In late February, I left a review on this game. I didn't really get it. I wouldn't say I fully get it now either, but I have been thinking a lot about this game ever since then. That review kind of sucked, but I guess it's a snapshot of that moment in time, the immediate guttural reaction to a challenge like this game is. I acknowledged in that review that as a cis guy, this was a perspective that I was likely not going to fully understand. I do feel as though this game is somehow unreviewable. Maybe this review can be seen as more of a review of my now-deleted review. In that I described this work as "ineffectual". That feels strange to say. I think it being on a site like Backloggd where it's presented as the same sort of product that any other video game is, inclines one to view it as a product. It's art, but is it really fair for it to be judged in the same way that Baldur's Gate 3 is? That just feels off-base to me. For me to suggest that it is "ineffectual" is almost like saying that somebody is venting in an "ineffectual" way. You could say that I guess, but read the room man! Maybe that's fair game because it's released as a Twine game on itch.io, but that still doesn't quite sit well with me. I didn't even really know what Twine games were when I first played this! It looks like this is its own category of game, which is pretty cool. I think my unfamiliarity might have hampered my perception in some way. This is an earnest piece of writing. That's important.

The major takeaway that I got from this game upon first playing it is this acknowledgment that there aren't that many critically acclaimed girly/feminine games. That IS true. As a cis guy I think that's an important point that I hadn't really thought about before. I find this point to be even more poignant after seeing the release of Princess Peach Showtime, recently. Especially with how a lot of people seem to look at a game like that. An industry where everybody feels there are ample games made for people like them and by people like them is a better industry than where we are today.

I love mechanics in video games. I love how much there is going on in a game like Metal Gear Solid 2, that kind of nitty-gritty where there's detail pouring out of every button press, every possibility, every corner of whatever world you're in; in my mind that is some of the best of what video games have to offer as art. I think when first reading this, the frank style of writing made me feel as though I was somehow wrong for thinking that way, like I was being reprimanded as this silly guy gamer. But that's really a reactionary way of looking at it, I think. I don't think that's its purpose. In retrospect I think I was really thinking about it all wrong. I think my older review, and I suppose the divided reviews on this game on this site are a showcase in how a site like Backloggd can and does play a part in the way in which we perceive art. I honestly wonder, if I had found out about this game through a recommendation from a friend, or some other kind of website, would I have reacted to it the way that I had? In a place like this, a piece of writing can end up commodified, as just another product to review and rate, and because it has strong writing it must have some sort of finger-wagging point to say to any and all gamers that come across it. Though I often criticize reactionaries and their culture wars against art, this was a case where I found some other ways that somebody can get sucked into that. Even me. That's humbling, and it has profound meaning to how I engage with art going forward. I realize that it's something that was present with how I engaged with other perspectives in the past, too. I never really understood the whole "liminal space" thing that was popular online, and I don't think I engaged with those feelings in an empathetic way. This was meaningful, important reading for me to have had.

This writing is another perspective. The best thing you can hope for with something like this is that it'll make you think, or at least feel. If it's lucky, it may even change some minds, open up mental doors. Evidently, it's successful. Based on Princess' perspective shown here, I'd really like to check out her games.

my last review was fucking terrible because i made it in the middle of some kind of breakdown and im sorry for contributing to the bizarre dogpile / micro-culture war this game seems to have cultivated on here. if you liked that review while it was up for a day or two, you owe me five dollars.
anyway, real re-review:
maybe it's just that part 1 blinded me with misplaced rage the first time, but i still don't really find any of the ideas in it "challenging", just dismissive, to the point where they almost dilute how amazing and revelatory parts 2 and 3 are. it feels directed so precisely at someone like me, a "mechanics" believer, a gdc talk watcher, but i struggle to see the point of it. why hypnotize me? i'm already as feminized as can be. all of my games (released or otherwise) are for girls and they always have been!
absolutely no disrespect to princess; i liked a lot of the ideas presented in this (genuinely made me reflect on how i make games in a lot of ways) and i'd like to play more of her games.

Moments of atmospheric brilliance ("you" getting closer and closer was clever and genuinely had me on the edge of my seat), but ultimately drives full-throttle down a frame-plot road that's been traversed by many other games, and more elegantly. It's not bad, just... overdone. In the IF genre alone you've got Photopia, Shade, and SPY INTRIGUE, off the top of my head.

Anyway, there are already reviews dissecting the ending, so I'll just talk about my personal bugbear: text parser pastiches need to stop using "USE". Actual parser games don't usually use "USE"; that's a menu-based adventure game thing. You cannot use ye flask. Stories Untold has the aesthetics of a Commodore 64 game, but the play logic is totally unlike any text parser game, in a way that I found outright distracting. I don't mean the verb selection menu--that's a smart way of levelling the playing field for people who haven't engaged with the genre--but things like AROUND being a noun which you can combine with GO or LOOK. You might say (perhaps the devs said) that real parser games are clunky, and nobody actually wants to play one, and the community of people who do play them in the 2020s is quite small. Sure. 100% fair. But if that's the reasoning... why make one? Why set this game in the 80s at all?

I wrote a review about this some months ago, but after some other people I saw review it change their minds (plus being reminded of it by having people tell me I'm wrong) I decided to give it another shot. I think the first time I came into this I saw the one line about 'girldick' at the beginning and I kind of turned my brain off after that because of how much I hated that one line. I'm not going to delve into this too much on backloggd dot com, but as a transgender woman myself I have a lot of issues with 'girldick' and the adjacent culture around it. It's gross and fetishizing and it genuinely makes me uncomfortable. But, after reading this again, I realized there's way more to this that I flagrantly ignored my first go around. (Also, as someone pointed out on my first review saying something among the lines of "there's only like one line talking about weird online stuff" and I will concede that they're right. My bad!)

As my boyfriend states in his review, while this is art it's not really something that's made to be talked about the same way as "proper games" (whatever that means to you) are. Which is why I'm not giving this a score this time as it's rather pointless to, in my mind.

There are a lot of thought provoking ideas in this work. I don't agree with all of them (I think the bit about writers being "obsessed with conflict" especially is very silly), but it made me think about games in a way I've not really thought about them before. Take the topic of violence; while I disagree about video game violence being nothing but filler or a power fantasy, I completely get where the author is coming from. When you take a look at video games as a medium, in most cases there is some sort of expectation for a combat system. Again, this is something that I never really gave much thought to this before as it's always been the norm for essentially as long as video games have existed, but having it pointed out puts into perspective how odd it is. In other artistic mediums, such as novels, paintings, movies and the like, while many of them feature combat of some form, it's not something that's expected because of the medium it was created in. In other words, I doubt anyone has watched Finding Nemo and went out thinking "Y'know, that was a good movie, but I think it's weird how there weren't any big fight scenes!".

I think this outlook of expecting games to have combat, or hell any pre-determined mechanic, as the author states, is limiting to the genre as a whole, and only serves to make games less unique. I think there are many other interesting ways to have the player interact with the world and the creatures inhabiting it that is more than just beating the ever loving crap out of them. To quote the author, "if u want to reinvent a medium u have to eviscerate it first. destroy video games from the inside out like an alien parasite." I agree. Games should be deconstructed to their barest parts, those parts should be turned over and examined, and subsequently thrown out and replaced with something entirely new in its stead. Still a video game, but something that disregards any and all preconceived notions as to what a video game is supposed to/should be.

When I first read this, I took this as "all video games are bad and I am so much smarter than you for realizing this" when that couldn't be further from the point. The author clearly has a deep love and passion for video games, as is made obvious throughout the whole work. It's this love, this passion that makes her want to change them. So they can grow. Video games can be, and SHOULD be so much more. This game is a love letter to video games and their potential. It's a message about why we should break down the barriers that only serve to limit the creativity put into games and the love that games make.

To close, I want to talk about a different game. A game that I had an extremely similar experience with, and that explores strikingly similar topics to this one. That game is moon. When I played moon, I was so incredibly bored. It felt like a complete and utter slog. I didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything at all. I hardly knew why I even kept on playing. It's only when I beat the game and put thought into what I had just experienced that I had realized the point of moon: to be a "boring" video game. moon, like Video Game Feminization Hypnosis, was made by people who have a deep love for video games and want to push boundaries. The purpose of both of these games is to make people think. They want you to feel challenged. It's by design. They're both extremely earnest experiences that pay respect to the boundless possibilities of the medium. And I think they both succeed splendidly.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FHthdZjWYAkkfNk.jpg

Honestly a bit more interesting than I thought it would be.

The time travel thing is a neat lil device i will have to steal someday (Yes i played this before chrono trigger why do you ask?)

Realizing how this entire city was reused in Heisei Pistol Show (And was probably a default rpg maker asset) And yet Heisei is still one of the most visually distinct games of all time is proof (As if it needed any proving) That the shame towards Unity asset store usage and "asset flips" was never about criticizing "uncreativity" but was always just some dumb hard work fetishism.

Steal the stuff that doesn't matter to you in your art so you can get to the stuff you really care about.

i have been reviewing the evil maths games with a repetitious and comedic tone that appeals to practically only 1/1000000 or so people. such is the nature of comedic writing.
i don't consider this an evil math game.
just something stupid that happened once.
but you might think it's an evil math game.
so i'm reviewing it just so you know what i think, even though you don't deserve it.