By far the greatest work of Lena NW thus far. Growing up in the first generation of internet oversaturation, Lena is the perfect artist to portray the moral ambivalence, debasement of identity, and complete corruption that can be found on the internet, as well as to show the lives of the people affected by it. She does this by giving us five characters going to high school in a surreal, post-apocalyptic space where every inch is brimming with human flesh, disco balls, used condoms, leopard print, fire, nooses, and just about everything else combined and contorted into something resembling a world. They mutilate animals, abuse their classmates, and live out their most perverted sexual fantasies, all in a public space where anyone who tries to stop you just signs you up for their own form of depravity. The only places you run into consistently every day are the abyss and the high school; the former allows the player to look into a hole where thousands have died and contemplate their own mortality, and the latter is run by a nameless, kafkaesque machine with no clear origin or motive, just fulfilling it’s program until the end of the world. It is likely this machine that made everything the way it is; retconning most aspects of their lives and altering what’s left, dissolving their existence down to the most basic signifiers. Dorian’s suicidal ideation, Stacy’s social justice, Riley’s artistic endeavors, and Chad’s ex-frat bro persona. They are literally written to be shallow and one-noted. Despite this, they are immensely compelling characters with genuine arcs, often related to, or caused by, the machine. Chad used to be an alcoholic frat bro and is trying to resist his temptations to return to that lifestyle. Dorian barely remembers his life before the machine maimed it and is trying his best to cling onto the few memories he has, but they all end up distorted. Stacey is a combination of the ‘mean/prep girl’ and ‘SJW’ archetypes, brought to an absurd degree as she locks people in cages to bring awareness to the suffering of animals. Riley is talented but demented, both as a person and an artist. She’s great with technology to the point where she has the power to free everyone from the machine, yet she uses her power to traumatize them. Likewise, she has a very distinct and impressive artistic style yet uses it primarily as a means to draw pornography, often of her non-consenting classmates. As the game progresses, each of these characters, excluding Chad, show you their depraved activities on a golden pedestal. The player is encouraged to pick which character(s) to indulge in life’s most horrific pleasures with. Suicide, torture, homicide, rape, and everything else is allowed. This is presented with complete indifference. Each time they speak to a character, they are given the choice to reply with one of two text boxes. No preference is shown one way or another. A standard visual novel mechanic given a whole lot more weight when one option is to torture one’s peers and the other is to not do that. In the world of Nightmare Temptation Academy, morality is obscured to the point where any action can be justified as just as valid as any other. The choice of whether or not to electrocute one’s friends is of equal consequence to what one wants to eat for lunch that day. The world since the machine took over is so far away from what it once was that it seems pointless for one to limit themself to what is decent.