnt matter from where do you come from, we do not care about your previous hardships: each day you still have one role to fulfill for us. and since there is no escape because everyone longs to be accepted by others, how many sacrifices are you willing to do to achieve humanity? can you say that you are inert in front of an equal?
i cant, thats why i gave up to peer pressure and decided to play this game and even write a little review for the second game that was suggested for backloggds game club #1. thanks to whoever suggested this game (it also allowed me to enjoy other etherane works) and thanks to everyone who decided to participate on this.
tomorrow won't come for those without anyone
i cant, thats why i gave up to peer pressure and decided to play this game and even write a little review for the second game that was suggested for backloggds game club #1. thanks to whoever suggested this game (it also allowed me to enjoy other etherane works) and thanks to everyone who decided to participate on this.
tomorrow won't come for those without anyone
Coming back to this after a disorienting walk back through history, both author's and subjects surrounding this work, is sort of like welcoming the slaughterhouse of abrasive cuts. Liminal space is a repeated word here, I'm going full circle back through the same ideas, now in search of new messaging through context and a more 'absolute narrative'.
I keep thinking of the scene of finding Ori in the bathtub again. There's no additional answer, no new transformative crux of the story, just the same raw effortlessly crafted emotion. More things make sense, I suppose. But TWC refuses to let you find a stable branch to sort of measure the world with, even if you choose to cut off all that noise it still won't feel right and you'll end up with less sense than you started, just repeating the same circle for yourself. I really really love it, though. I love how difficult it is to wrap your head around the complete grossness of the institutions we make for ourselves to avoid or approach the right answers. I love that half the perspective here is Knowing more of the truth and chaos and in that respect wanting to keep Hiding and boxing yourself to feel safe again. We want factual consolidating answers so we can feel a better breath of tomorrow's air but as soon as hardship within our heads encroaches, we cut it off as noise. This is something HC3 started, actually, that drive to be pure. I like how this response is more hazy.
Final takeaway for me is going to be thinking about Mari's destruction within the society around her and then respond by calling herself alien and "not your sister anymore", then painting her fingers the next day. I can relate.
I keep thinking of the scene of finding Ori in the bathtub again. There's no additional answer, no new transformative crux of the story, just the same raw effortlessly crafted emotion. More things make sense, I suppose. But TWC refuses to let you find a stable branch to sort of measure the world with, even if you choose to cut off all that noise it still won't feel right and you'll end up with less sense than you started, just repeating the same circle for yourself. I really really love it, though. I love how difficult it is to wrap your head around the complete grossness of the institutions we make for ourselves to avoid or approach the right answers. I love that half the perspective here is Knowing more of the truth and chaos and in that respect wanting to keep Hiding and boxing yourself to feel safe again. We want factual consolidating answers so we can feel a better breath of tomorrow's air but as soon as hardship within our heads encroaches, we cut it off as noise. This is something HC3 started, actually, that drive to be pure. I like how this response is more hazy.
Final takeaway for me is going to be thinking about Mari's destruction within the society around her and then respond by calling herself alien and "not your sister anymore", then painting her fingers the next day. I can relate.
really admirable for how tight the execution of the core themes manages to be without being airlessly so, there's room to breathe. religious trauma obviously, and totally structures the world here - the strong sense of in/outgroup morality, the playful irony teased out between logic and faith as they dialectically sustain each other, the ritual of willful sacrifice and blood magic - all of it is deftly tied back into the one-sidedly destructive homosocial interpersonal/epistemological dynamic, linking two forms of suffocating transparency together while not quite arguing for opacity. with this subject matter, it would be easy to allegorize simplistically and with one-to-one mimesis between the internal logics and the external structuring preoccupations, but the authorial voice is far more gnomic, unresolved, and therefore more interesting than that. need to sit with it for a bit and there's stuff i still don't feel i really grasp fully but definitely incredible
i personally harbour no religious ties or guilt whatsoever myself, but tomorrow won't come's portrayal of childhood experiences and how they can shape our futures felt extremely tangible and sharp. religious organisations and hierarchies and how they assert control over the faithful, harmful and avoidant thinking strategies which only result in self-mutilating apathy, the cling to a fading sense of self.
etherane's textured illustrations and simplistic yet expressive characters are wonderfully charming. i enjoyed a few tracks on the score, but the very significant "noise" sound had an awful effect on my tinnitus ass. i also had little patience for a very small segment midway through, and did consult a guide for both this area and obtaining the other, difficult to obtain ending. spending the extra half hour to experience the full story was well worth it however.
etherane's textured illustrations and simplistic yet expressive characters are wonderfully charming. i enjoyed a few tracks on the score, but the very significant "noise" sound had an awful effect on my tinnitus ass. i also had little patience for a very small segment midway through, and did consult a guide for both this area and obtaining the other, difficult to obtain ending. spending the extra half hour to experience the full story was well worth it however.
This review contains spoilers
Discordant thoughts clamoring in my head, draping over an oppressive painting. Those are the only words to describe the feelings of me,, working with the work and attempting to understand the message. What I can only do now is do my best to put them into the right boxes, and for something this deeply abstract maybe that's a bad idea, because chipping away trying to make tangible thoughts from something that is indirectly getting me to tears is hard. But here they are nonetheless.
Personal attempts to cut off nails, skin, objects until what's left is something pure. Abandoning the remnants behind and not realizing what they meant for us, actions to escape reality that we justify in religious vessels. The ending hurt the hardest when I realized myself that othering was in some ways done to escape memory, yet for Ori that was considered pollution. The noise was erased when his projection upon what we know as Rem was murdered so he could escape that past and move to the future, yet there was something more human in keeping to that past, remembering the individuality even though pain came with it. And yet it was also the path that had the most 'alien' abstract feelings.
I don't know, it's hard for me to sit down and wrestle with the dichotomy of future vs. past on display. I had thoughts about the religious angle, because it's certainly a side of me i've deeply estranged, not wanting to wrestle with faith and what comes with it. Faith in ourselves is the main goal, that's the positive message I suppose, but I don't feel satisfied with that. I don't like being so unsure about my thoughts and maybe that is what was the most painful about this work. Being terrified that maybe my perspective is too small, that i'm toying with a world too complex and large for me to rationalize.
Maybe I wanted to sleep in the tub like Ori, forget it all, and move on. Just wanted to keep going keep going keep going towards some invisible semblance of the future. In a sense I get what these puzzles now serve for, "Rem" says it flat out that they're simple lessons and constructs but maybe I really do need that all spelt out for me, do I. Trial and error until I get it and then act like I've learned something.
The playing cards really get to me, I think it was about halfway through where I tried thinking more on what they're for. Like yes the celestials are "traumas" but what's probably more fucked up is how they inadvertently commercialized them in-universe into some 'other' collector's item that you get on multiple runs. There's poems that feel absent almost from the goal of not feeling those painful emotions again but then again that we rationalize it as some rng story we kind of metacontextually see it as a narrative and nothing more.
It's all enough to give me a headache, I can't deal with abstract stuff maybe. Trying to think further is just making me find messages I don't agree with, stuff I don't want to move on with. Nothing satisfying and making me feel worse like I'm putting up paintings of awful realizations and then not knowing where to go with any of them.
I want to throw these thoughts into the void and see if anyone responds to them with something that's more comforting and helps me get them together, for now.
Personal attempts to cut off nails, skin, objects until what's left is something pure. Abandoning the remnants behind and not realizing what they meant for us, actions to escape reality that we justify in religious vessels. The ending hurt the hardest when I realized myself that othering was in some ways done to escape memory, yet for Ori that was considered pollution. The noise was erased when his projection upon what we know as Rem was murdered so he could escape that past and move to the future, yet there was something more human in keeping to that past, remembering the individuality even though pain came with it. And yet it was also the path that had the most 'alien' abstract feelings.
I don't know, it's hard for me to sit down and wrestle with the dichotomy of future vs. past on display. I had thoughts about the religious angle, because it's certainly a side of me i've deeply estranged, not wanting to wrestle with faith and what comes with it. Faith in ourselves is the main goal, that's the positive message I suppose, but I don't feel satisfied with that. I don't like being so unsure about my thoughts and maybe that is what was the most painful about this work. Being terrified that maybe my perspective is too small, that i'm toying with a world too complex and large for me to rationalize.
Maybe I wanted to sleep in the tub like Ori, forget it all, and move on. Just wanted to keep going keep going keep going towards some invisible semblance of the future. In a sense I get what these puzzles now serve for, "Rem" says it flat out that they're simple lessons and constructs but maybe I really do need that all spelt out for me, do I. Trial and error until I get it and then act like I've learned something.
The playing cards really get to me, I think it was about halfway through where I tried thinking more on what they're for. Like yes the celestials are "traumas" but what's probably more fucked up is how they inadvertently commercialized them in-universe into some 'other' collector's item that you get on multiple runs. There's poems that feel absent almost from the goal of not feeling those painful emotions again but then again that we rationalize it as some rng story we kind of metacontextually see it as a narrative and nothing more.
It's all enough to give me a headache, I can't deal with abstract stuff maybe. Trying to think further is just making me find messages I don't agree with, stuff I don't want to move on with. Nothing satisfying and making me feel worse like I'm putting up paintings of awful realizations and then not knowing where to go with any of them.
I want to throw these thoughts into the void and see if anyone responds to them with something that's more comforting and helps me get them together, for now.
tomorrow won't come for those without a reversible octopus plushie.
i finished it the blank is "pussy"
ever since I played 8:11, i've been slowly trying to play more games with religious themes to see if i can manage to deal with my religious trauma in a way that feels safe and comforting to me. that's when i came across this game, and let me tell you something... it's really good. not going to spoil anything, just try it out for yourself and see <3
i cannot understand etherane's games even a little
etherane
Played through this again to see if I could pick up on more in the story because I was worried that maybe I didn't give it a fair shot my first go 'round. I definitely did pick up on more the second go 'round, mostly because I was actively looking out for specific things this time. I think a big issue I have with this game is that it's written/structured in such a way that I spent more time trying to decode what the themes it was trying to get at were, than I spent actually engaging with those themes on any deeper level. And like, even after a second playthrough, there are still bits that are confusing to me, and there are bits that strike me as problematic but I'm cautious of critiquing them too hard because I don't know if I even have an accurate interpretation of what this game's message is. I guess my final thought at the end of this second playthrough is that I just wish there was more clarity.
there was some point in time where i could tell you how this quaint looking game entered my backlog, but that point in time is gone; it is now the past. but when i first saw it i still remember how it made me feel. the redacted white block of text, the purple figure at the edge of the hallway made even more obscure by the tiny factor of the game poster. the developer behind this game is etherane, who as far as i can tell from one of my friends and from generally peeking around is most well known for their Hello Charlotte series of games.
in any case, i bought this game for a (very modest) 2 dollars, and started it up - mind blank, ready for anything. my character - to my surprise, the approaching figure in the back on the poster - is Ori, a religious boy who wakes up in a bathtub.
the first thing you notice as you enter the game world, summarized by our main character sleeping in a bathtub - Ori's purple hair contrasting against the white of the tub and the tile-floor - is the subdued yet surrealistic aesthetic of this place. it's been a while since i've played any of these half-arthouse post-Yume Nikki RPG Maker games - and longer yet since i've experienced any of them anew - and seeing something like this in this year has a sort of wistful nostalgia to it. nothing is really expressed directly for a lot of the game, everything is behind a metaphor that is seemingly only there to be there. of course, i'm not complaining; games like Hylics use this sort of "text as atmosphere" approach very well with its use of procedurally generated text, and although scripted this game gives the vibe of a similar process albeit with far different effects.
this game is more or less a visual novel with game elements; you walk around and do puzzles while going through dialogue which builds this world and endears you to the characters. all the puzzles in this game are simple enough that you don't have to disengage with the story or atmosphere to solve them. the almost clinical atmosphere of these puzzles in contrast with the strangely tender and sympathetic main-game creates a really interesting tonal whiplash that enhances both sides of the coin a lot.
beginning to talk about plot now, if i have sold you please go in blind and enjoy!
as you go through this world the first time, you will likely come across some strange collectables as you go. the former of these are Card Packs, which contain cards of the various Celestials - the main enemies for the majority of the game who seem to posess humans and control them with an unknown negative force known simply as Dithyrambs. these treasures face externally, attempting to somehow logically describe this strange and chaotic world.
the latter of these treasures are Indulgences which, seemingly inverse to Card Packs, take us into Ori's mind and past - a detail which is strangely glossed upon for all the little hints we get for the past of our secondary character Remiel (henceforth Rem). these Indulgences tell us about Ori's past with his sister, Mari. originally best friends and avid roleplayers, a mysterious event befalls Mari and soon after she encourages Ori to join the "Choir", a vaguely religious organization which we see Ori a part of during the events of the game.
as you finish your first playthrough of the game, you don't get a lot of clarification as to what this event was or how exactly it manifested in mari, other than a vague sense of a shattering ego. you just assume she's possessed by yet another celestial or whatever. it looms over your head like a spectre. right after beating this i tried to play it again, it was obvious i had missed a few things (one of the advantages of this second hidden ending is how it's just kind of done by doing the things you didn't do on your first run) so i, without even looking it up, already knew i wanted to play again.
the first ending sees you wake up from a purification capsule - a structure you have seen or heard of multiple times in the game by this point - as Rem, surprisingly enough. it's a bit surprising at first, but considering Rem's behaviour through the game, and the game being a process of him finding a friend in the Choir, finding faith even where Ori cannot, and lastly acquiring his own Rosary, it's not like it's contrived - it's a good half-twist that i'm all for. after being congratulated by a conductor (not necessarily the conductor), on his way to post-purification recovery, he comes across Ori. the conductor mentions that he does not keep the memories of himself in the simulation, but seeing Ori not know Rem is still really sad. Rem remarks on two things; the first being how he feels like something is missing now that the Celestial is purged from him, and how Ori seems to look like the conductor but younger. this ending on some level wraps up the game adequately, but for all the surrealist melodramatic dystopia the story built up it certainly feels flat, if glibly satisfying. with that in mind, i collected myself and went forward to the second ending, named the NOISE ending in contrast to the aforementioned SILENCE ending. noise and silence are a recurring duality in this game; the celestials influence is marked by noise - the soundtrack, the white noise saved for the climax of the time puzzle and various climactic moments - and silence - the conductor's lessons, the silent ending. noise and silence tend to be indicative of Celestial influence and Chorister respectively. fitting in with this, the Celestials are described near the end of the game by the Conductor as "a cacophony of instruments, [as] long as they keep playing, they stay active". the soundtrack and the organizations fit into this; the soundtrack is evocative and mysterious through its strange warbling atmospheres and near lack of any coherent motifs or melodies. the repeated Choir motifs begin to come together at this point; the Monastery and the Choir - the two groups explicitly mentioned as part of this fictional religion - are both known for their music. music in this context is a deliberate attempt to control the noises which have been here long before humanity and will be here long after we are gone. these places in particular both take advantage of vocal music - utilizing the noise that comes out of our throats in a seemingly futile attempt to reach silence. my interpretation is that this game's religion's attempts to silence the inherent noise to humanity just makes them push back. when Ori pesters Rem about his Rosary or shows ill will towards Celestials, Rem reacts with bouts of bitter spite. with this in mind, let's talk about the second ending, which i see as proving this point.
the second ending, more or less, is achieved by focusing into the lore of this game. throughout the game, there are 4 chances to get Indulgences, which i mentioned near the start of this review. each indulgence, when read in order, tell the story of Ori's sister Mari. as mentioned earlier, they used to play roleplay games in the forest, until one day Mari begins acting erratically after stating, simply, "I'm an alien". she loses interest in playing games, and spends most of her time crying to herself, desparately trying to prove she exists. the last thing she says to Ori that we hear of is a desparate plea for him to join the Choir and her to join the Monastery, and her pleading Ori to come across as ignorant, to reject his "sanity" so the Choir won't hurt him. with this in mind, we get to the penultimate section of the normal game once again, multiple sets of 2 doors. each one is labelled with a sheet with pictures as to what each door corresponds to, but Ori does not look at them himself. looking at them is strictly optional and in normal play all Rem has to do is follow Ori. however, to trigger the NOISE ending after reading all the Indulgences, you defy from Ori once; choosing the path with a picture clearly showing him and Mari role-playing in the forest rather than the path showing him praying which he truly did choose. Ori this entire time seems almost willfully ignorant of the world around him; he doesn't even read the first card, clinging to his Rosary instead - something which combined with the SILENCE ending seems to imply that he knows what's going on here and just chooses to stay ignorant. a similar attitude is present when taking the Indulgences; Ori shows a very visible discomfort whenever he sees one. after this, we enter the final room. i didn't mention it in the first part due to pacing, but game-play wise it's fairly forgettable; you mostly just walk around and interact with things while reading about the lore. the only difference between the final room puzzle in each ending is, when Ori sees the statue holding the lantern, he remarks it looks like Mari.
the reward for beating the final puzzle is three "object" items - primary, secondary and tertiary - which tell a short fable. in the first part, a person is born inside a box. the box is stuffy and cramped, but it is all they know, they cannot do anything but be inside that box. in the second part, the person tries to move inside the box, to no avail. however, they remark on how the outside world is scarier than the box, making special note of how it is silent. in the final part, the box's walls fall apart. the person, instead of living in the outside world, runs and runs until they find another box to hide in.
after this, Ori welcomes Rem after they reunite, except Rem cuts him off. says to stop calling him by that name, that he knows why he's here. and, with the Indulgences read, he does know why we're here. it's at this point Ori snaps. we find out that these Indulgences are less of a distant memory than we thought, all Ori wants is to play in the forest again, or to stop the noise in his head. two seemingly contradictory desires, with one endgame - to be absolute. in dealing with the removal of celestials from humans so often, you begin seeing where the celestials are coming from. the environment the game takes place in is described as a "mindscape". i read this as the mindscape of the "polluted" person, which opens up so many possibilities. personally, i think that Ori is being fed these memories by the celestial, in an attempt to make him snap. as he said in the SILENCE ending, knowing nothing of this world, Celestials don't effect happy or fulfilled people, they can only fill empty spaces.
and, to finish off, we play as Rem, alone. he refers to himself as a name we can't see, saying he is one of the few left of his kind. expecting Ori to try to purify him nonetheless, Rem hides in a closet in his original hotel room - but he hears a distant thud, and hobbling footsteps towards the bathroom. while he does not get a view into what this is, we do.
this grey mass, this weird alien creature (i checked all the cards, as far as we know this is not a celestial) crawls towards the bathroom, and sits itself on Ori's chest, him laying in the bathtub. initially asking it where Rem is, he eventually takes it for Rem. it starts talking to him in a language that to us looks like incoherent symbols and sounds like pure noise, but Ori seems to understand perfectly. as i see it, this is the closest thing to the language of the Celestials - that ever-nagging voice of chaos that this new institutionalized world has no place for. he talks to it about the forest, thanks Rem for helping him remember his past, and at last asks it to tell him a story. watching this scene for the first time was honestly intense, there's this sense of heartbreaking intimacy between Ori and this alien, it's heartbreaking seeing Ori's depths of despair - but at the same time it's relieving to see him get some peace away from this dystopian future. the consequences of this event are not really clarified - in the SILENCE ending the conductor says memories are not shared between mindscape-versions of him and the real version of him, and the text says that the simulation will end and the events of the SILENCE ending will play out "even so", implying this return to this world was sort of inevitable - this strange abberation could even be normal, perhaps it has happened dozens or hundreds of times, reflecting these Choristers interior desires to become one with the primordial urges the Celestials embody before being swept up once again. but at the same time Ori says that only he and the alien will "remember the lie [they] told that day", giving us a bizarre mix of bittersweet and surreal feelings as we close out of the NOISE ending.
after the credits roll, we get one more choice: "Close your ears", or "Listen in to the noise". choosing the first gives you a quick afterword from the author, thanking you for playing the game, and describing briefly the nature of this game's world in very abstract terms. this seems to reflect my feelings on the Choristers and Celestials relations - the final phrase in this afterwords urging the listener to "put down [their] Rosary and laugh" and happily awaits a "futureless future". after everything we've went through, it's honestly a sweet post-script to end on. if we decide to listen in to the noise instead, we get some final clarification on what happened to Mari. we meet an alien - seemingly unrelated to the Celestials or the Choristers - who comes to this world to research humanity. it finds a host body to do this in, which happens to be Mari. during this alien's monologue, it very frequently says "i am an alien", the same phrase Mari said to Ori on that fateful day. it seems to use this phrase when comparing its own mannerisms to the seemingly irrational beliefs of humanity, which it does not understand. we see it talking to Mari in a surprisingly cordial manner, picking her brain about human concepts such as love, mortality and ambitions. closing off the game, she asks the alien what love is. it replies that love is violet.
violet has been a recurring motif throughout the game; everything in it - with the exception of Rem's hair and background in his dialogue boxes - is either black, white, or violet. various things in the games smell like lavender - a purple flower - Ori loves the smell and Rem hates it - though we're not really told why that is the case. the symbolic importance of violet seems to begin here. after the alien tells her that love is violet, Mari paints her fingers violet. from here Ori must have extrapolated this colour everywhere; in his clothes and hair colour, in the colour of blood, you name it. given the potential that the Choristers are all clones of the Conductor based on Rem's comment during the SILENCE ending and all portrayals of Choristers looking like Ori, it's even possible that the Conductor made this religion and made violet significant in it, in attempts to rationalize Mari's condition and immortalize what he saw as one of her final expressions respectively. the fact it is the colour of love makes this extra bittersweet, as the Conductor seems to indoctrinate people into his delusion and curb basic human desires out of people both in the name and colour of love.
one more thing i feel is worth mentioning is the title, the strange little tagline that attracted me to this game to begin with. the censored block plays a role as a sort of carrot on a stick throughout the game. at first it seems to be a blank as you go through the rooms; tomorrow won't come for those without a friend, faith, a Rosary. but, the fourth gate is the block itself, an unknown word. Rem points out it is a 9-letter word, and they wonder about what it could be. during the noise ending he guesses it is "sacrifice". however, the seemingly omnipotent author in the "Close your ears" segment, while thanking you for playing the game, refers to it with only 5 blocks instead of 9. this, in conjunction with the alien's name being 5 blocks, feels to me like the final indicator that the saviours of this world will be in the form of aliens, strangers who break the mold and challenge the Choir's preconceptions of reality. Rem even hints at this himself during the Light and Strategy puzzles, slightly showing pity for Ori's indoctrination into this world.
and, with that said, i'm technically not even done saying all i could say about this game - the colour violets significance in relation to etherane's other games (while looking on etherane's website in an attempt to find their pronouns i saw that each of their series has an associated colour), the backstory of the conductor, the more specific points on organized religion; i could really go on and on.
that, to me, is the greatest strength of a high-quality surrealist work; through the usage of certain symbols and moods you create an explosion of potential, an utter kaleidoscope of fan interpretation that is just a joy to fall into. and even my talking about this game's story for as long as i have kind of betrays my actual experience playing this game - which is taking in its beautiful aesthetic and haunting atmosphere. at just around 2 canadian dollars (i think 1.50 usd) you get so much to think about, if not so much to play, in this lovely bite-sized experience.
(tried out a different writing style for this review, using capitalization as a means of emphasis more than to traditionally structure a sentence. i've used this talking about music before but not so much video games. if you have any thoughts positive or negative on the format, please let me know! and, thank you for reading)
in any case, i bought this game for a (very modest) 2 dollars, and started it up - mind blank, ready for anything. my character - to my surprise, the approaching figure in the back on the poster - is Ori, a religious boy who wakes up in a bathtub.
the first thing you notice as you enter the game world, summarized by our main character sleeping in a bathtub - Ori's purple hair contrasting against the white of the tub and the tile-floor - is the subdued yet surrealistic aesthetic of this place. it's been a while since i've played any of these half-arthouse post-Yume Nikki RPG Maker games - and longer yet since i've experienced any of them anew - and seeing something like this in this year has a sort of wistful nostalgia to it. nothing is really expressed directly for a lot of the game, everything is behind a metaphor that is seemingly only there to be there. of course, i'm not complaining; games like Hylics use this sort of "text as atmosphere" approach very well with its use of procedurally generated text, and although scripted this game gives the vibe of a similar process albeit with far different effects.
this game is more or less a visual novel with game elements; you walk around and do puzzles while going through dialogue which builds this world and endears you to the characters. all the puzzles in this game are simple enough that you don't have to disengage with the story or atmosphere to solve them. the almost clinical atmosphere of these puzzles in contrast with the strangely tender and sympathetic main-game creates a really interesting tonal whiplash that enhances both sides of the coin a lot.
beginning to talk about plot now, if i have sold you please go in blind and enjoy!
as you go through this world the first time, you will likely come across some strange collectables as you go. the former of these are Card Packs, which contain cards of the various Celestials - the main enemies for the majority of the game who seem to posess humans and control them with an unknown negative force known simply as Dithyrambs. these treasures face externally, attempting to somehow logically describe this strange and chaotic world.
the latter of these treasures are Indulgences which, seemingly inverse to Card Packs, take us into Ori's mind and past - a detail which is strangely glossed upon for all the little hints we get for the past of our secondary character Remiel (henceforth Rem). these Indulgences tell us about Ori's past with his sister, Mari. originally best friends and avid roleplayers, a mysterious event befalls Mari and soon after she encourages Ori to join the "Choir", a vaguely religious organization which we see Ori a part of during the events of the game.
as you finish your first playthrough of the game, you don't get a lot of clarification as to what this event was or how exactly it manifested in mari, other than a vague sense of a shattering ego. you just assume she's possessed by yet another celestial or whatever. it looms over your head like a spectre. right after beating this i tried to play it again, it was obvious i had missed a few things (one of the advantages of this second hidden ending is how it's just kind of done by doing the things you didn't do on your first run) so i, without even looking it up, already knew i wanted to play again.
the first ending sees you wake up from a purification capsule - a structure you have seen or heard of multiple times in the game by this point - as Rem, surprisingly enough. it's a bit surprising at first, but considering Rem's behaviour through the game, and the game being a process of him finding a friend in the Choir, finding faith even where Ori cannot, and lastly acquiring his own Rosary, it's not like it's contrived - it's a good half-twist that i'm all for. after being congratulated by a conductor (not necessarily the conductor), on his way to post-purification recovery, he comes across Ori. the conductor mentions that he does not keep the memories of himself in the simulation, but seeing Ori not know Rem is still really sad. Rem remarks on two things; the first being how he feels like something is missing now that the Celestial is purged from him, and how Ori seems to look like the conductor but younger. this ending on some level wraps up the game adequately, but for all the surrealist melodramatic dystopia the story built up it certainly feels flat, if glibly satisfying. with that in mind, i collected myself and went forward to the second ending, named the NOISE ending in contrast to the aforementioned SILENCE ending. noise and silence are a recurring duality in this game; the celestials influence is marked by noise - the soundtrack, the white noise saved for the climax of the time puzzle and various climactic moments - and silence - the conductor's lessons, the silent ending. noise and silence tend to be indicative of Celestial influence and Chorister respectively. fitting in with this, the Celestials are described near the end of the game by the Conductor as "a cacophony of instruments, [as] long as they keep playing, they stay active". the soundtrack and the organizations fit into this; the soundtrack is evocative and mysterious through its strange warbling atmospheres and near lack of any coherent motifs or melodies. the repeated Choir motifs begin to come together at this point; the Monastery and the Choir - the two groups explicitly mentioned as part of this fictional religion - are both known for their music. music in this context is a deliberate attempt to control the noises which have been here long before humanity and will be here long after we are gone. these places in particular both take advantage of vocal music - utilizing the noise that comes out of our throats in a seemingly futile attempt to reach silence. my interpretation is that this game's religion's attempts to silence the inherent noise to humanity just makes them push back. when Ori pesters Rem about his Rosary or shows ill will towards Celestials, Rem reacts with bouts of bitter spite. with this in mind, let's talk about the second ending, which i see as proving this point.
the second ending, more or less, is achieved by focusing into the lore of this game. throughout the game, there are 4 chances to get Indulgences, which i mentioned near the start of this review. each indulgence, when read in order, tell the story of Ori's sister Mari. as mentioned earlier, they used to play roleplay games in the forest, until one day Mari begins acting erratically after stating, simply, "I'm an alien". she loses interest in playing games, and spends most of her time crying to herself, desparately trying to prove she exists. the last thing she says to Ori that we hear of is a desparate plea for him to join the Choir and her to join the Monastery, and her pleading Ori to come across as ignorant, to reject his "sanity" so the Choir won't hurt him. with this in mind, we get to the penultimate section of the normal game once again, multiple sets of 2 doors. each one is labelled with a sheet with pictures as to what each door corresponds to, but Ori does not look at them himself. looking at them is strictly optional and in normal play all Rem has to do is follow Ori. however, to trigger the NOISE ending after reading all the Indulgences, you defy from Ori once; choosing the path with a picture clearly showing him and Mari role-playing in the forest rather than the path showing him praying which he truly did choose. Ori this entire time seems almost willfully ignorant of the world around him; he doesn't even read the first card, clinging to his Rosary instead - something which combined with the SILENCE ending seems to imply that he knows what's going on here and just chooses to stay ignorant. a similar attitude is present when taking the Indulgences; Ori shows a very visible discomfort whenever he sees one. after this, we enter the final room. i didn't mention it in the first part due to pacing, but game-play wise it's fairly forgettable; you mostly just walk around and interact with things while reading about the lore. the only difference between the final room puzzle in each ending is, when Ori sees the statue holding the lantern, he remarks it looks like Mari.
the reward for beating the final puzzle is three "object" items - primary, secondary and tertiary - which tell a short fable. in the first part, a person is born inside a box. the box is stuffy and cramped, but it is all they know, they cannot do anything but be inside that box. in the second part, the person tries to move inside the box, to no avail. however, they remark on how the outside world is scarier than the box, making special note of how it is silent. in the final part, the box's walls fall apart. the person, instead of living in the outside world, runs and runs until they find another box to hide in.
after this, Ori welcomes Rem after they reunite, except Rem cuts him off. says to stop calling him by that name, that he knows why he's here. and, with the Indulgences read, he does know why we're here. it's at this point Ori snaps. we find out that these Indulgences are less of a distant memory than we thought, all Ori wants is to play in the forest again, or to stop the noise in his head. two seemingly contradictory desires, with one endgame - to be absolute. in dealing with the removal of celestials from humans so often, you begin seeing where the celestials are coming from. the environment the game takes place in is described as a "mindscape". i read this as the mindscape of the "polluted" person, which opens up so many possibilities. personally, i think that Ori is being fed these memories by the celestial, in an attempt to make him snap. as he said in the SILENCE ending, knowing nothing of this world, Celestials don't effect happy or fulfilled people, they can only fill empty spaces.
and, to finish off, we play as Rem, alone. he refers to himself as a name we can't see, saying he is one of the few left of his kind. expecting Ori to try to purify him nonetheless, Rem hides in a closet in his original hotel room - but he hears a distant thud, and hobbling footsteps towards the bathroom. while he does not get a view into what this is, we do.
this grey mass, this weird alien creature (i checked all the cards, as far as we know this is not a celestial) crawls towards the bathroom, and sits itself on Ori's chest, him laying in the bathtub. initially asking it where Rem is, he eventually takes it for Rem. it starts talking to him in a language that to us looks like incoherent symbols and sounds like pure noise, but Ori seems to understand perfectly. as i see it, this is the closest thing to the language of the Celestials - that ever-nagging voice of chaos that this new institutionalized world has no place for. he talks to it about the forest, thanks Rem for helping him remember his past, and at last asks it to tell him a story. watching this scene for the first time was honestly intense, there's this sense of heartbreaking intimacy between Ori and this alien, it's heartbreaking seeing Ori's depths of despair - but at the same time it's relieving to see him get some peace away from this dystopian future. the consequences of this event are not really clarified - in the SILENCE ending the conductor says memories are not shared between mindscape-versions of him and the real version of him, and the text says that the simulation will end and the events of the SILENCE ending will play out "even so", implying this return to this world was sort of inevitable - this strange abberation could even be normal, perhaps it has happened dozens or hundreds of times, reflecting these Choristers interior desires to become one with the primordial urges the Celestials embody before being swept up once again. but at the same time Ori says that only he and the alien will "remember the lie [they] told that day", giving us a bizarre mix of bittersweet and surreal feelings as we close out of the NOISE ending.
after the credits roll, we get one more choice: "Close your ears", or "Listen in to the noise". choosing the first gives you a quick afterword from the author, thanking you for playing the game, and describing briefly the nature of this game's world in very abstract terms. this seems to reflect my feelings on the Choristers and Celestials relations - the final phrase in this afterwords urging the listener to "put down [their] Rosary and laugh" and happily awaits a "futureless future". after everything we've went through, it's honestly a sweet post-script to end on. if we decide to listen in to the noise instead, we get some final clarification on what happened to Mari. we meet an alien - seemingly unrelated to the Celestials or the Choristers - who comes to this world to research humanity. it finds a host body to do this in, which happens to be Mari. during this alien's monologue, it very frequently says "i am an alien", the same phrase Mari said to Ori on that fateful day. it seems to use this phrase when comparing its own mannerisms to the seemingly irrational beliefs of humanity, which it does not understand. we see it talking to Mari in a surprisingly cordial manner, picking her brain about human concepts such as love, mortality and ambitions. closing off the game, she asks the alien what love is. it replies that love is violet.
violet has been a recurring motif throughout the game; everything in it - with the exception of Rem's hair and background in his dialogue boxes - is either black, white, or violet. various things in the games smell like lavender - a purple flower - Ori loves the smell and Rem hates it - though we're not really told why that is the case. the symbolic importance of violet seems to begin here. after the alien tells her that love is violet, Mari paints her fingers violet. from here Ori must have extrapolated this colour everywhere; in his clothes and hair colour, in the colour of blood, you name it. given the potential that the Choristers are all clones of the Conductor based on Rem's comment during the SILENCE ending and all portrayals of Choristers looking like Ori, it's even possible that the Conductor made this religion and made violet significant in it, in attempts to rationalize Mari's condition and immortalize what he saw as one of her final expressions respectively. the fact it is the colour of love makes this extra bittersweet, as the Conductor seems to indoctrinate people into his delusion and curb basic human desires out of people both in the name and colour of love.
one more thing i feel is worth mentioning is the title, the strange little tagline that attracted me to this game to begin with. the censored block plays a role as a sort of carrot on a stick throughout the game. at first it seems to be a blank as you go through the rooms; tomorrow won't come for those without a friend, faith, a Rosary. but, the fourth gate is the block itself, an unknown word. Rem points out it is a 9-letter word, and they wonder about what it could be. during the noise ending he guesses it is "sacrifice". however, the seemingly omnipotent author in the "Close your ears" segment, while thanking you for playing the game, refers to it with only 5 blocks instead of 9. this, in conjunction with the alien's name being 5 blocks, feels to me like the final indicator that the saviours of this world will be in the form of aliens, strangers who break the mold and challenge the Choir's preconceptions of reality. Rem even hints at this himself during the Light and Strategy puzzles, slightly showing pity for Ori's indoctrination into this world.
and, with that said, i'm technically not even done saying all i could say about this game - the colour violets significance in relation to etherane's other games (while looking on etherane's website in an attempt to find their pronouns i saw that each of their series has an associated colour), the backstory of the conductor, the more specific points on organized religion; i could really go on and on.
that, to me, is the greatest strength of a high-quality surrealist work; through the usage of certain symbols and moods you create an explosion of potential, an utter kaleidoscope of fan interpretation that is just a joy to fall into. and even my talking about this game's story for as long as i have kind of betrays my actual experience playing this game - which is taking in its beautiful aesthetic and haunting atmosphere. at just around 2 canadian dollars (i think 1.50 usd) you get so much to think about, if not so much to play, in this lovely bite-sized experience.
(tried out a different writing style for this review, using capitalization as a means of emphasis more than to traditionally structure a sentence. i've used this talking about music before but not so much video games. if you have any thoughts positive or negative on the format, please let me know! and, thank you for reading)
I wish I got as into the story on this one as much as some other reviewers here because I have to say, I enjoyed some of y'alls reviews more than the actual game here. What I will say is that I'm baffled by the choice of including puzzles in this game. The game is relatively short, taking around 2 hrs to finish, and the only thing hindering progress are a handful of puzzles which as far as I can tell don't really add to the story. I had to look up the solutions for two of the puzzles, and I'm also not a huge fan of games that hide their "better" ending behind some obscure knowledge that most will use a guide to find. I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more as a short story because it doesn't really use the medium to its advantage here. In fact, its insistence on implementing commonly used elements of the medium actively hurt it.
The Backloggd game club is just a secret conspiracy group specifically made to get me to play bad games
the sci fi tinge and the recontextualized religious iconography and the gay undertones injected by a true fujo-scholar would imply some sinister christian dystopia metaphor, but even if all that does play into that idea of it somewhat, its ultimately way too simple for describing what its doing. while its perceptibly influenced by other horror (read: often surreal/unsettling in tone more than full on genre horror) rpgmaker games, it honestly surpasses the bulk of these games in the confidence and evocativeness of its writing; its truly open and giving to interpretation in a way these games would often like to be but don't really accomplish. i was surprised and impressed by how this 1-2 hr experience could feel immense thanks to its thematic density, and the spaces within its margins that it allows you to occupy.
my favorite aspect of this game might be how it meters out the "truth" behind its framing device. its the most difficult thing here to talk about but basically, what i like about it is how its less like its /revealed/ as much as the curtain gets just slightly lifted up at points, never fully, and from there it leaves you constantly changing the conclusions you make about it in your head. also love how--with the slightest most nonintrusive touch--its the author commenting on their work and their own characters, tying into the theme of how you process your own narrative, and the creation of your own self-identity from there. the way it pushed me "outside" of the story, looking in, is something i'm always captivated by in games.
this is only one side of twc that im grasping at too, there are many different angles it encourages you to approach it from that its actually daunting to get too into. only real problems with the game i had are a couple bizarre puzzles and the checklist towards getting the noise ending not being as intuitive as it might seem in specific places (reading the stack of papers during the time puzzle is a trigger you NEED to hit, btw), so read a walkthrough closely. i got a lot out of this though, not just as a nostalgia trip from playing rpgmaker games years ago but returning to the medium with an ESPECIALLY great one. will be looking into hello charlotte and mr rainer after my time with this, im officially lavenderpilled
my favorite aspect of this game might be how it meters out the "truth" behind its framing device. its the most difficult thing here to talk about but basically, what i like about it is how its less like its /revealed/ as much as the curtain gets just slightly lifted up at points, never fully, and from there it leaves you constantly changing the conclusions you make about it in your head. also love how--with the slightest most nonintrusive touch--its the author commenting on their work and their own characters, tying into the theme of how you process your own narrative, and the creation of your own self-identity from there. the way it pushed me "outside" of the story, looking in, is something i'm always captivated by in games.
this is only one side of twc that im grasping at too, there are many different angles it encourages you to approach it from that its actually daunting to get too into. only real problems with the game i had are a couple bizarre puzzles and the checklist towards getting the noise ending not being as intuitive as it might seem in specific places (reading the stack of papers during the time puzzle is a trigger you NEED to hit, btw), so read a walkthrough closely. i got a lot out of this though, not just as a nostalgia trip from playing rpgmaker games years ago but returning to the medium with an ESPECIALLY great one. will be looking into hello charlotte and mr rainer after my time with this, im officially lavenderpilled
Tomorrow won't come without a friend.
A tale of two strangers: Ori, an unwavering member of the Choir, a religious organization with a strict dogma; and Rem, a skeptic who regards the world with caution and questions everything he sees. On a journey through a monochromatic purgatory, their interactions reveal to us an Earth that has stopped turning. A world where humanity has peaked, seemingly both physically and mentally invincible, where the past is forgotten and the people live for their faith, but yet, is haunted by manifestations of our collective past traumas. Our two actors are intertwined, two halves of a whole, faith and doubt: the labor of practicing and believing in dogma, but the lingering doubt of the rules you've lived by buried deep within.
Tomorrow won't come without faith.
The through line for TWC's story and characters is that of religion and trauma. A world that has seemingly healed on the outside, but is still haunted by specters of the past. A world ruled by a institution that instills in its followers a devotion to tomorrow and a rejection of the past, yet who's tools are all related to reliving it. Ori's welcoming embrace of the future, versus Rem's desire for the familiar. The world's steadfast belief in tomorrow, at the cost of their ability to dream of anything better. The absolute faith in a future without ever truly accepting the past, only scrubbing away the undesirable to maintain the illusion of perfection.
Tomorrow won't come without sacrifice.
The Choir seeks to eliminate the Celestials: the errors of humanity, the physical remnant regrets of our species. But they only came about because humanity tried to reach our apex by erasing their existences within ourselves. They are trauma without a host. When we removed our unseemly qualities, they had no where else to go. To err is to be human. To regret is to be alive. Our past is what makes us human, and so do our flaws. We cannot scrub away the unsightly with blind faith, but we can learn to accept ourselves. Only once we can do that...
...Tomorrow will come for humanity.
A tale of two strangers: Ori, an unwavering member of the Choir, a religious organization with a strict dogma; and Rem, a skeptic who regards the world with caution and questions everything he sees. On a journey through a monochromatic purgatory, their interactions reveal to us an Earth that has stopped turning. A world where humanity has peaked, seemingly both physically and mentally invincible, where the past is forgotten and the people live for their faith, but yet, is haunted by manifestations of our collective past traumas. Our two actors are intertwined, two halves of a whole, faith and doubt: the labor of practicing and believing in dogma, but the lingering doubt of the rules you've lived by buried deep within.
Tomorrow won't come without faith.
The through line for TWC's story and characters is that of religion and trauma. A world that has seemingly healed on the outside, but is still haunted by specters of the past. A world ruled by a institution that instills in its followers a devotion to tomorrow and a rejection of the past, yet who's tools are all related to reliving it. Ori's welcoming embrace of the future, versus Rem's desire for the familiar. The world's steadfast belief in tomorrow, at the cost of their ability to dream of anything better. The absolute faith in a future without ever truly accepting the past, only scrubbing away the undesirable to maintain the illusion of perfection.
Tomorrow won't come without sacrifice.
The Choir seeks to eliminate the Celestials: the errors of humanity, the physical remnant regrets of our species. But they only came about because humanity tried to reach our apex by erasing their existences within ourselves. They are trauma without a host. When we removed our unseemly qualities, they had no where else to go. To err is to be human. To regret is to be alive. Our past is what makes us human, and so do our flaws. We cannot scrub away the unsightly with blind faith, but we can learn to accept ourselves. Only once we can do that...
...Tomorrow will come for humanity.
soooooo what do i think
this was very weird i got no idea of what this is supposed to be it almost feels like a prototype for something to come but i guess its pretty self contained so i wouldnt wait for that
after playing HC1 and HC2 and taking a little break to continue HC3 because its getting HEAVY i wanted to check out this one and honestly i didnt have that many expectations but i was still some degree of disappointed
its not bad it just feels very incoherent i wish it was more fleshed out and had some clear direction but still its a cool experience ig ig for a 1 hour game
basically as an rpgmaker game the main gimmick is puzzles . obviously and i grew a bit tired of that but i guess those here are ok somehow so yeah didnt care for that too much but since this kind of games tends to be like that they end up relying on vibes or story and well
vibes ? p cool ? it feels very haunting and claustrophobic and sterile and i guess that was the goal and they succeeded in that department
the story . well . im sure this game got a good story a great one even but its left to rot behind some not so explicit lore and disjointed info dumps that make it almost impossible to follow whats going on in the game unless you read a 50 lines reddit post on how this is an impressive tale of grief and depression or whatever
in general terms youre ori (and the blind forest sorry thats what ive been thinking ever since) and he wakes up in a fucking bath and searches for his rosary and it talks ? weird af whatever he encounters some dead bodies and a boy named remiel (sounds like an angel name but i still have no idea if thats supposed to mean that theyre angels) anyway they try to get out together even though remiel is edgy and tsundere i hate him and i wish this was more homoerotic . umh sorry who said that i meant i wanted this to have more background and the only really interesting aspect is FIRST the worldbuilding around it which is yes very subtle and chaotic but it feels almost dystopic to the point that its almost asphyxiating to live in a world like this and SECOND the backstory with oris sister mari who is dead sorry (is this an omori reference this feels very intentional) but it isnt that clear what happened maybe the wiki lore will help me but im honestly not that impressed to read between the lines about a game that couldve been really good but ends up being kind of whatever
i really tried to love this one since i enjoyed HC a lot i can at least say that i still loved the art style every illustration is a joy to see even tho i still dont know what the fuck is up with the violet colors here and there but whatever its a good contrast with the black and white
overall ? pretty forgettable but etherane is great so i will support this and maybe another playthrough will make me like this better
maybe i was too hard on this
i dont hate it i swear it was just whatever
this was very weird i got no idea of what this is supposed to be it almost feels like a prototype for something to come but i guess its pretty self contained so i wouldnt wait for that
after playing HC1 and HC2 and taking a little break to continue HC3 because its getting HEAVY i wanted to check out this one and honestly i didnt have that many expectations but i was still some degree of disappointed
its not bad it just feels very incoherent i wish it was more fleshed out and had some clear direction but still its a cool experience ig ig for a 1 hour game
basically as an rpgmaker game the main gimmick is puzzles . obviously and i grew a bit tired of that but i guess those here are ok somehow so yeah didnt care for that too much but since this kind of games tends to be like that they end up relying on vibes or story and well
vibes ? p cool ? it feels very haunting and claustrophobic and sterile and i guess that was the goal and they succeeded in that department
the story . well . im sure this game got a good story a great one even but its left to rot behind some not so explicit lore and disjointed info dumps that make it almost impossible to follow whats going on in the game unless you read a 50 lines reddit post on how this is an impressive tale of grief and depression or whatever
in general terms youre ori (and the blind forest sorry thats what ive been thinking ever since) and he wakes up in a fucking bath and searches for his rosary and it talks ? weird af whatever he encounters some dead bodies and a boy named remiel (sounds like an angel name but i still have no idea if thats supposed to mean that theyre angels) anyway they try to get out together even though remiel is edgy and tsundere i hate him and i wish this was more homoerotic . umh sorry who said that i meant i wanted this to have more background and the only really interesting aspect is FIRST the worldbuilding around it which is yes very subtle and chaotic but it feels almost dystopic to the point that its almost asphyxiating to live in a world like this and SECOND the backstory with oris sister mari who is dead sorry (is this an omori reference this feels very intentional) but it isnt that clear what happened maybe the wiki lore will help me but im honestly not that impressed to read between the lines about a game that couldve been really good but ends up being kind of whatever
i really tried to love this one since i enjoyed HC a lot i can at least say that i still loved the art style every illustration is a joy to see even tho i still dont know what the fuck is up with the violet colors here and there but whatever its a good contrast with the black and white
overall ? pretty forgettable but etherane is great so i will support this and maybe another playthrough will make me like this better
maybe i was too hard on this
i dont hate it i swear it was just whatever
Drivel. Never really explains anything about itself, had to read around comments and reviews and such to piece anything together, and as a whole it left me quite unsatisfied. In one ear, out the other. Maybe I'm a dumbass, though.
Futility and meaning are in constant flux, and in a post-modern world, it’s hard to tell which will actually bring us happiness. In a time where nostalgia is exploited ad nauseam, tomorrow won’t come for those without rallies against reflection in an extreme way. By the end, we’re presented with two philosophies — one of silence, and one of noise — and the conflict between the two never really seems to be resolved. It’s like a fleeting thought verging on a breakthrough that passes before it gets too transformative. More than that, though, it’s an unsettling tragedy and filled to the brim with haunting ambient music, curious lore, and insightful musings on the line between religion and trauma.
There’s a cliche in the world of fanart (though derived from East Asian folklore, I see it more there than anywhere): the red thread of fate, an invisible tether that attaches two souls, thus ensuring a life together. I couldn’t help but imagine Ori and Rem's red thread, or rather, their lack of one, as they continue through the barriers. In the dark forest, running with their disconnection, and in the tub holding each other as nothing else will do it for them.
~
I’m worried I’ve become a bit of an ether-stan(e?). What first looked like a clean (as in, distinct but difficult to inure one’s self to) RPGmaker excursion has since become a now-personal study of medium mastery. Gone are the erratics of Hello Charlotte, yet still a wielding of chaos and rationed information remains the Tool of Choice, carving out reality in stories even the narrators struggle to fully believe.
If I had to guess etherane’s MO at this point, it seems to stem from concern, like a desire to break habits (particularly those of the audience I'm sure they know they have) and allow the space between ideas to organically fill and thrive. The moment in the silence ending where Ori reminds Rem to “stay hydrated” hit in a very distinct way for me as someone who used to (in my younger, more embarrassing days) champion the idea of reminding folks to drink water; like, it’s such a simple and innocent thing to become tyrannical about that it ends up acting as a more falsely-amicable “grammar ████”-like joke. That assumption that someone needs to be told an instinctual truth of their body for the sake of a false sense of general betterment... I dunno how intentional it was, but the fact that it manages to blend into the game for me has kept me occupied.
There’s still plenty for me to work through - Ori breaching Rem’s space with a ritual using /Rem’s/ blood from a separate corpse is a sequence so strong yet elusive that it’ll no doubt be good cud for the future. Unlike Hello Charlotte’s emotional whiplash practically forcing response (still waiting on that collapse, btw), this is much more of a mental trip into ruminative spaces, museum-like, with porcelain and Rothkoesque bands of color adorning the room. And that’s incredible to see in something so compact, honestly. I’ve always thought that games are, by their nature, slacken and inefficient vehicles for ideas (10+ hour games just to learn how to punch better). But here is something where nearly every gesture felt like a flashbang of truth, only for the very ideas to be made so fluid and monochromatic that the pursuit feels paradoxically both vital and hopeless.
(side note that I can’t fit anywhere else: pitch-perfect OST. Can’t think of a better accompaniment.)
~
I’m worried I’ve become a bit of an ether-stan(e?). What first looked like a clean (as in, distinct but difficult to inure one’s self to) RPGmaker excursion has since become a now-personal study of medium mastery. Gone are the erratics of Hello Charlotte, yet still a wielding of chaos and rationed information remains the Tool of Choice, carving out reality in stories even the narrators struggle to fully believe.
If I had to guess etherane’s MO at this point, it seems to stem from concern, like a desire to break habits (particularly those of the audience I'm sure they know they have) and allow the space between ideas to organically fill and thrive. The moment in the silence ending where Ori reminds Rem to “stay hydrated” hit in a very distinct way for me as someone who used to (in my younger, more embarrassing days) champion the idea of reminding folks to drink water; like, it’s such a simple and innocent thing to become tyrannical about that it ends up acting as a more falsely-amicable “grammar ████”-like joke. That assumption that someone needs to be told an instinctual truth of their body for the sake of a false sense of general betterment... I dunno how intentional it was, but the fact that it manages to blend into the game for me has kept me occupied.
There’s still plenty for me to work through - Ori breaching Rem’s space with a ritual using /Rem’s/ blood from a separate corpse is a sequence so strong yet elusive that it’ll no doubt be good cud for the future. Unlike Hello Charlotte’s emotional whiplash practically forcing response (still waiting on that collapse, btw), this is much more of a mental trip into ruminative spaces, museum-like, with porcelain and Rothkoesque bands of color adorning the room. And that’s incredible to see in something so compact, honestly. I’ve always thought that games are, by their nature, slacken and inefficient vehicles for ideas (10+ hour games just to learn how to punch better). But here is something where nearly every gesture felt like a flashbang of truth, only for the very ideas to be made so fluid and monochromatic that the pursuit feels paradoxically both vital and hopeless.
(side note that I can’t fit anywhere else: pitch-perfect OST. Can’t think of a better accompaniment.)
This review contains spoilers
A commentary on religion and the structures of hierarchical religious associations therein that is intentionally open-ended, stanced grey, and whose narrative crux is roughly allegorical to American Christianity and its common pitfalls. More games need to be as abstract as this.
This review contains spoilers
There's some neat stuff in TWC. There's legitimately lovely artwork, the surrealism of it all is quite lovely, it well establishes a weird world and some likeable characters very well in it's short runtime, and the story is, whilst kinda wishy-washy, engaging enough to carry it through it's 50-minutes or so of stuff to do.
But it's also hamstrung from some very weak structure and seeming to straight up borrow tropes of the RPGmaker adventure/thing genre without really putting much thought into it, and i sadly feel it fails as a result.
The main elephant in the room is the puzzles. They're blatantly terrible and add basically nothing to the game. Obviously in a game this short there's not many of them, but they just add nothing to the story and generally feel like a bit of a weak way of the characters making progression. There's a few story tidbits within them but I do feel it takes away from the story for the dumb puzzles to be the progression for the most part rather than some growth or progression within the characters.
The RPGmaker presentation also feels a bit underthought. For what's otherwise a very engrossing world the menus and text boxes in particular are great at pulling you right out of it, and I'm not convinced a top down perspective with Pixel-art characters was the best way of doing it. It clashes with the lovely art pieces quite hard and just kinda makes me wish the game was a point and click or something in that vein where I could really fall into it all. Because when the art is on screen, its legitimately very pretty and surreal in just the right way.
There's also the pointless inclusion of a secret ending by doing some random stuff that isnt really signposted because idk, it's a trope of the genre. The secret ending is pretty important and I feel the whole thing could have been better incorporated into one more satisfying concluison but whatever.
Even with all those issues, it would probably be pretty good. It's short, cute, kinda interesting and the two core characters are great. BUT THEN.
So at the end of the secret ending, the developer has a literal signpost which explains the plot and what the game was about. I hate it with every fiber of my being and I have no idea why it's there other than to maybe highlight that it's a personal tale, but that does nothing compared to how condescending it is and how much it shatters the suspsension of disbelieft the rest of the game has been pretty great at.
The game is pretty abstract but it's also definetly piece-able together without this shit. It's watching an artsty movie and then finding the movie theatre goes immedietly onto a watchmojo "ANNIHILATION ENDING EXPLAINED" youtube video. Fuck off. It's a terrible inclusion and feels like something that should have been entirely culled in playtesting.
It's still a neat little experience. The art in particular is lovely and there's a emotional core to it that is well captured. But it does leave a bitter taste in my mouth somewhat, especially as I despise it's final moments. Probably worth playing with being only about an hour long, but it could have been much more.
But it's also hamstrung from some very weak structure and seeming to straight up borrow tropes of the RPGmaker adventure/thing genre without really putting much thought into it, and i sadly feel it fails as a result.
The main elephant in the room is the puzzles. They're blatantly terrible and add basically nothing to the game. Obviously in a game this short there's not many of them, but they just add nothing to the story and generally feel like a bit of a weak way of the characters making progression. There's a few story tidbits within them but I do feel it takes away from the story for the dumb puzzles to be the progression for the most part rather than some growth or progression within the characters.
The RPGmaker presentation also feels a bit underthought. For what's otherwise a very engrossing world the menus and text boxes in particular are great at pulling you right out of it, and I'm not convinced a top down perspective with Pixel-art characters was the best way of doing it. It clashes with the lovely art pieces quite hard and just kinda makes me wish the game was a point and click or something in that vein where I could really fall into it all. Because when the art is on screen, its legitimately very pretty and surreal in just the right way.
There's also the pointless inclusion of a secret ending by doing some random stuff that isnt really signposted because idk, it's a trope of the genre. The secret ending is pretty important and I feel the whole thing could have been better incorporated into one more satisfying concluison but whatever.
Even with all those issues, it would probably be pretty good. It's short, cute, kinda interesting and the two core characters are great. BUT THEN.
So at the end of the secret ending, the developer has a literal signpost which explains the plot and what the game was about. I hate it with every fiber of my being and I have no idea why it's there other than to maybe highlight that it's a personal tale, but that does nothing compared to how condescending it is and how much it shatters the suspsension of disbelieft the rest of the game has been pretty great at.
The game is pretty abstract but it's also definetly piece-able together without this shit. It's watching an artsty movie and then finding the movie theatre goes immedietly onto a watchmojo "ANNIHILATION ENDING EXPLAINED" youtube video. Fuck off. It's a terrible inclusion and feels like something that should have been entirely culled in playtesting.
It's still a neat little experience. The art in particular is lovely and there's a emotional core to it that is well captured. But it does leave a bitter taste in my mouth somewhat, especially as I despise it's final moments. Probably worth playing with being only about an hour long, but it could have been much more.
I'm way too unsure about the game: I certainly lack the perspective or "education" to parse the themes discussed and explored here and I am fine with that. Yet I am not sure if it's intended as an esoteric piece, or if it's a story getting unnecessarly "muddled" by the lack of clarity. The "ending note" (im keepin it vague) doesnt really ooze that much confidence in my opinion (that and... it doesn't fix the issue?).
I do have a problem with the game developer unnecessarly using game mechanics to A: stretch out the playtime with tropey, bland puzzle designs and B: validate the use of RPGMaker. I get it, it's in RPGMaker, but does every one of these games need some weird janky "puzzles" that are at best "walk to a and do b after you done c" or at worst "Do the exact thing or you fail :-)". They don't add anything to the table thematically. Sure, they enforce the already presented themes, but without them it wouldn't really make that much of a difference to the narrative or it's themes.
Nevertheless, TWC is a bleak work of fiction that pulls you in from the get go with it's strong visuals and strong worldbuilding. Go check it out and pick its themes apart for yourself, 'cause I sure lacked the big brain for it.
played for the BL game club
I do have a problem with the game developer unnecessarly using game mechanics to A: stretch out the playtime with tropey, bland puzzle designs and B: validate the use of RPGMaker. I get it, it's in RPGMaker, but does every one of these games need some weird janky "puzzles" that are at best "walk to a and do b after you done c" or at worst "Do the exact thing or you fail :-)". They don't add anything to the table thematically. Sure, they enforce the already presented themes, but without them it wouldn't really make that much of a difference to the narrative or it's themes.
Nevertheless, TWC is a bleak work of fiction that pulls you in from the get go with it's strong visuals and strong worldbuilding. Go check it out and pick its themes apart for yourself, 'cause I sure lacked the big brain for it.
played for the BL game club
This review contains spoilers
"Nós vivemos na realidade ou tudo o que vemos é uma ilusão?" é uma daquelas Grandes Perguntas que acompanha a humanidade há muito tempo - pelo menos desde tempos gregos, como qualquer um que conhece a Metáfora da Caverna de Platão sabe. Diversas correntes filosóficas, religiões, ideologias e outros sitemas de pensamento chegaram, por um meio ou outro, à conclusão similar de que sim, vivemos em uma espécie de ilusão, dentro da caverna metafórica. Mas é só você acreditar em Deus, seguir os preceitos filosóficos, aplicar o materialismo dialético ou confiar na ciência que vamos encontrar o caminho para fora da caverna.
Mas quem disse que o mundo fora da caverna é bom? E se a "realidade" for não só inapropriada para a mente humana, mas ativamente hostil? Talvez não seja o caso de que vivemos em um mundo imaginário criado por nossas mentes, mas que nossas mentes só são capazes de permanecer vivas porque estão dentro de um mundo imaginário. Nossa subjetividade não é uma prisão que nos impede acesso a um mundo ideal platônico, é uma barreira que nos protege de um vazio inóspito, indiferente e difícil de processar.
O que não quer dizer que todos vivemos isolados em nossos mundinhos internos. A imaginação não é o que nos separa, é o que nos une, é o que nos torna não só humanos, mas humanidade. Através de histórias e narrativas somos capazes de criar um mundo intersubjetivo. São mentiras que contamos uns aos outros e fingimos coletivamente acreditar. Mas há perigo também nessas mentiras. Do mesmo jeito que elas podem ser usadas para nos confortar, podem ser usadas para nos manipular e conformar.
Em quais mentiras acreditar? E quando dizer a verdade? O amanhã só virá para aqueles que se defrontarem com esse dilema.
Mas quem disse que o mundo fora da caverna é bom? E se a "realidade" for não só inapropriada para a mente humana, mas ativamente hostil? Talvez não seja o caso de que vivemos em um mundo imaginário criado por nossas mentes, mas que nossas mentes só são capazes de permanecer vivas porque estão dentro de um mundo imaginário. Nossa subjetividade não é uma prisão que nos impede acesso a um mundo ideal platônico, é uma barreira que nos protege de um vazio inóspito, indiferente e difícil de processar.
O que não quer dizer que todos vivemos isolados em nossos mundinhos internos. A imaginação não é o que nos separa, é o que nos une, é o que nos torna não só humanos, mas humanidade. Através de histórias e narrativas somos capazes de criar um mundo intersubjetivo. São mentiras que contamos uns aos outros e fingimos coletivamente acreditar. Mas há perigo também nessas mentiras. Do mesmo jeito que elas podem ser usadas para nos confortar, podem ser usadas para nos manipular e conformar.
Em quais mentiras acreditar? E quando dizer a verdade? O amanhã só virá para aqueles que se defrontarem com esse dilema.
Playing this felt like when you want to cry but can't. Like sobs stuck in your throat. Like the frustration of dry eyes. Like tears that won't spill.
It is at once blurry and clear. Abstract and straightforward.
I felt like I newly understood something about myself and about the world but couldn't remember what. Like I had forgotten something important.
It's about religion. Life. Death. Freedom. Lies. Guilt. Love. Loss.
I don't know how else to describe it other than this.
What an amazing game.
It is at once blurry and clear. Abstract and straightforward.
I felt like I newly understood something about myself and about the world but couldn't remember what. Like I had forgotten something important.
It's about religion. Life. Death. Freedom. Lies. Guilt. Love. Loss.
I don't know how else to describe it other than this.
What an amazing game.
FINALMENTE A ETHERANE APRENDEU A PROGRAMAR GUYS. Um jogo muito mais bem polido que os hello charlotte, mesmo que visualmente inferior ao citado ainda é belo, a mulher manja muito do desenho, gostei bastante da história e da crítica, mas foi muito curto :( enfim etherane faça mais jogos pelo amor de Deus preciso de mais.
Sabe bem evocar mistério e falar muito com pouco. Porém, sinto que a estética anime (não apenas presente no audiovisual, mas bem notável na escrita) me alienou um pouco. Seja preconceito ou não, em partes senti lampejos de algo que poderia ser brilhante, em outras senti apenas sinônimo das várias interpretações “cristianismo mas dessa vez x é y” que tanto se vê na mídia japonesa. Tenho certeza que há muito aqui, só não tanto que colará em mim.
To tell a lie, you have to know the truth.