I walked into this expecting to really find it annoying, but it was more annoying in a gay way than a diaspora kid way so I felt able to be more lenient towards it. Still, I still find it lacking in having the conversations it needs to have. It’s moulded in the American liberal tradition of diaspora narratives, always ultimately optimistic about the ties that bind us and the motherlands, always finding the right angles where all our identities can be overlaid on top of each other perfectly. Even when this game is critical of the conservatism embedded in much of south asian social relations, it is reductively simplistic - the homophobic parents of one of the side characters are Brahmins who have brought all of their casteism to the new world that they have different plates for non-Brahmin guests! Jala’s, the protagonist’s, parents have historically progressed a generation ahead having eloped in a caste-exogamous marriage which informs how they raised their children. Their homophobia was dealt with in their generation too, with Jala’s aunt’s lesbianism leaving decades of room to have it addressed and sorted out. But this is a cowardly artifice rooted in contemporary anxieties of representation - our families are not violently homophobic satans clinging on to feudal hierarchies or futuristically progressive angels. Our anxieties are a lot more complex. My communist mother and liberal father (don’t say this is a good sitcom setup, I know, I’ve lived it for 22 years, Kerala has a great tradition of comedy of this vein) have always allowed me to do and be whatever and whoever I want, but they are still a pair of 52 year old Indian Gen X-ers. I don’t talk to them about queer issues. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know if their allowance of “what and who I want” extents to being a woman. I wish the game was interested in navigating this complexity instead of black and white depictions of south asian conservatism and progressivism. It reads very much like a “we don’t want to scare off a white liberal audience with a more nuanced engagement with the baggage of history”, and every time the game dips into “haha Asian parents am I right” humour I wanted to destroy the state of california.

On the flipside, and maybe this is what they were going for, Jala is a perfect fantasy. She is absolutely what people like me wish to be. Aside from the whole being a life-ruining mess for everyone part. She’s empowered, confident, supported by everyone, effortlessly cool. It is absolutely good that we have a game with a protagonist like her, as much as I can be critical of what that game is.

There’s a part of this game where Jala is criticised for choosing “the pleasures of the imperial core” over family and tradition. While the character suggesting this serves an antagonistic function, they are still suggested to be making a correct assessment. But Jala is a Tamil Brahmin whose family lives in Bangalore. The imperial core is where she is minoritised and racialised. The “pleasure of the imperial core” she has access to is queer struggle, not burgers and milkshakes. It’s a much easier struggle than what she’d face in the motherland, but it’s not easy, especially with this game’s weird anachronistic 90s setting. It just appeared so strange to me that such an idea would pop up in this game at all, and so evidently shows the game’s frustrating crisis in managing an original, personal story and the monomyth of asian diasporic narratives.

I feel second hand embarrassment that a 5-minute web browser game that was made as a vent game has garnered so much attention with people trying to critique it as if it's a real product, or as is the case with any review site, the one-line joke reviews

Gonna steal this one from my friend, but writing about how this game "didn't resonate" with you is the equivalent of your friend detailing their feelings to you, and you look them dead in the eyes and say "Hmm, you seem to be getting your life back together. I must dock 2 points! The narrative has become severely uninteresting."

It's okay to let your feelings out in an unconventional way because some people fundamentally struggle with communicating them normally; who gives a fuck if people relate or "get it". Best thing you can do is lend an ear, offer support, and move on

Hope the creator is having a good day today