"Guys let's make a new game that is about the absurdity of China's Gaokao entrance exam system, the social alienation and lack of connections that students in modern-day China face, the abhorrent birth rate, and anime plus other pop culture as a form of both escapism and freedom from the restrictions and censorship of mundane life in China. Except fuck all that, that doesn't sell well! So despite including elements of all of those above themes in our plot (to make it appear "deep" so those who care about circlejerking obscure games regardless of quality can have something to latch onto when others question them), let's instead shoehorn in some jiraikei chuunibait aggrandizing bullshit as a 'plot' and call it a day! Surely that will work, right?"

Holy fucking shit I am about done with this genre of game and also with Chinese indies. Three incredible games in a row made me convinced that China had one of the best current indie scenes in the world but it's increasingly looking like I just managed to get lucky and picked the three ripe apples from a rotten tree.

If you want to play an actually good, no, dazzling Chinese VN filled with lovable characters, addicting gameplay, and social commentary that isn't afraid to speak far above its security clearance, go play A Blessing for the Herd. Yeah, that doesn't have an English translation. So what? The English translation for this game is so atrocious and insulting that I don't even know if it classifies as English anymore. The game is already bad enough in its native tongue, and from the few minutes that I turned on English, I shudder to think the depths of utter disgrace this game would descend to for some later scenes. To give some context, this dogshit writing I'm currently typing out at the middle of a zoom lecture in 5 minutes where I forget to split infinitives and where a single run-on sentence is an entire paragraph is infinitely better prose than ANY line of dialogue in this entire game.

This game is also very bad for other reasons regarding Chinese current politics and some stupid philosophy and edgy shit they put in because subahibi is now apparently part of the official tumblrcore™ canon. The philosophy is based on teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism (presumably both due to the need to appease all groups in China) and is about as insightful as the rest of the damn game.

That being said, I'll save all that for an in-depth review. This game is just so consistently awful and unbelivably tone-deaf that it collapses under its own weight with the absolute lack of any moral spine or narrative structure. As a result, it serves to me as the ultimate canary in the coal mine for the future of indie gaming, where metatextual references put in for the sole purpose of increasing the quirky meter and performative beige bullshit that says absolutely nothing while doubling the game's runtime becomes hallmarks of "good design." There's just so much to talk about that is bad in this game and even greater potential that was completely wasted in the meandering sea of chemistry booklets and childhood romances that compose this score to an AJR soundtrack.

Recommended for theater kids who self-diagnose themselves with multiple personality disorder, pepper every conversation with quotes from Sylvia Plath, and consider themselves worldly and committed to decolonialization by looking at the front page of Jacobin magazine once a month with an adblocker and VPN turned on to South Africa.