the 2020s has their rekinder :-)) and it’s good !! not nearly as good or as thematically/mechanically rich as parun’s games but yeah this is a good modern indie game !! cute and fun and I rlly love the ost here and that there’s a character that recommends real life albums that’s such a cute little feature. looks great too like im not sure what petscop rlly is bc im not a fucking nerd but this has such a great style ! has a title like any mid 00s emo/pop punk song which I rlly appreciate. ultimately too obtuse and complex and time consuming for me rn esp since the guides that do exist for this are equally obtuse and offer rlly very little help but i spent like two hours in this games world and rlly enjoyed it!

also there’s a text document in the games files that lists some of the devs inspirations and fucking one of them is 90210 - travis scott lmaoo that’s so funny

While not a perfect game by any means, this is a game that has a particular magnetism that I found myself glued to from the time I booted it up to the time I got my first ending. This is one of those games that doesn't burst at the seams with content, but instead leaves you with enough thoughtful ruminations that will stick with you long after. I'm absolutely going to be playing this again, as the particular vibes of this game are just so unique and nail such a melancholic vibe that make my heart feel enveloped in a sticky sweet bitterness. Some of the puzzles the game presents will be a bit frustrating, but if you let go of your anger and approach it from a few different angles, you should find yourself immersed in a deeply personal experience that few other games offer.

maybe a perfect game? in the sense that it does exactly what it seems to set out to do. a shockingly beautiful character study despite the strange outsider-art vibe its going for. in many ways its strange, surreal, mixed media aesthetic makes it what it is, and lends itself to a non-literal style of implicit storytelling that i've never seen fully realised in games like it, outside of maybe OMORI's black space.

puzzles were sometimes frustrating, i accidentally 'beat' the game after only collecting around 6 effects because i had no idea how to progress, but once i got around the roadblock i was stuck at and found the next piece of content i was able to truck through to the end with minimal use of a guide, caving to the super helpful Steam discussion board when i felt myself getting frustrated. i don't have much patience for puzzles in games anyway, so i do think its perfectly to see everything important without a guide.

this is exactly what i want out of a video game and im glad i was able to find this

Swollen to Bursting is something that feels straight out of 2014, and yet something that I feel like I could only truly appreciate in the current moment. When I replay this game in 5 years, I wonder if I'll see it the same way I see games like Undertale now, where it's impossible to look through the goofiness to see the beautiful story within.

For now though, while there are some wonderfully surreal areas, and sneakily one of the most unique and high effort soundtracks I've ever heard (seriously, Google some of the vocal songs from this ost, 'A good thing about broken glass' is genuinely magical at the end), it's the core story about somebody struggling to get through their mundane day that I truly felt like I connected to. This is a game I truly loved, and yet one that I feel like is hard to blindly recommend.

It's free though so I'm going to anyway.

9/10
Game #8 of 2024, January 27th

Swollen to Bursting Until I am Disappearing on Purpose is a game about many things. A UFO crashing in a small town. The isolating life of an individual who's been deeply traumatized and has lost any semblance of identity within themselves. A funny man who pops out of a box and tries to stab you. The mudanity of life despite the insanity surrounding you.

There's clear influences from games like Yume Nikki and Earthbound here, a dash of Chulip and even fictional games like Petscop. The core of the gameplay loop is more about the exploration out into the unknown in order to find portals to doors that bring the player into surreal dimensions. This then requires you to solve somewhat obtuse puzzles in order to progress. The game is very loosely an RPG with it's non-existent yet existent combat, but it's mostly used as progression markers rather than traditional RPG style combat. Swollen to Bursting is less of a game about it's gameplay and more centric on the emotional feelings it draws out of the player.

There's a mixture of comfort and surreal that's hard to balance if you're not careful, but the game separates it's two feelings quite well. You have an anchor back to reality, which puts the player at ease when they've had enough. The game really let's you soak that comfort in when you need it most. You spend only a day here in this quaint little town, yet it feels like a lifetime. The mudanity of this rainy woodland town is relaxing to explore. The faces you meet are strange, quirky and sometimes inviting, giving that sense of community so prevelant to small towns. All of this is punctuated by the somber yet pop-y tones brought about by the music. It's reminiscent of Jack Stauber's music for me, that same sort of catchy, pop-y sadness with shrilling vocals laid on top.

The game's title is indecisive in what it wishes to be called. Take Care of Yourself, Maybe I Misdirected You, I'm Not Happy Or Sad I'm Just Here All The Time, Mechanical Cows, Fish Fish Fish Soft Spot, they all fit the moniker of this game's MO, but it's so unsure of itself. I believe this is the point. Our protagonist, (at least, I think it's our protagonist, the crux of the story could also be Kick, who is leaving the town this day and disappears from the plot eventually, similarly to the UFO), is going through memories and worlds that feel like abstraction of their own life. The ending of the game seems to be an examination of our protagonist through the lense of the alien, this alien learning more about humanity and maybe itself through your dialogue and choices. I'm not sure they learned the right lesson with my playthrough. Was the UFO even real? Was it a metaphor? Was it both? My assumption is both, given the town is aware of the UFO, but I can't rightly say for certain.

This review has been rather clinical in it's dissection. It could be because of what the protagonist goes through doesn't match up neatly with my own experiences. I have a tendency to have a deep centric focus on my own emotions, something I learned out of necessity, which could be dampening the emotional resonance as well. This could also be the result of aspects of the abstractions within the story going over my head, preventing me from having that emotional connection. I'm okay with media literacy, but I wouldn't say I'm great at it. The game might just be too obtuse for my tiny little pea brain. It's hard to say. Either way, I feel like I don't relate to Swollen to Bursting as much as other have seemed to, which bothers me.

What I can say about Swollen to Bursting for certain, is that it's a piece of media that gave me comfort. It gave me unease. It lead me along on a journey that felt like it meant something to someone. Someone's heart and soul was delved into here, and I could feel it pulsating and beating.

Good art is much like learning about someone. You may never know everything there is about a person. You may never know all the exact meaning of their actions, their words, why they decided what they decided. But you still come out the other side feeling like you knew them in someway. Like you've incorporated a piece of someone else into yourself.

A piece of Swollen to Bursting will be apart of me now, even if I don't fully understand it.

This is a weirdo RPG maker type game with obvious inspirations to games like Yume Nikki and Earthbound. On the surface, this is really up my alley as and at the start of it I really did enjoy its bizarre writing and characters. But then in order to progress you have to solve some of the most obtuse puzzles I've encountered in the longest time. Due to the nature of this being a bizarre game many of the solutions to puzzles and even traversal of certain areas are just plain frustrating and not fun to figure out. I consulted a Youtube video multiple time just to figure out what to do next and at that point, given the short length of the game, I figured what's the point in playing it as I can just watch the rest.

I really wished I enjoyed this more as there is a lot of heart put into this shown not only from the inspirations but also from some very personal writing the author included about their life. Creators using games to reflect and express their own lives is something I always enjoy seeing, I just wish it was more fun to play. I still recommend people to try it out, especially since its free, as obviously others have gotten more out of it than I have.

There are criminally few plays on this for how unbelievably good this is. I went in expecting a shitpost RPGMaker game and left with tears in my eyes. The writing early on is incredibly witty and tight. I really don't want to spoil anything, but the game takes heavy inspiration from a certain ARG, and is one of the first I've played to do so. The visual style is unique and immediately reminiscent of said ARG. I didn't even know 3D was possible in RPGMaker and now I'm kind of interested in firing it up again. The music must have been a priority with how much was put into it, with several vocal tracks riding somewhere between Daniel Johnston and Neutral Milk Hotel. Just so many surprises with how much heart, wit and soul exude from such a small package. It's free on Steam and I implore you to give it a shot.