I've always been romantic about radio. Maybe it's just inherited from American Graffiti, but I think I would actually listen to modern radio if there was more personality. That feeling that songs aren't just being spit out by a playlist, they have to be physically started by a DJ, someone selecting the programming and keeping you company in between. You and them, alone together, before the internet made that our default state.

So a game about listening to and interacting with radio DJs is immediately interesting, and given the inherent limitations I think it mostly works. The messages you send have to be phrases heard elsewhere, which meshes with the hacker angle. The story keeps it simple and I found a handful of fun easter eggs.

But that story just didn't engage me. This should not have been a time loop narrative. I get those are in style now and it's an easy explanation for why the radio broadcasts are so short (a couple minutes per chapter) but it's a video game, no one would mind if it just repeated. Time loops are such fantastical plot devices that every time the DJs matter-of-factly discuss "the vote on the proposed time loop" it's hard to take seriously. I get the sense the writers weren't quite sure where to take that story, because it ends on an anti-democratic note that's just as disconcerting in 2022 as it should have been in 2019.

I played this on Apple Arcade and it took like an hour or two. Can't say it's not worth it for that time and price.