A tragic tale of a mentally ill, terminally online girl and her (imaginary?) partner navigating the challenges of internet stardom. Fundamentally, NSO is a resource management game that plays similarly to a Tamagotchi of all things; you manage your girlfriend’s stress, attachment, and mental darkness while helping her grow her audience and develop new ideas for content creation. The game can get surreal and quite dark, you can literally overdose on drugs and drug addiction is a rewarded mechanic. The game sports more than 25 endings, only 3 of which I would call somewhat “good”. I actually started feeling a little sick when i realized that you aren’t “supposed” to fix her or help her fix herself; the game wants you, through incompetence or malice, to ruin her life. There’s a literal minigame to inflict self-harm on yourself. It’s fucked up. It was jarring and not tasteful (IMO). However, the game is making a point about the reality of modern streamer/internet culture, and i know a lot of people do really struggle with drug addiction and self-harm. I really liked how the fastest ways to grow your channel (through sex or through pseudo alt-right conspiracy theories) inevitably lead to bad endings and irreparably damage you for the rest of the playthrough. However, dancing with the devil is the only way to hit a million fans in a month. Such is the paradox. Either way, NSO made its point, but i personally couldn’t stomach betraying the virtual girl ad nauseum, it felt wrong.