This review contains spoilers
Kaleidoscope manages to be both minimalistic and excessive. Its so anti itself in many ways i cant help but respect it.
Its "death game" isnt about interesting scenarious enabled by the game rule sets, its about characters having conflict enabled by idea of "death game" existing.
"Death game" itself is short, 5 minutes in the game world, which obviously translates into around 30 minutes for the player. And it will reset and repeat until it serves its goal.
Many death game stories are about characters beating the game, beating the system and cracking this "death game" apart. Those expectations are futhered by the player input, in Kaleidoscope player distributes cards with "roles" to the characters, and sees how match ups they created will play out. One may expect that player must solve the puzzle: figure out the characters relationships to each other and create a match up where characters will work together to survive.
However it is ultimately impossible as player will soon discover, conflicts will arise not from any consistent logic, but just because they are expected. In one game character may be genius manipulator who will kill everyone, in another they will be noble martyr who will sacrifce themselves for the sake of their friends.
Player will simply be there exhausting all options while watching farce a play out. It doesnt feel like "death game" does unmasking of the characters dark side, it feels like a performance - all these ways we can all be awful to each other and create dramatic narrative about suffering and unfairness.
The game states plainly in text that it pursues to create disillusionment with its cute girls main characters. Idea of idealisation that hurts someone being idolised and also dehumanises them is compelling one and i think to tackle it by using moe and cute character designs courtesty of Hinoue Itaru was a good match.
However i think it falls apart in several ways. It claims that this idolisation of female world is born from viewing it on a surface level, by imagining it to be flowery sugary, when in fact its more complex. But text engagement with gender aspect is itself surface level. For exaple to deromanticize women it goes for kinda extreme antagonisation of them that borderlines on sexists anecdotes told by an awful stand up comedian on mainstream tv. Simiarly this idea of "those cute girls doing faces that feel wrong on them" while correct on a surface and executed in the very interesting way of Itaru characters doing Ryuskishi's facial expressions (twisted faces one may encounter in Higurashi and Umineko), it kinda treats Itaru as cutesy cute artist and nothing else, despite her having drawn stuff thats actually more graphic and hecked up than Kaleidoscope.
Despite that i still feel like narrative about hurting someone by idolising them and in that non considering their opinions/emotions delievers a point across and has emotional narrative to go along with it.
Its obviously pretty difficult to be emotionally invested in "death games" playing on loop and becoming the noise. Some of them manage to be somewhat more compelling dramatic narratives, but largely they are the noise of vomiting and dying groans. Structure around repition is obviously is deeply rooted in bishoujou games in particular, however instead of long form storytelling, Kaleidoscope does those bite size chunks than be treated almost like episodes of TV show.
Rules of choosing heroine whose story players wants to see even somewhat still apply, however real story is happening under all the noise.
As mentioned before characters behave largely inconsistently and will create conflict just because it needs to happen, however there are some consistencies that can be spotted. It kinda feels like mystery solving, not unlike cross examination of several witnesses testimonies.
"Death games" are pretty utilitarian in this, even if someone would to escape by sacrificing their close friend, the game wont show future with some sort of epilogue with them living after "death game" - it will show past of those characters, their idyllic mundane life.
The game shows flashbacks before and after "death game", sometimes even in the middle. At first they are inconsequantial slice of life scenes that feel like something to act as contrast to vulgarity of "death games", something to give characters humanity and make player feel bad about them. But over the course of the game it develops into overarching narrative of another character - of the boy who idolises those cute girls for their surface level sugary flowery qualities.
Its obvious when you play the game, but game contexualises player input of giving girls cards via a boy sitting in a cade in the room where "death game" is taking place. Via this contextualisation it creates assosiation between this character who exists inside of the story and us the player who experiences this story by engaging with gaming software. If this boy is meant to be disillusioned with cute girls, surely we also should be disillusioned with moe characters.
However interestingly enough the game doesnt attempt to present this as a first person POV that watches over "death games", it just shows those events in normal "camera is where it needs to be at any given time", which be considered just contrivence of presentation (even games with first person POV have full screen illustrations in third person), but there is a background where boy in the cage can be seen.
Whatever this disconnect creates something interesting is up to debate, i have no particular opinion on it, but figured ill write up this observation.
So for what do girls suffer? Or for who?
In somewhat of inverse of how meta angle of those stories can be "characters are being tortured for the entertainment of the audience" Kaleidoscope instead seeks to torture its audience with 12 short stories where characters arent really much of the characters.
However by having to bear this noise for so long, by being front loaded with their awful qualities, by sorting out inconsistencies and discovering consistencies - you discover the characters.
In a way the game tries to say that we have to accept people for who we are, not project our own idolised version on them. However it drowns that in noise of treating gender related issues as binary things, sometimes the game doesnt only feel like it lacks female perspective, but male one as well.
it trully is frustrating how disconnected from understanding how people of different genders exist and interact in a real society.
But also feel like its writer Ryukishi is himself a person on whom ideolised version of himself is being projected by fans he aquired over the years. A person some of whose works are really beloved, but others are dismissed because they dont meet this idolised idea of Ryukishi.
Maybe Ryukishi was a kaleidoscope too.
Its "death game" isnt about interesting scenarious enabled by the game rule sets, its about characters having conflict enabled by idea of "death game" existing.
"Death game" itself is short, 5 minutes in the game world, which obviously translates into around 30 minutes for the player. And it will reset and repeat until it serves its goal.
Many death game stories are about characters beating the game, beating the system and cracking this "death game" apart. Those expectations are futhered by the player input, in Kaleidoscope player distributes cards with "roles" to the characters, and sees how match ups they created will play out. One may expect that player must solve the puzzle: figure out the characters relationships to each other and create a match up where characters will work together to survive.
However it is ultimately impossible as player will soon discover, conflicts will arise not from any consistent logic, but just because they are expected. In one game character may be genius manipulator who will kill everyone, in another they will be noble martyr who will sacrifce themselves for the sake of their friends.
Player will simply be there exhausting all options while watching farce a play out. It doesnt feel like "death game" does unmasking of the characters dark side, it feels like a performance - all these ways we can all be awful to each other and create dramatic narrative about suffering and unfairness.
The game states plainly in text that it pursues to create disillusionment with its cute girls main characters. Idea of idealisation that hurts someone being idolised and also dehumanises them is compelling one and i think to tackle it by using moe and cute character designs courtesty of Hinoue Itaru was a good match.
However i think it falls apart in several ways. It claims that this idolisation of female world is born from viewing it on a surface level, by imagining it to be flowery sugary, when in fact its more complex. But text engagement with gender aspect is itself surface level. For exaple to deromanticize women it goes for kinda extreme antagonisation of them that borderlines on sexists anecdotes told by an awful stand up comedian on mainstream tv. Simiarly this idea of "those cute girls doing faces that feel wrong on them" while correct on a surface and executed in the very interesting way of Itaru characters doing Ryuskishi's facial expressions (twisted faces one may encounter in Higurashi and Umineko), it kinda treats Itaru as cutesy cute artist and nothing else, despite her having drawn stuff thats actually more graphic and hecked up than Kaleidoscope.
Despite that i still feel like narrative about hurting someone by idolising them and in that non considering their opinions/emotions delievers a point across and has emotional narrative to go along with it.
Its obviously pretty difficult to be emotionally invested in "death games" playing on loop and becoming the noise. Some of them manage to be somewhat more compelling dramatic narratives, but largely they are the noise of vomiting and dying groans. Structure around repition is obviously is deeply rooted in bishoujou games in particular, however instead of long form storytelling, Kaleidoscope does those bite size chunks than be treated almost like episodes of TV show.
Rules of choosing heroine whose story players wants to see even somewhat still apply, however real story is happening under all the noise.
As mentioned before characters behave largely inconsistently and will create conflict just because it needs to happen, however there are some consistencies that can be spotted. It kinda feels like mystery solving, not unlike cross examination of several witnesses testimonies.
"Death games" are pretty utilitarian in this, even if someone would to escape by sacrificing their close friend, the game wont show future with some sort of epilogue with them living after "death game" - it will show past of those characters, their idyllic mundane life.
The game shows flashbacks before and after "death game", sometimes even in the middle. At first they are inconsequantial slice of life scenes that feel like something to act as contrast to vulgarity of "death games", something to give characters humanity and make player feel bad about them. But over the course of the game it develops into overarching narrative of another character - of the boy who idolises those cute girls for their surface level sugary flowery qualities.
Its obvious when you play the game, but game contexualises player input of giving girls cards via a boy sitting in a cade in the room where "death game" is taking place. Via this contextualisation it creates assosiation between this character who exists inside of the story and us the player who experiences this story by engaging with gaming software. If this boy is meant to be disillusioned with cute girls, surely we also should be disillusioned with moe characters.
However interestingly enough the game doesnt attempt to present this as a first person POV that watches over "death games", it just shows those events in normal "camera is where it needs to be at any given time", which be considered just contrivence of presentation (even games with first person POV have full screen illustrations in third person), but there is a background where boy in the cage can be seen.
Whatever this disconnect creates something interesting is up to debate, i have no particular opinion on it, but figured ill write up this observation.
So for what do girls suffer? Or for who?
In somewhat of inverse of how meta angle of those stories can be "characters are being tortured for the entertainment of the audience" Kaleidoscope instead seeks to torture its audience with 12 short stories where characters arent really much of the characters.
However by having to bear this noise for so long, by being front loaded with their awful qualities, by sorting out inconsistencies and discovering consistencies - you discover the characters.
In a way the game tries to say that we have to accept people for who we are, not project our own idolised version on them. However it drowns that in noise of treating gender related issues as binary things, sometimes the game doesnt only feel like it lacks female perspective, but male one as well.
it trully is frustrating how disconnected from understanding how people of different genders exist and interact in a real society.
But also feel like its writer Ryukishi is himself a person on whom ideolised version of himself is being projected by fans he aquired over the years. A person some of whose works are really beloved, but others are dismissed because they dont meet this idolised idea of Ryukishi.
Maybe Ryukishi was a kaleidoscope too.