akanta
2020
Coming from a native japanese person, this game is oblivious to actual japanese history. It dances with fantasies of japanese stereotypes like "honor" while ignoring the undercurrent of actual samurai life, which is both far less honorable and far more mundane than depicted. It would be one thing if this was designed to be fantastical, but it isn't. Sucker Punch designed this game with the goal of accurately portraying Japan's culture and history, and they failed at that. To say otherwise would be a disservice to the memory of the samurai themselves.
Besides, the game is just bland open world AAA kitsch with a big map and picturesque locations made by crunching underpaid developers and artists. Which is to say, it's a game that isn't bad, but isn't memorable either. A game that entices the senses but never the imagination, that gives the illusion of enjoyment while leaving you empty in the end. It's a AAA game in 2020 and that's all I really have to say.
Besides, the game is just bland open world AAA kitsch with a big map and picturesque locations made by crunching underpaid developers and artists. Which is to say, it's a game that isn't bad, but isn't memorable either. A game that entices the senses but never the imagination, that gives the illusion of enjoyment while leaving you empty in the end. It's a AAA game in 2020 and that's all I really have to say.
2021
Class of '09 shows that most visual novel fans who accuse Western visual novels of being made by "tourists" who disrespect the genre are able to support "deconstructionist" parody games as long as it's blatantly xenophobic and utterly devoid of any social consciousness beyond the luminescent flicker of a 4chan forum.
This review contains spoilers
Addenum: I read Subahibi at a very miserable time in my personal life, detailed with erratic behavior, prolonged mental illness, suicide attempts, and watching as my life became more polished and privileged than ever -- and simultaneously crumbled to the ground. A year later, I am attempting a reread in a far better mental state, and will update this review with some additional notes and closing thoughts. My original review will stay at the bottom, unchanged, as a permanent fixture in my digital consciousness of my past. As a reminder that, in spite of my past struggles, there still exists a sentiment in me -- in all of us -- that yearns to live happily.
TW: rape, mutilation, violence, porn, bullying, dogs
non-spoiler review since I don't want this to be 8000 words
honestly, subahibi in of itself should be a trigger warning
Wonderful Everyday: Down the Rabbit-Hole, or Subahibi as it is commonly referred to, is the single costliest game I have ever purchased. Not only is it 30 dollars, or the equivalent of four hours of minimum-wage work in the United States, but it also is responsible for the destruction of a 20 dollar logitech keyboard I bought from walmart, two chopsticks, and a ceramic mug. More importantly, it also was directly responsible for me accidentally breaking a small clay figurine I made in 1st grade, something so dear to my heart that when I moved to America I wrapped it in paper and stored it in the front pouch of my backpack. And that's not even counting the monetary costs of the two pills of my grandmother's high blood pressure medication I ate (along with double the normal dose of my Prozac) while playing this game, which looking back was a terrible idea both for my own health and my grandmother's, but was a choice I decided to pursue given just how much stress and anxiety this game was causing me.
Why? Well, it is garbage, trash, rubbish, and refuse. It is an extraordinarily banal work with zero artistic value, where philosophical depth extends down to the collective value of three litcharts summary pages and a sparknotes prep book, and where an underaged girl being raped or having her limb cut off is considered an acceptable subsitute for any sort of character development in the classical sense. Bullying is not character development, rape is not character development, gore is not character development, and fucking a table is not fucking character development. I'll excuse myself from mentioning the dog rape part, as the most ardent subahibi defenders could probably twist my words into stating that the dog rape scene is innovative as it represents a reversal of traditional power structures. After all, in basically every other piece of media where man fucks man's best friend, the human being is the one doing the fucking, but...you know what I won't add fuel to the fire. Let's move on with the review.
I am known for heavily emphasizing an unified creative vision. And, in a swiftian sense of irony, this game has one of the strongest creative visions I've ever seen. In that, I mean that it represents a creative vision of someone unfit to live in a civilized society, and Japanese prosecutors should probably take note. SCA-DI's creative vision is less of a vision and more of a blindness, a darkness that spreads across the whole novel, and a plague on the visual novel genre.
Given that this is a visual novel, it is only sensible to start off by critiquing the writing quality. After all, a visual novel with poor writing is automatically a poor visual novel. And in terms of subahibi, the writing quality is disgustingly awful, to the point where it is actually incredible how consistently terrible it is. It's unsensible, unstable, and unfocused purple prose that is astoundingly massive in its own sense of self-importance and lilliputian in its actual depth. In fact, I almost have a fleeting suspicion it was intentionally written to be bad, because there is almost no way a 50-hour work of fiction can be this goddamn bad for the entire fifty hours. Even David Cage games have their moments of midness, a break away from the dumpster bin, DDLC and euphoria have genuine emotional moments, and Banban is sometimes funny. Many of the 0.5 star games I rate are middlemarket mobile shovelware created for the sole reason of exploiting underaged Timmy and his mom's credit card, which makes them obviously bad games, but at least they have zero effort put into them. This game has effort put into it, is 30 fucking bucks, and yet somehow is consistently worse than all of the games that I listed above.
My favorite games overwhelmingly tend to skew towards the depressing and miserable, and I absolutely adore the misery found in literary realism like Jude the Obscure, Germinal, Crime and Punishment, and Middlemarch. And I'm not someone who is averse to the weird and sometimes disgusting: I love Naked Lunch and photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki! In Subahibi, however, the greatest misery I experienced from this game was my own misery in questioning the life choices that lead up to me buying, downloading, and playing this game. Indeed, this game holds the onerous distinction of being the first (and likely last) game where I purposefully wished that all the main characters would just die, not because they were written to attract a negative perception, but because I just wanted the game to end quicker.
I rarely come across games with zero redeeming qualities. Subahibi is the epitome of a game that fits that bill. Shock porn for the sake of shock porn, with zero emotional weight placed behind the situation and treated with an air of levity that does not suit the context. Actual porn for the sake of actual porn, inserted in the middle of the narrative with no cohesion or substance or even simply a purpose behind said porn, other than maybe to sell more copies by targeting a demographic completely at odds with the game's stated intent of creating a deeply interwoven psychological character drama tackling questions of fate, existence, confronting reality, and living happily. Purple and inelegant prose that creaks and stutters across the page with heavy-handed themes and uneven rhythms all masquerading as faux-philosophical depth. Incomprehensive and flat characters with negative development and even worse motivations, where erratic behaviors are justified as "oh, that's just how he is" and where the community is still to this day debating the merits of several character actions in the game, because they're written so vaguely and with so little depth that piecing together your own retelling of the events that happen unironically gives you a better narrative than the game's official explanation. An overarching plotline so confusing and muddy that it seems to completely detach and run away from itself multiple times in the first half alone, and let's not even get started about Jabberwocky 1 and 2 and the swiss cheese of plot holes they poke into the narrative fabric of the overall story. Even the music and the art, things that visual novels typically excel at, range from terrible at worst to painfully average at best.
Oh yeah, and the ending is not good.
There is nothing in Subahibi that has been explored, and explored better, in other media. Hell, there's nothing that has been explored better in other visual novels. If you want fetish eroge bordering on the insane, Nitroplus and Alicesoft games gives you the same demented fap. If you want vanilla eroge, Innocent Grey is pumping out genre-bending and absurdly well-written visual novels that will change your perspective and worldview: in particular, both Kara no Shoujo 3 and the entire Flowers saga sit in my current top 5. And if you just want a good story to read in the company breakroom without getting weird looks from your colleagues and manager, there's Umineko, Fata Morgana, and a whole slew of quality visual novels to bide your lunch break with. (I haven't even played Umineko yet, and I know it's better than this.) Or, you know, you could play ten quality indie game in the time it takes to finish this "thing" (I shudder to call it an actual game), of whom at least eight would have far greater philosophical depth without having to namedrop whatever philosopher names SCA-DI found interesting in the five minutes of researching Wikipedia articles during the writing of this game, because clearly he didn't actually read any of Wittgenstein's works. Or you could read actual books! That's right, there's tens of thousands of high quality paperbacks that can be yours for a fraction of the price of this (not accounting for blood pressure medications of course), and each of which contains a story of far greater depth and profundity than anything SCA-DI can dream of. You could read Pale Fire, in my opinion the greatest piece of prose on paper, in the time it takes to play...this.
Unless you are in the very small category of people who has the exact same fetishes that SCA-DI apparently has, or you are in the very small category of people who want to sound pretentious on anime twitter forums by quoting random philosophical quotes out of your ass without truly understanding what they mean (instead of reading the actual philosophical treatises they come from, which would take far less time than the 50 hours it takes to read this piece of shit disgrace to the Japanese language), there is simply no reason to play this game. Malware has more value on my desktop screen compared to this literary smallpox. SCA-DI is an absolute hack, and excuse me if you must, but I need to go play a good indie game to wash my eyes from this cancerous filth.
Damn it, I'm mad again. Fuck you SCA-DI, and fuck you subahibi, for making me this mad. Don't you realize how much high blood pressure medication costs these days?
TW: rape, mutilation, violence, porn, bullying, dogs
non-spoiler review since I don't want this to be 8000 words
honestly, subahibi in of itself should be a trigger warning
Wonderful Everyday: Down the Rabbit-Hole, or Subahibi as it is commonly referred to, is the single costliest game I have ever purchased. Not only is it 30 dollars, or the equivalent of four hours of minimum-wage work in the United States, but it also is responsible for the destruction of a 20 dollar logitech keyboard I bought from walmart, two chopsticks, and a ceramic mug. More importantly, it also was directly responsible for me accidentally breaking a small clay figurine I made in 1st grade, something so dear to my heart that when I moved to America I wrapped it in paper and stored it in the front pouch of my backpack. And that's not even counting the monetary costs of the two pills of my grandmother's high blood pressure medication I ate (along with double the normal dose of my Prozac) while playing this game, which looking back was a terrible idea both for my own health and my grandmother's, but was a choice I decided to pursue given just how much stress and anxiety this game was causing me.
Why? Well, it is garbage, trash, rubbish, and refuse. It is an extraordinarily banal work with zero artistic value, where philosophical depth extends down to the collective value of three litcharts summary pages and a sparknotes prep book, and where an underaged girl being raped or having her limb cut off is considered an acceptable subsitute for any sort of character development in the classical sense. Bullying is not character development, rape is not character development, gore is not character development, and fucking a table is not fucking character development. I'll excuse myself from mentioning the dog rape part, as the most ardent subahibi defenders could probably twist my words into stating that the dog rape scene is innovative as it represents a reversal of traditional power structures. After all, in basically every other piece of media where man fucks man's best friend, the human being is the one doing the fucking, but...you know what I won't add fuel to the fire. Let's move on with the review.
I am known for heavily emphasizing an unified creative vision. And, in a swiftian sense of irony, this game has one of the strongest creative visions I've ever seen. In that, I mean that it represents a creative vision of someone unfit to live in a civilized society, and Japanese prosecutors should probably take note. SCA-DI's creative vision is less of a vision and more of a blindness, a darkness that spreads across the whole novel, and a plague on the visual novel genre.
Given that this is a visual novel, it is only sensible to start off by critiquing the writing quality. After all, a visual novel with poor writing is automatically a poor visual novel. And in terms of subahibi, the writing quality is disgustingly awful, to the point where it is actually incredible how consistently terrible it is. It's unsensible, unstable, and unfocused purple prose that is astoundingly massive in its own sense of self-importance and lilliputian in its actual depth. In fact, I almost have a fleeting suspicion it was intentionally written to be bad, because there is almost no way a 50-hour work of fiction can be this goddamn bad for the entire fifty hours. Even David Cage games have their moments of midness, a break away from the dumpster bin, DDLC and euphoria have genuine emotional moments, and Banban is sometimes funny. Many of the 0.5 star games I rate are middlemarket mobile shovelware created for the sole reason of exploiting underaged Timmy and his mom's credit card, which makes them obviously bad games, but at least they have zero effort put into them. This game has effort put into it, is 30 fucking bucks, and yet somehow is consistently worse than all of the games that I listed above.
My favorite games overwhelmingly tend to skew towards the depressing and miserable, and I absolutely adore the misery found in literary realism like Jude the Obscure, Germinal, Crime and Punishment, and Middlemarch. And I'm not someone who is averse to the weird and sometimes disgusting: I love Naked Lunch and photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki! In Subahibi, however, the greatest misery I experienced from this game was my own misery in questioning the life choices that lead up to me buying, downloading, and playing this game. Indeed, this game holds the onerous distinction of being the first (and likely last) game where I purposefully wished that all the main characters would just die, not because they were written to attract a negative perception, but because I just wanted the game to end quicker.
I rarely come across games with zero redeeming qualities. Subahibi is the epitome of a game that fits that bill. Shock porn for the sake of shock porn, with zero emotional weight placed behind the situation and treated with an air of levity that does not suit the context. Actual porn for the sake of actual porn, inserted in the middle of the narrative with no cohesion or substance or even simply a purpose behind said porn, other than maybe to sell more copies by targeting a demographic completely at odds with the game's stated intent of creating a deeply interwoven psychological character drama tackling questions of fate, existence, confronting reality, and living happily. Purple and inelegant prose that creaks and stutters across the page with heavy-handed themes and uneven rhythms all masquerading as faux-philosophical depth. Incomprehensive and flat characters with negative development and even worse motivations, where erratic behaviors are justified as "oh, that's just how he is" and where the community is still to this day debating the merits of several character actions in the game, because they're written so vaguely and with so little depth that piecing together your own retelling of the events that happen unironically gives you a better narrative than the game's official explanation. An overarching plotline so confusing and muddy that it seems to completely detach and run away from itself multiple times in the first half alone, and let's not even get started about Jabberwocky 1 and 2 and the swiss cheese of plot holes they poke into the narrative fabric of the overall story. Even the music and the art, things that visual novels typically excel at, range from terrible at worst to painfully average at best.
Oh yeah, and the ending is not good.
There is nothing in Subahibi that has been explored, and explored better, in other media. Hell, there's nothing that has been explored better in other visual novels. If you want fetish eroge bordering on the insane, Nitroplus and Alicesoft games gives you the same demented fap. If you want vanilla eroge, Innocent Grey is pumping out genre-bending and absurdly well-written visual novels that will change your perspective and worldview: in particular, both Kara no Shoujo 3 and the entire Flowers saga sit in my current top 5. And if you just want a good story to read in the company breakroom without getting weird looks from your colleagues and manager, there's Umineko, Fata Morgana, and a whole slew of quality visual novels to bide your lunch break with. (I haven't even played Umineko yet, and I know it's better than this.) Or, you know, you could play ten quality indie game in the time it takes to finish this "thing" (I shudder to call it an actual game), of whom at least eight would have far greater philosophical depth without having to namedrop whatever philosopher names SCA-DI found interesting in the five minutes of researching Wikipedia articles during the writing of this game, because clearly he didn't actually read any of Wittgenstein's works. Or you could read actual books! That's right, there's tens of thousands of high quality paperbacks that can be yours for a fraction of the price of this (not accounting for blood pressure medications of course), and each of which contains a story of far greater depth and profundity than anything SCA-DI can dream of. You could read Pale Fire, in my opinion the greatest piece of prose on paper, in the time it takes to play...this.
Unless you are in the very small category of people who has the exact same fetishes that SCA-DI apparently has, or you are in the very small category of people who want to sound pretentious on anime twitter forums by quoting random philosophical quotes out of your ass without truly understanding what they mean (instead of reading the actual philosophical treatises they come from, which would take far less time than the 50 hours it takes to read this piece of shit disgrace to the Japanese language), there is simply no reason to play this game. Malware has more value on my desktop screen compared to this literary smallpox. SCA-DI is an absolute hack, and excuse me if you must, but I need to go play a good indie game to wash my eyes from this cancerous filth.
Damn it, I'm mad again. Fuck you SCA-DI, and fuck you subahibi, for making me this mad. Don't you realize how much high blood pressure medication costs these days?
2023
In American college applications, the theme of “ethnic food”, and the bonds that form between generations when cooking said “ethnic food”, is considered one of the most stereotypical college admissions essays around, overused to the point where it lost all meaning both in the eyes of students and admissions officers.
This was something that I was unfamiliar with before I started applying to US colleges. Growing up in a country with shockingly little diversity and where everyone drew inspiration from the same cultural cookbook (Japan), the concept of ethnic food was foreign and intriguing. As a result, when applying to colleges myself, I specifically explained in my essays about my country’s cuisine and how it connected with me and connected me to the bonds that demarcated my life.
So why am I talking about the overusage of writing about ethnic food in American college applications? Because Venba represents the culmination and the zenith of ethnic food writing, in any medium, for any purpose. It’s a devastating glimpse into the precipice of cultural collision, identity, and the balance between assimilation and submission. And it does this with a deft hand of literary seasoning, a fleur-de-sel of stylistic prose that never overpowers the clarity of the original vision. The food gameplay itself is charming, engaging and fun: an appetizer to the main course, some acidity to cleanse the palate and that cuts through the richness of the writing one digests.
(Review in progress, come back later for the full review! Just saving this review for now :>)
This was something that I was unfamiliar with before I started applying to US colleges. Growing up in a country with shockingly little diversity and where everyone drew inspiration from the same cultural cookbook (Japan), the concept of ethnic food was foreign and intriguing. As a result, when applying to colleges myself, I specifically explained in my essays about my country’s cuisine and how it connected with me and connected me to the bonds that demarcated my life.
So why am I talking about the overusage of writing about ethnic food in American college applications? Because Venba represents the culmination and the zenith of ethnic food writing, in any medium, for any purpose. It’s a devastating glimpse into the precipice of cultural collision, identity, and the balance between assimilation and submission. And it does this with a deft hand of literary seasoning, a fleur-de-sel of stylistic prose that never overpowers the clarity of the original vision. The food gameplay itself is charming, engaging and fun: an appetizer to the main course, some acidity to cleanse the palate and that cuts through the richness of the writing one digests.
(Review in progress, come back later for the full review! Just saving this review for now :>)
2013
good
TW: depression, suicide, employee abuse, late-stage capitalism
“I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing”
- Jack Ma, Weibo, April 15, 2019
It’s 2 AM. Black eyelids and blacker coffee. The investor report is due tomorrow, and yet another group of college students has started a startup targeting your company’s market value. Unfortunately, they don’t intend on sleeping, so you pull another can of Red Bull from the employee breakroom fridge. After all, no intelligence can leapfrog four more hours of code. Perhaps, if I…
“Could you help me forecast upcoming B2B sales trends for Q2?”
Get back to work.
On December 29, 2020, at 1:30 AM, a commodity trader surnamed Zhang collapsed in the street while walking back home with her colleagues. Rushed to the hospital, she was pronounced dead approximately half an hour later. She was 23. Zhang’s death marked the second overwork-related death in a month for Pinduoduo, the unicorn commerce platform startup worth more than $170 billion (and the owner of Temu, the popular Western shopping app), and sparked widespread outrage among Chinese netizens, leading to a government investigation and a user boycott that dropped Pinduoduo’s market cap by 6.1% in a single day. The CEO pledged to do better, the users who boycotted Pinduoduo reinstalled the app, and Zhang’s death was forgotten.
Two weeks after Zhang died, a Pinduoduo engineer in the app infrastructure department asked for leave early and traveled home. On the afternoon of January 9th, 2021, he leaped to his death from the window of his apartment building. News reports later surfaced that employees in his division were made to work 300 hours a month, with many of those hours without pay.
A few days later, a whistleblower named Wang Taixu filmed a video of a colleague collapsing and being taken into an ambulance after working overtime at Pinduoduo’s offices, and was promptly fired. In response, he published a Bilibili exposal that confirmed not just 300 but 380 hours of work a month, as well as various poor working conditions such as having 8 bathrooms for 1000 employees (in response, the administrators put up signs requesting employees to “hurry up”), forcing employees to work during Lunar New Year, forcing employees to work overtime to make up for hours lost if sick, and fluctuating salaries and bonuses seemingly on a whim’s notice.
The three deaths, as well as Wang’s exposal, solidified Pinduoduo as the face of the infamous “996” system, which stands for workdays from 9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week, with companies often requiring employees to work unpaid overtime past the 996 system itself. Popularized by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, 996 – or even worse – is virtually universal among Chinese startups and behemoths alike in the fast-moving Chinese technology sector, where investor expectations are high, potential profits are higher, and where competitors will do anything to undercut their competition. Indeed, Pinduoduo reached its ascendency by undercutting countless other 团购 or group-buying companies, achieved through intentionally selling at a loss and bleeding investor dollars until its competition could not afford to keep up. Furthermore, Pinduoduo prided itself on having more features and integration than any of the competition, from native compatibility with uber-popular WeChat and QQ to fully-streamlined supply chains with multiple fallback suppliers to custom-designed AI meant to help shoppers.
In hindsight, the notion that a startup could fully build such a streamlined and efficient platform, perhaps more so than even Amazon, while simultaneously expanding to all of China, Singapore, and Southeast Asia in the span of two years without brutal working conditions was foolish. But what choice did Pinduoduo have? It was competing with dozens of other startups, all aiming for the same piece of the pie, and all with similarly horrid working conditions. Had Pinduoduo implemented humane working conditions, it would simply dissolve in the sea of failed startups, in which case another company with terrible labor practices would have dominated the market segment. After all, at the end of the day employees are simply just a resource, and like any other resource, the goal is to get maximum value at a minimum cost. Pinduoduo, like all the other startups it was competing against, was just another cog in the machine of China’s emerging information economy, a gladiator forced to fight while the spectators of venture capitalists cheered on.
A Blessing for the Herd, developed by ex-developers from Tencent and Netease (two companies notorious for their 996 practices), was created as a response to the Pinduoduo situation and depicts the daily working lives of dozens of employees at a small ecommerce startup. This is not a new concept, and multiple games have already tackled the 996 system in-depth before, such as the aptly named game “996me”. Yet, where A Blessing for the Herd diverges from the herd – and where it shines brightest – is in its brilliantly-written characters, as well as its focus on the societal structure and economic incentives that makes 996 not only possible, but often necessary to a startup’s survival.
Instead of playing as an employee, you play as the CEO of the company, tasked with managing dozens of employees, each with their own struggles and aspirations, as you try to claw your company’s way towards profitability, fight back against competitors trying to do the same thing, and fulfill the impossible expectations of the investors who loaned you money. Playing as the CEO naturally gives the game more depth in both gameplay and narrative, as it enables choices you make to have ramifications not only on you, but on everyone that surrounds you, as well as changing the goal of the game from simply meeting a deadline to reaching “success” for the company, a far more abstract and seemingly-impossible affair.
Your main goal as CEO is to ensure maximum worker productivity while growing the company and staying within the monthly allotted funding given by your investors. Worker productivity can be increased through two main methods: upgrades to your workplace, such as break rooms or yoga studios, or overtime. The former option improves the mental and physical stability of your workers while simultaneously improving productivity, but depletes a significant amount of your already-limited funding, when you still need to spend money on marketing and salaries and rent. The latter option is free and gives a bigger productivity boost than more break rooms, but depletes mental and physical health, which gradually depletes their maximum productivity in the long run, while also increasing the chance of employee sudden death, leaving the company, or suicide. Yet, in the face of almost-impossible investor expectations, you quickly learn that overtime is basically essential to avoid your company immediately drowning in a sea of red numbers. Therefore, to make sure that your company doesn’t fail without killing all your employees, a careful balance must be struck.
The narrative centers on six key employees: Lin Tong and Gao Qi, the two leaders of the R&D division, Luo Xin and Zhao Nan, the two leaders of the Product Development division, and Fan Ruichao, the marketing head. Each employee, including you (a dog), are represented by and depicted as an animal, with the only characters in the game depicted as humans being the investors, which illustrates their power over you and your startup’s replaceability in the Chinese economy. For instance, Fan is extremely aggressive in his marketing efforts, often recruiting new users using unscrupulous and sometimes-illegal practices to boost user figures, an important metric for investors. As such, he is depicted as a boar, due to the boar’s status in Chinese culture as being aggressive and confident. Each of the six key employees represents one of the main demographics of people in the tech industry, from the meek yet talented worker who keeps their head down to the ambitious employee willing to do anything to get a promotion.
Ever since I’ve gotten proficient at Chinese after four years of self-study, this game has been one of the top things on my backlog. From its release in 2019, it has been regarded in China as a cult classic, and by many Chinese netizens as one of China’s finest indies, something made more impressive by China emerging as one of the most vibrant and bold indie scenes in the world. On TapTap, a popular Chinese mobile app store for gaming, A Blessing for the Herd was ranked as the #1 highest rated game for two years in a row. From reading the synopsis, it was immediately evident that this game had unquestionable potential, and I was extremely curious where it took its unique ideas. While I have never experienced the 996 system myself or seen it in person, in Japan the idea of dedicating long hours towards a company is seen as normal, and my dad clocked in early every morning and clocked out when the sky was black, doing god-knows-what at the small chemical company in Shizuoka-shi where he received his monthly paycheck. When I was growing up, the concept of studying hard to ace the common test to get into a good university, in order to join a company upon graduating – putting in overtime regularly – and climbing up the corporate ladder was seen as normal, and was instilled in me from an early age. Of course, this game covered the startup boom in China especially among technology companies, which I was interested in as it was so radically different compared to the Japanese system I was used to, yet at the same time, so many elements were the same, from the corporate hierarchies to the emphasis on company loyalty to the characters involved. It was “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics”, perhaps. As such, I walked in expecting a decent story critiquing the 996 system, but nothing really more than that.
What I didn’t expect was a story that exposed the absurdity and inequality of China’s childhood rat races and the Gaokao exam, or a story that lamented Chinese people forgetting their own ancient wisdom and culture to worship at the altar of consumerism and their blind admiration of the West. or a swiftian story that picked apart the bureaucracy of different Chinese agencies and their artificial inefficiency, or a story that explored China’s massive (and growing) rural-urban divide and how long-entrenched societal systems like the Hukou household registration system exacerbates that divide. In other games focusing on Chinese corporate culture, these societal issues would be brushed aside or ignored entirely, perhaps included as a two-sentence quip in a twenty-hour game. Not here, though. A Blessing for the Herd is a game that isn’t content to point its sharp pen at the 996 work system, or even the corporate structures that enable it. No, it’s a game that is smart enough to know that corporate culture ultimately is largely derived from societal norms and values, and that one cannot fully address the injustices in companies without taking a glance at the society that enabled it. While relatively brief in size, these ventures into the tears in Chinese society in the midst of rapid modernization are packed with detail and emotion, complementing the main story perfectly while never detracting from the tightly-paced writing. Indeed, many of the game’s most brilliant moments come from these asides, these dazzling introspections into Chinese society as a whole.
That’s high praise, especially when the main story itself is so good. As stated earlier, the main story essentially functions as six intertwined character studies, with the company and its success being the common thread that links each character story together. Given the lifelessness of the corporation and the lack of a preset main plot, one would assume that the progression of said character stories would largely be dependent on player agency. Yet, while this game gives the illusion of player agency through the way gameplay is perfectly intertwined with story, because the player fundamentally has very little agency on changing the end result of the gameplay, the progression and ending of the story is hence inevitable. After all, regardless of what you do or how you optimize, you will always lose at least 10 million RMB a month (which, according to the developers, is by design), with hanging on and optimizing your gameplay only a temporary gauze in the hemorrhage of investor funds, often by no fault of your own. This is what leads to the tragic but beautifully inevitable ending of the game (no, it’s not the company going bankrupt), which not only ties up the fate of the company but the fate of all of the characters in a shocking yet sensible manner.
Indeed, let’s talk about said characters, shall we? While all of the characters in this game get luscious development and are very well-written, I would like to shine a spotlight on a few of my favorite characters that had a particular impact on me.
Luo Xin has been described by the developers as the “real daughter” of the game in subsequent interviews, and it’s easy to see why: she gets more screen time than any other character, and she has the most tragic story in the entire game. The developers, in their reflection, note that when the Chinese internet bubble started, product manager was among the most desired jobs in all of China, as people dreamed of creating unique projects that could change the world. Yet, this subsequently led to a surplus of product managers in the market, and when combined with the bursting of several bubbles in the Chinese technology sector, led to the vast majority of product managers quitting the technology sector or migrating to more in-demand jobs. As a result, the remaining product managers are often driven by passion more than anything, due to the low pay, long hours, and constant struggles of the profession – leading to the occupation having some of the highest depression rates of any job in China. Product managers need to have constant communication, arguments, and quarrels with all sectors of the company, often acting as a mediator in negotiating between different divisions from designers to programmers to the accounting department. Yet, even after all that, the vast majority of projects proposed are ultimately rejected, leading to what the developers themselves term as the feeling that “all efforts are illusory”. Luo Xin perfectly reflects this ideal of a person whose passion drives them to the point of insanity, and whose quest to create the “timeless product” eventually leads to her depression and suicide. Her descent into madness, partially spurred by your actions as the CEO, is one of the most important events that happens in the game, and illustrates the human impact of 996, as well as the effects when creative passion is exploited for monetary gain. And in a medium that has often struggled to portray mental health, with many games ranging from DDLC to Milk Outside a Bag of Milk often ending up romanticizing and smoothing-out mental illness into some voyeuristic aesthetic to be slapped on top like an ableist Band-Aid in lieu of actual substance or depth, Luo Xin’s progression is raw and ugly – much like actual mental health struggles. It’s heartbreaking, really, to see her creative dreams descend into nightmares. From the start, it is evident that Luo Xin represents the story of someone working at Muccy Games, given both the background of the developers and that such a highly personal and specific story cannot be formed from consciousness but instead experience. To whoever the owner and creator of this story is, I hope you find inner peace.
Gao Qi, represents to me, both the Chinese idealization of women in the workplace and the end result of it. Her character is constantly depicted as innocent, docile, and pure, sometimes with a slight sexualization bent, which fits her persona as a sheep. Yet, by the end of the story, she is a completely different person than when she began, due to the countless examples of harassment (and worse) that she experiences. She becomes more mature, wary, and guarded; she fights back and demonstrates her independence in the face of a culture and society not designed for her. Perhaps the closest analogue I can make is Tess from Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy: two characters once pure but drastically changed in the face of cultural norms and societal misogyny – and yes, the two are similar in more ways than one (think strawberries). Gao Qi’s story most represents the developers’ anger at not just Chinese corporate culture, but long-entrenched social norms as well, and the perspective that one cannot truly understand the former without understanding the latter. While Gao Qi’s story isn’t the first time I’ve seen a critique about the lack of agency, domesticity, and objectification of women in traditional (and modern) Chinese culture, or even the first time I’ve seen a story where a woman is forced to get an abortion to secure a promotion at her workplace, for her story to be told in a way that takes such full usage of the video game medium’s strength and to be told this eloquently is a delight.
As someone who migrated to America by myself a year ago, at the age of 15 and a half, I deeply connected to Lin Tong’s story for personal reasons. The idea of being an immigrant in a new land, the unfamiliarity and sense of starting over that it entails…these are all universal experiences, unconstrained by demarcation lines or the passing of time. The way that her story is outlined and the way it progresses has actually reminded me a lot of my own story, which has led to an introspection and reflection on my own life – after all, nobody in this game has a happy ending. Perhaps it is a normal occurrence, or a fate to be avoided? In all likelihood, it is both. Either way, the fact that my current life nearly perfectly matches up with the early sections of Lin Tong’s story terrifies me, and I should probably spend more time connecting with my family now that I think about it. Ah well, I’ll do it tomorrow…
Before concluding this review, I’d like to touch on the game’s status as a mobile, free-to-play app. This, for good reason, probably raises concern to a lot of you – after all, Chinese free-to-play mobile apps have a reputation of being either gacha games or ad-infested shovelware. Luckily, I’m happy to report that this game is neither of those. There are no ads during the game, besides a few optional ads you can watch to gain some in-game money (which, again, is useless because you will always end up returning a negative profit at the end of the month). There are no gacha elements either. The developers themselves have stated that they actually lost money developing this game compared to operating expenses (office rent, etc.), and that the decision to put this game on mobile for free was mainly to get a wide playerbase and attract brand loyalty for their future projects, forsaking any money to be made in exchange for publicity and recognition. This, hilariously, reflects the startups depicted in the game itself, who care only about growth and expansion and a bigger user base over profitability. Either way, it seems to have worked, given that I’ll just about buy anything Muccy Games releases next, regardless of price or platform.
Had A Blessing for the Herd been simply a game about the experiences of workers in the 996 system, the sheer quality of its writing and characters alone would have made it a landmark in Chinese indie gaming – the fact that it accomplishes all that while also hiding a viciously-laced satire about Chinese corporate culture and the materialistic bent of modern Chinese society makes it nothing short of unbelievable, all while weaving its game mechanics into the tapestry of the story in a way so seamless that ludology and narratology seems to melt and blend into one. This is a work that is very distinctly and proudly modern Chinese, which is something so rare and refreshing in an environment where so many Chinese indies are trying to be something they aren’t, focusing on settings like Ancient China or anime instead of drawing inspiration from the China that surrounds them every day. In contrast, A Blessing for the Herd embraces its Chinese heritage, drawing from the experiences of the developers’ own lives and the current state of China, resulting in a game unapologetic in its dedication to its own creative vision and overflowing with passion and heart. Rather than being a “996 game” or a “corporate game” or a “management game”, A Blessing for the Herd, more than any other game I’ve played, represents the quintessential Chinese picturesque of the modern era. For a group of game developers who used to work on cash-grab gacha games to create such an indispensable work as their first independent project is extraordinary, and I cannot temper myself for the next Muccy Games release.
I end this review with an excerpt from the developer’s reflection on the game itself.
“Sometimes I am also quite puzzled: Your XX Group and XX Company have almost a monopoly position in the industry, why do you need employees to work overtime continuously? Are you that busy? How much money can you make for the company? If you still need employees to work overtime like this, aren't you monopolizing it for nothing?”
This, for all the game’s success delving into the logistical and practical and societal reasons companies use 996, is the one question it is too afraid to ask: the moral reasons for China’s corporate culture. After all, there are no words to be said, and no answers to be found. Perhaps the most harrowing takeaway from A Blessing for the Herd is that there is no alternate ending. There is no solution. Whereas games like Bioshock and The Stanley Parable explore the illusion of choice through flipping traditional player-game interaction feedback mechanisms, here, the illusion of choice is embedded in the entire structure itself. The game itself isn't preoccupied with pithy questions about free will -- rather, the structure of 996 is a natural extension, a conditia sine qua non of the structure of modern Chinese society. And in modern Chinese fashion, then, such a question is a question that should be avoided.
And so, the cycle continues. Keep your head up, do your code review, and get another Red Bull from the fridge; it’s going to be a long night.
“I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing”
- Jack Ma, Weibo, April 15, 2019
It’s 2 AM. Black eyelids and blacker coffee. The investor report is due tomorrow, and yet another group of college students has started a startup targeting your company’s market value. Unfortunately, they don’t intend on sleeping, so you pull another can of Red Bull from the employee breakroom fridge. After all, no intelligence can leapfrog four more hours of code. Perhaps, if I…
“Could you help me forecast upcoming B2B sales trends for Q2?”
Get back to work.
On December 29, 2020, at 1:30 AM, a commodity trader surnamed Zhang collapsed in the street while walking back home with her colleagues. Rushed to the hospital, she was pronounced dead approximately half an hour later. She was 23. Zhang’s death marked the second overwork-related death in a month for Pinduoduo, the unicorn commerce platform startup worth more than $170 billion (and the owner of Temu, the popular Western shopping app), and sparked widespread outrage among Chinese netizens, leading to a government investigation and a user boycott that dropped Pinduoduo’s market cap by 6.1% in a single day. The CEO pledged to do better, the users who boycotted Pinduoduo reinstalled the app, and Zhang’s death was forgotten.
Two weeks after Zhang died, a Pinduoduo engineer in the app infrastructure department asked for leave early and traveled home. On the afternoon of January 9th, 2021, he leaped to his death from the window of his apartment building. News reports later surfaced that employees in his division were made to work 300 hours a month, with many of those hours without pay.
A few days later, a whistleblower named Wang Taixu filmed a video of a colleague collapsing and being taken into an ambulance after working overtime at Pinduoduo’s offices, and was promptly fired. In response, he published a Bilibili exposal that confirmed not just 300 but 380 hours of work a month, as well as various poor working conditions such as having 8 bathrooms for 1000 employees (in response, the administrators put up signs requesting employees to “hurry up”), forcing employees to work during Lunar New Year, forcing employees to work overtime to make up for hours lost if sick, and fluctuating salaries and bonuses seemingly on a whim’s notice.
The three deaths, as well as Wang’s exposal, solidified Pinduoduo as the face of the infamous “996” system, which stands for workdays from 9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week, with companies often requiring employees to work unpaid overtime past the 996 system itself. Popularized by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, 996 – or even worse – is virtually universal among Chinese startups and behemoths alike in the fast-moving Chinese technology sector, where investor expectations are high, potential profits are higher, and where competitors will do anything to undercut their competition. Indeed, Pinduoduo reached its ascendency by undercutting countless other 团购 or group-buying companies, achieved through intentionally selling at a loss and bleeding investor dollars until its competition could not afford to keep up. Furthermore, Pinduoduo prided itself on having more features and integration than any of the competition, from native compatibility with uber-popular WeChat and QQ to fully-streamlined supply chains with multiple fallback suppliers to custom-designed AI meant to help shoppers.
In hindsight, the notion that a startup could fully build such a streamlined and efficient platform, perhaps more so than even Amazon, while simultaneously expanding to all of China, Singapore, and Southeast Asia in the span of two years without brutal working conditions was foolish. But what choice did Pinduoduo have? It was competing with dozens of other startups, all aiming for the same piece of the pie, and all with similarly horrid working conditions. Had Pinduoduo implemented humane working conditions, it would simply dissolve in the sea of failed startups, in which case another company with terrible labor practices would have dominated the market segment. After all, at the end of the day employees are simply just a resource, and like any other resource, the goal is to get maximum value at a minimum cost. Pinduoduo, like all the other startups it was competing against, was just another cog in the machine of China’s emerging information economy, a gladiator forced to fight while the spectators of venture capitalists cheered on.
A Blessing for the Herd, developed by ex-developers from Tencent and Netease (two companies notorious for their 996 practices), was created as a response to the Pinduoduo situation and depicts the daily working lives of dozens of employees at a small ecommerce startup. This is not a new concept, and multiple games have already tackled the 996 system in-depth before, such as the aptly named game “996me”. Yet, where A Blessing for the Herd diverges from the herd – and where it shines brightest – is in its brilliantly-written characters, as well as its focus on the societal structure and economic incentives that makes 996 not only possible, but often necessary to a startup’s survival.
Instead of playing as an employee, you play as the CEO of the company, tasked with managing dozens of employees, each with their own struggles and aspirations, as you try to claw your company’s way towards profitability, fight back against competitors trying to do the same thing, and fulfill the impossible expectations of the investors who loaned you money. Playing as the CEO naturally gives the game more depth in both gameplay and narrative, as it enables choices you make to have ramifications not only on you, but on everyone that surrounds you, as well as changing the goal of the game from simply meeting a deadline to reaching “success” for the company, a far more abstract and seemingly-impossible affair.
Your main goal as CEO is to ensure maximum worker productivity while growing the company and staying within the monthly allotted funding given by your investors. Worker productivity can be increased through two main methods: upgrades to your workplace, such as break rooms or yoga studios, or overtime. The former option improves the mental and physical stability of your workers while simultaneously improving productivity, but depletes a significant amount of your already-limited funding, when you still need to spend money on marketing and salaries and rent. The latter option is free and gives a bigger productivity boost than more break rooms, but depletes mental and physical health, which gradually depletes their maximum productivity in the long run, while also increasing the chance of employee sudden death, leaving the company, or suicide. Yet, in the face of almost-impossible investor expectations, you quickly learn that overtime is basically essential to avoid your company immediately drowning in a sea of red numbers. Therefore, to make sure that your company doesn’t fail without killing all your employees, a careful balance must be struck.
The narrative centers on six key employees: Lin Tong and Gao Qi, the two leaders of the R&D division, Luo Xin and Zhao Nan, the two leaders of the Product Development division, and Fan Ruichao, the marketing head. Each employee, including you (a dog), are represented by and depicted as an animal, with the only characters in the game depicted as humans being the investors, which illustrates their power over you and your startup’s replaceability in the Chinese economy. For instance, Fan is extremely aggressive in his marketing efforts, often recruiting new users using unscrupulous and sometimes-illegal practices to boost user figures, an important metric for investors. As such, he is depicted as a boar, due to the boar’s status in Chinese culture as being aggressive and confident. Each of the six key employees represents one of the main demographics of people in the tech industry, from the meek yet talented worker who keeps their head down to the ambitious employee willing to do anything to get a promotion.
Ever since I’ve gotten proficient at Chinese after four years of self-study, this game has been one of the top things on my backlog. From its release in 2019, it has been regarded in China as a cult classic, and by many Chinese netizens as one of China’s finest indies, something made more impressive by China emerging as one of the most vibrant and bold indie scenes in the world. On TapTap, a popular Chinese mobile app store for gaming, A Blessing for the Herd was ranked as the #1 highest rated game for two years in a row. From reading the synopsis, it was immediately evident that this game had unquestionable potential, and I was extremely curious where it took its unique ideas. While I have never experienced the 996 system myself or seen it in person, in Japan the idea of dedicating long hours towards a company is seen as normal, and my dad clocked in early every morning and clocked out when the sky was black, doing god-knows-what at the small chemical company in Shizuoka-shi where he received his monthly paycheck. When I was growing up, the concept of studying hard to ace the common test to get into a good university, in order to join a company upon graduating – putting in overtime regularly – and climbing up the corporate ladder was seen as normal, and was instilled in me from an early age. Of course, this game covered the startup boom in China especially among technology companies, which I was interested in as it was so radically different compared to the Japanese system I was used to, yet at the same time, so many elements were the same, from the corporate hierarchies to the emphasis on company loyalty to the characters involved. It was “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics”, perhaps. As such, I walked in expecting a decent story critiquing the 996 system, but nothing really more than that.
What I didn’t expect was a story that exposed the absurdity and inequality of China’s childhood rat races and the Gaokao exam, or a story that lamented Chinese people forgetting their own ancient wisdom and culture to worship at the altar of consumerism and their blind admiration of the West. or a swiftian story that picked apart the bureaucracy of different Chinese agencies and their artificial inefficiency, or a story that explored China’s massive (and growing) rural-urban divide and how long-entrenched societal systems like the Hukou household registration system exacerbates that divide. In other games focusing on Chinese corporate culture, these societal issues would be brushed aside or ignored entirely, perhaps included as a two-sentence quip in a twenty-hour game. Not here, though. A Blessing for the Herd is a game that isn’t content to point its sharp pen at the 996 work system, or even the corporate structures that enable it. No, it’s a game that is smart enough to know that corporate culture ultimately is largely derived from societal norms and values, and that one cannot fully address the injustices in companies without taking a glance at the society that enabled it. While relatively brief in size, these ventures into the tears in Chinese society in the midst of rapid modernization are packed with detail and emotion, complementing the main story perfectly while never detracting from the tightly-paced writing. Indeed, many of the game’s most brilliant moments come from these asides, these dazzling introspections into Chinese society as a whole.
That’s high praise, especially when the main story itself is so good. As stated earlier, the main story essentially functions as six intertwined character studies, with the company and its success being the common thread that links each character story together. Given the lifelessness of the corporation and the lack of a preset main plot, one would assume that the progression of said character stories would largely be dependent on player agency. Yet, while this game gives the illusion of player agency through the way gameplay is perfectly intertwined with story, because the player fundamentally has very little agency on changing the end result of the gameplay, the progression and ending of the story is hence inevitable. After all, regardless of what you do or how you optimize, you will always lose at least 10 million RMB a month (which, according to the developers, is by design), with hanging on and optimizing your gameplay only a temporary gauze in the hemorrhage of investor funds, often by no fault of your own. This is what leads to the tragic but beautifully inevitable ending of the game (no, it’s not the company going bankrupt), which not only ties up the fate of the company but the fate of all of the characters in a shocking yet sensible manner.
Indeed, let’s talk about said characters, shall we? While all of the characters in this game get luscious development and are very well-written, I would like to shine a spotlight on a few of my favorite characters that had a particular impact on me.
Luo Xin has been described by the developers as the “real daughter” of the game in subsequent interviews, and it’s easy to see why: she gets more screen time than any other character, and she has the most tragic story in the entire game. The developers, in their reflection, note that when the Chinese internet bubble started, product manager was among the most desired jobs in all of China, as people dreamed of creating unique projects that could change the world. Yet, this subsequently led to a surplus of product managers in the market, and when combined with the bursting of several bubbles in the Chinese technology sector, led to the vast majority of product managers quitting the technology sector or migrating to more in-demand jobs. As a result, the remaining product managers are often driven by passion more than anything, due to the low pay, long hours, and constant struggles of the profession – leading to the occupation having some of the highest depression rates of any job in China. Product managers need to have constant communication, arguments, and quarrels with all sectors of the company, often acting as a mediator in negotiating between different divisions from designers to programmers to the accounting department. Yet, even after all that, the vast majority of projects proposed are ultimately rejected, leading to what the developers themselves term as the feeling that “all efforts are illusory”. Luo Xin perfectly reflects this ideal of a person whose passion drives them to the point of insanity, and whose quest to create the “timeless product” eventually leads to her depression and suicide. Her descent into madness, partially spurred by your actions as the CEO, is one of the most important events that happens in the game, and illustrates the human impact of 996, as well as the effects when creative passion is exploited for monetary gain. And in a medium that has often struggled to portray mental health, with many games ranging from DDLC to Milk Outside a Bag of Milk often ending up romanticizing and smoothing-out mental illness into some voyeuristic aesthetic to be slapped on top like an ableist Band-Aid in lieu of actual substance or depth, Luo Xin’s progression is raw and ugly – much like actual mental health struggles. It’s heartbreaking, really, to see her creative dreams descend into nightmares. From the start, it is evident that Luo Xin represents the story of someone working at Muccy Games, given both the background of the developers and that such a highly personal and specific story cannot be formed from consciousness but instead experience. To whoever the owner and creator of this story is, I hope you find inner peace.
Gao Qi, represents to me, both the Chinese idealization of women in the workplace and the end result of it. Her character is constantly depicted as innocent, docile, and pure, sometimes with a slight sexualization bent, which fits her persona as a sheep. Yet, by the end of the story, she is a completely different person than when she began, due to the countless examples of harassment (and worse) that she experiences. She becomes more mature, wary, and guarded; she fights back and demonstrates her independence in the face of a culture and society not designed for her. Perhaps the closest analogue I can make is Tess from Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy: two characters once pure but drastically changed in the face of cultural norms and societal misogyny – and yes, the two are similar in more ways than one (think strawberries). Gao Qi’s story most represents the developers’ anger at not just Chinese corporate culture, but long-entrenched social norms as well, and the perspective that one cannot truly understand the former without understanding the latter. While Gao Qi’s story isn’t the first time I’ve seen a critique about the lack of agency, domesticity, and objectification of women in traditional (and modern) Chinese culture, or even the first time I’ve seen a story where a woman is forced to get an abortion to secure a promotion at her workplace, for her story to be told in a way that takes such full usage of the video game medium’s strength and to be told this eloquently is a delight.
As someone who migrated to America by myself a year ago, at the age of 15 and a half, I deeply connected to Lin Tong’s story for personal reasons. The idea of being an immigrant in a new land, the unfamiliarity and sense of starting over that it entails…these are all universal experiences, unconstrained by demarcation lines or the passing of time. The way that her story is outlined and the way it progresses has actually reminded me a lot of my own story, which has led to an introspection and reflection on my own life – after all, nobody in this game has a happy ending. Perhaps it is a normal occurrence, or a fate to be avoided? In all likelihood, it is both. Either way, the fact that my current life nearly perfectly matches up with the early sections of Lin Tong’s story terrifies me, and I should probably spend more time connecting with my family now that I think about it. Ah well, I’ll do it tomorrow…
Before concluding this review, I’d like to touch on the game’s status as a mobile, free-to-play app. This, for good reason, probably raises concern to a lot of you – after all, Chinese free-to-play mobile apps have a reputation of being either gacha games or ad-infested shovelware. Luckily, I’m happy to report that this game is neither of those. There are no ads during the game, besides a few optional ads you can watch to gain some in-game money (which, again, is useless because you will always end up returning a negative profit at the end of the month). There are no gacha elements either. The developers themselves have stated that they actually lost money developing this game compared to operating expenses (office rent, etc.), and that the decision to put this game on mobile for free was mainly to get a wide playerbase and attract brand loyalty for their future projects, forsaking any money to be made in exchange for publicity and recognition. This, hilariously, reflects the startups depicted in the game itself, who care only about growth and expansion and a bigger user base over profitability. Either way, it seems to have worked, given that I’ll just about buy anything Muccy Games releases next, regardless of price or platform.
Had A Blessing for the Herd been simply a game about the experiences of workers in the 996 system, the sheer quality of its writing and characters alone would have made it a landmark in Chinese indie gaming – the fact that it accomplishes all that while also hiding a viciously-laced satire about Chinese corporate culture and the materialistic bent of modern Chinese society makes it nothing short of unbelievable, all while weaving its game mechanics into the tapestry of the story in a way so seamless that ludology and narratology seems to melt and blend into one. This is a work that is very distinctly and proudly modern Chinese, which is something so rare and refreshing in an environment where so many Chinese indies are trying to be something they aren’t, focusing on settings like Ancient China or anime instead of drawing inspiration from the China that surrounds them every day. In contrast, A Blessing for the Herd embraces its Chinese heritage, drawing from the experiences of the developers’ own lives and the current state of China, resulting in a game unapologetic in its dedication to its own creative vision and overflowing with passion and heart. Rather than being a “996 game” or a “corporate game” or a “management game”, A Blessing for the Herd, more than any other game I’ve played, represents the quintessential Chinese picturesque of the modern era. For a group of game developers who used to work on cash-grab gacha games to create such an indispensable work as their first independent project is extraordinary, and I cannot temper myself for the next Muccy Games release.
I end this review with an excerpt from the developer’s reflection on the game itself.
“Sometimes I am also quite puzzled: Your XX Group and XX Company have almost a monopoly position in the industry, why do you need employees to work overtime continuously? Are you that busy? How much money can you make for the company? If you still need employees to work overtime like this, aren't you monopolizing it for nothing?”
This, for all the game’s success delving into the logistical and practical and societal reasons companies use 996, is the one question it is too afraid to ask: the moral reasons for China’s corporate culture. After all, there are no words to be said, and no answers to be found. Perhaps the most harrowing takeaway from A Blessing for the Herd is that there is no alternate ending. There is no solution. Whereas games like Bioshock and The Stanley Parable explore the illusion of choice through flipping traditional player-game interaction feedback mechanisms, here, the illusion of choice is embedded in the entire structure itself. The game itself isn't preoccupied with pithy questions about free will -- rather, the structure of 996 is a natural extension, a conditia sine qua non of the structure of modern Chinese society. And in modern Chinese fashion, then, such a question is a question that should be avoided.
And so, the cycle continues. Keep your head up, do your code review, and get another Red Bull from the fridge; it’s going to be a long night.
2013
Kentucky Route Zero is one of those games that most know about, many put in their backlogs...yet few attempt to play and even fewer complete.
There's a very good reason for this: KRZ gets closer to a book than any game I have ever played, including visual novels. In fact, strip away the tiny amount of interactivity and you're left with one of the best 21st century magical realist novels written this side of Latin America. And while that might sound like a good thing -- after all, books are far more respected in society than video games -- its stature as more befitting a novel than a walking simulator actually works against it in multiple ways.
First (and most obviously) of all, it's long. Extraordinarily, sometimes excessively long. And this isn't just talking about the length of the game's story, but the way the story is presented. One of the benefits video games and visual novels have over traiditional mediums of fiction is their ability to break apart larger sections of plot into bite-size pieces that are far easier to digest. KRZ, on the other hand, does not do that. Aside from Disco Elysium and indie arthouse games (which KRZ should honestly be categorized as) like [domestic], I don't think I have ever seen a game with paragraphs as wordly and fleshed out as KRZ. And not only that: they're dense. There are no wasted words in KRZ, no filler sentences, no overlong paragraphs. Every word is both an action and an imperative. Every word carries its own weight, an emotional and literary baggage that weighs down on your consciousness at all times. This makes for good fiction, as KRZ often is, but it also makes KRZ extremely difficult to read in long sessions. Personally, I could only read KRZ for an hour or two at a time before having to take a break for a couple of days, just to digest and comprehend the words I had prior seen, as well as to give my poor brain a break.
Furthermore, like any good magical realist novel, there are many characters. So many characters, in fact to the point where if this was any other game it would be almost impossible to keep track of them all. Luckily, like any good magical realist novel, each character is given the proper time and exposition to develop them into flesh-and-bone humans instead of words on a page, and the amount of love and attention that went into writing and developing each character simply cannot be overstated. Even with how developed each character is, it's still a struggle, though, that remains present throughout the game. This, again, is something common in novels, especially modernist novels, yet exceedingly rare in games. In most games, the character that gets the most development...is you. You play as the main character, and everyone else revolves around you. As such, even if there are hundreds or even thousands of characters, because those characters aren't you or the people that are close to you, they don't matter past a passing reference or a short cutscene or a fetch quest. In Kentucky Route Zero, you are not the main character, or any sort of important character at all. You are a vessel for their stories; your legacy is to carry their history. As such, to understand even the main story, you have to understand far, far more people -- and by extension, the qualities and experiences of said people -- than you normally would with any other game.
Yet, even given the strength of the overall game's story, I cannot say the same for the main plot. This is odd, given that the side stories are brilliant and beautiful and executed perfectly. Indeed, the game is at its strongest when it is just unfolding the narratives of the people you're around, and revealing their pasts. Meanwhile, Conway's story...is not nearly as good, and in fact is the weakest story in the entire game. Every time I was reading through Conway's own mission of the antiques company, I was biding my time until the side stories showed up back again, because that is where the real meat of the game lies.
Before closing this review, I'd like to touch upon the episodic format and gameplay. Gameplay is simple point-and-click. As I stated earlier, it's crude. Yet, it has just the right amount of interaction and gets the job done. The episodic format is handled perfectly, and the style is consistently even.
In conclusion, Kentucky Route Zero is an absurdly-focused, fiercely creative tour de force that is executed with utmost grace and stylistic flair. Its unapologetic complexity and neverending length naturally makes it a divisive game, and many might (with good intention) view the game as being flowerly, dull, and pretentious. This is somewhat fair, especially since much of the genius behind the game's wriitng can only be revealed after careful observation, or in my case, a second playthrough (I found it dull and monotonous the first time through). Yet, pushing through Kentucky Route Zero and truly getting to know the dozens of dazzlingly-written characters reveals one of the most hilarious, heartbreaking, poignant, satirical, and ultimately unforgettable experiences you will ever encounter in this medium. As I stated in the beginning of the review, Kentucky Route Zero isn't just one of the best stories in gaming, but the best 21st century work of fiction in the magical realism genre published outside of Latin America. The developers struck a Faustian bargain to bring us this game, and we, as gamers, all collectively benefit.
But, in finality, a word of advice: to understand the magic behind this game, you need to committ. You need to understand, to listen, to put in the time and the effort. In Kentucky Route Zero, you're not talking to walking encylopedias or fetch quest robots. You're talking to humans. Remember that.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5 (Phenomenal)
There's a very good reason for this: KRZ gets closer to a book than any game I have ever played, including visual novels. In fact, strip away the tiny amount of interactivity and you're left with one of the best 21st century magical realist novels written this side of Latin America. And while that might sound like a good thing -- after all, books are far more respected in society than video games -- its stature as more befitting a novel than a walking simulator actually works against it in multiple ways.
First (and most obviously) of all, it's long. Extraordinarily, sometimes excessively long. And this isn't just talking about the length of the game's story, but the way the story is presented. One of the benefits video games and visual novels have over traiditional mediums of fiction is their ability to break apart larger sections of plot into bite-size pieces that are far easier to digest. KRZ, on the other hand, does not do that. Aside from Disco Elysium and indie arthouse games (which KRZ should honestly be categorized as) like [domestic], I don't think I have ever seen a game with paragraphs as wordly and fleshed out as KRZ. And not only that: they're dense. There are no wasted words in KRZ, no filler sentences, no overlong paragraphs. Every word is both an action and an imperative. Every word carries its own weight, an emotional and literary baggage that weighs down on your consciousness at all times. This makes for good fiction, as KRZ often is, but it also makes KRZ extremely difficult to read in long sessions. Personally, I could only read KRZ for an hour or two at a time before having to take a break for a couple of days, just to digest and comprehend the words I had prior seen, as well as to give my poor brain a break.
Furthermore, like any good magical realist novel, there are many characters. So many characters, in fact to the point where if this was any other game it would be almost impossible to keep track of them all. Luckily, like any good magical realist novel, each character is given the proper time and exposition to develop them into flesh-and-bone humans instead of words on a page, and the amount of love and attention that went into writing and developing each character simply cannot be overstated. Even with how developed each character is, it's still a struggle, though, that remains present throughout the game. This, again, is something common in novels, especially modernist novels, yet exceedingly rare in games. In most games, the character that gets the most development...is you. You play as the main character, and everyone else revolves around you. As such, even if there are hundreds or even thousands of characters, because those characters aren't you or the people that are close to you, they don't matter past a passing reference or a short cutscene or a fetch quest. In Kentucky Route Zero, you are not the main character, or any sort of important character at all. You are a vessel for their stories; your legacy is to carry their history. As such, to understand even the main story, you have to understand far, far more people -- and by extension, the qualities and experiences of said people -- than you normally would with any other game.
Yet, even given the strength of the overall game's story, I cannot say the same for the main plot. This is odd, given that the side stories are brilliant and beautiful and executed perfectly. Indeed, the game is at its strongest when it is just unfolding the narratives of the people you're around, and revealing their pasts. Meanwhile, Conway's story...is not nearly as good, and in fact is the weakest story in the entire game. Every time I was reading through Conway's own mission of the antiques company, I was biding my time until the side stories showed up back again, because that is where the real meat of the game lies.
Before closing this review, I'd like to touch upon the episodic format and gameplay. Gameplay is simple point-and-click. As I stated earlier, it's crude. Yet, it has just the right amount of interaction and gets the job done. The episodic format is handled perfectly, and the style is consistently even.
In conclusion, Kentucky Route Zero is an absurdly-focused, fiercely creative tour de force that is executed with utmost grace and stylistic flair. Its unapologetic complexity and neverending length naturally makes it a divisive game, and many might (with good intention) view the game as being flowerly, dull, and pretentious. This is somewhat fair, especially since much of the genius behind the game's wriitng can only be revealed after careful observation, or in my case, a second playthrough (I found it dull and monotonous the first time through). Yet, pushing through Kentucky Route Zero and truly getting to know the dozens of dazzlingly-written characters reveals one of the most hilarious, heartbreaking, poignant, satirical, and ultimately unforgettable experiences you will ever encounter in this medium. As I stated in the beginning of the review, Kentucky Route Zero isn't just one of the best stories in gaming, but the best 21st century work of fiction in the magical realism genre published outside of Latin America. The developers struck a Faustian bargain to bring us this game, and we, as gamers, all collectively benefit.
But, in finality, a word of advice: to understand the magic behind this game, you need to committ. You need to understand, to listen, to put in the time and the effort. In Kentucky Route Zero, you're not talking to walking encylopedias or fetch quest robots. You're talking to humans. Remember that.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5 (Phenomenal)
2013
The racism allegory in the first half of the game is handled super awkwardly, to the point of being actually racist, and the second part of the game with its quantum mechanics is confusing not because it's intelligent but because it's obtuse. Furthermore, that whole ordeal regarding quantum mechanics and time travel directly conflict with the game's earlier message and intention, making the final product extremely uneven and thematically inconsistent. The twist is also poorly explained and executed.
This is a game that attempted to be shocking and unconventional, yet as shown by the widespread adoration given to it by the mainstream gaming press (undeservingly), it clearly failed. Compare the reception this game had to actually shocking games like Pathologic, and it's clear that in spite of its lofty ambitions to become a part of true art, it's just another piece of soulless, corporate, bland mass-market kitsch. With bad writing and storytelling to boot.
In fact, the story is so horrendous that the (admittedly very fun) gameplay would itself make a better game if it didn't come packaged with any story at all. I could see this game be a decent time-waster if it was just the shooting gameplay with none of the awful story bundled in, but given the prerogative towards enjoying the gameplay is waddling through hours of murky word vomit, the only sensible use for this game is to serve as fuel for the nearest dumpster bin.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
This is a game that attempted to be shocking and unconventional, yet as shown by the widespread adoration given to it by the mainstream gaming press (undeservingly), it clearly failed. Compare the reception this game had to actually shocking games like Pathologic, and it's clear that in spite of its lofty ambitions to become a part of true art, it's just another piece of soulless, corporate, bland mass-market kitsch. With bad writing and storytelling to boot.
In fact, the story is so horrendous that the (admittedly very fun) gameplay would itself make a better game if it didn't come packaged with any story at all. I could see this game be a decent time-waster if it was just the shooting gameplay with none of the awful story bundled in, but given the prerogative towards enjoying the gameplay is waddling through hours of murky word vomit, the only sensible use for this game is to serve as fuel for the nearest dumpster bin.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
2000
This review contains spoilers
Like all other Japanese games I play, this was played on the Japanese version
A major appeal of this game is the ability to relieve your childhood in a sense. Unfortunately, I can't remember much of my childhood, and what I can remember is, without being personal, shit. And without the relatability to the main character, the entire game sort of...falls apart. Yeah, there's scenes that touch on deeper issues, such as the war and moving out and the death of a familial figure. But those are only moments, too brief and too hurried, in the azure landscape of a perfect, reflected sky. And in this landscape of perfectly pristine idealism, pastel colors, and snow-white painted clouds, those brief respites of realism and explorations of longing, loss, and struggle feel...lilliputian. While their rarity undoubtedly makes those special moments stand out, I shouldn't have to trudge through the meaningless wonder of a childhood dream to get there. The entire game should stand out to me, and this simply doesn't.
Perhaps it's just my bias as someone who experienced a childhood full of abuse, depression, trauma that I prefer games about childhood abuse, depression, trauma (case in point: the entire Hello Charlotte series, which is arguably miles worse mechanic-wise than this) over games about childhood wonder, innocence, and joy like this game. When the vacation ended, I felt nothing. After all, what was I supposed to feel? This wasn't my childhood; this wasn't even close to my childhood. This was Boku's childhood, Boku's summer, Boku's story, and Boku's joy. I was merely a visitor to the spectacle, able to see but not truly participate, and certainly never truly connect to those pastel colors and sunny skies. When I view characters, I want to view them extensions of my lived-in self, or unique, breathing people. I couldn't connect with the former, and Boku is written nowhere near well enough for the latter.
The game tries to compare the levity of the summer to the bitterness that followed in the pursuit of a notion of nostalgia. And it does so in an extremely self-decadent, saccharine way that makes it easy to gulp down, bite after star-laced bite, assuming you're into the childhood charm this game provides. It's one of those titles where the appeal is immediately evident, which is why I'm so hesitant to give this a low score and criticize it so harshly.
Unfortunately for the game, I'm fructose intolerant. I'm no longer a child, it seems.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
*this review is a personal opinion of mine and not objective in the slightest
A major appeal of this game is the ability to relieve your childhood in a sense. Unfortunately, I can't remember much of my childhood, and what I can remember is, without being personal, shit. And without the relatability to the main character, the entire game sort of...falls apart. Yeah, there's scenes that touch on deeper issues, such as the war and moving out and the death of a familial figure. But those are only moments, too brief and too hurried, in the azure landscape of a perfect, reflected sky. And in this landscape of perfectly pristine idealism, pastel colors, and snow-white painted clouds, those brief respites of realism and explorations of longing, loss, and struggle feel...lilliputian. While their rarity undoubtedly makes those special moments stand out, I shouldn't have to trudge through the meaningless wonder of a childhood dream to get there. The entire game should stand out to me, and this simply doesn't.
Perhaps it's just my bias as someone who experienced a childhood full of abuse, depression, trauma that I prefer games about childhood abuse, depression, trauma (case in point: the entire Hello Charlotte series, which is arguably miles worse mechanic-wise than this) over games about childhood wonder, innocence, and joy like this game. When the vacation ended, I felt nothing. After all, what was I supposed to feel? This wasn't my childhood; this wasn't even close to my childhood. This was Boku's childhood, Boku's summer, Boku's story, and Boku's joy. I was merely a visitor to the spectacle, able to see but not truly participate, and certainly never truly connect to those pastel colors and sunny skies. When I view characters, I want to view them extensions of my lived-in self, or unique, breathing people. I couldn't connect with the former, and Boku is written nowhere near well enough for the latter.
The game tries to compare the levity of the summer to the bitterness that followed in the pursuit of a notion of nostalgia. And it does so in an extremely self-decadent, saccharine way that makes it easy to gulp down, bite after star-laced bite, assuming you're into the childhood charm this game provides. It's one of those titles where the appeal is immediately evident, which is why I'm so hesitant to give this a low score and criticize it so harshly.
Unfortunately for the game, I'm fructose intolerant. I'm no longer a child, it seems.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
*this review is a personal opinion of mine and not objective in the slightest
2023
I am a firm believer that games, at heart, are an art form. They exist like all other art mediums not for any extrinsic value such as money or fame, but for the inherent beauty that they posess. Art, for the sake of art.
Yet, this "game", or rather I should call it, kitsch, goes against all of those values. Yes, the waifus are hot, which is why this gets more than a half star rating. But in terms of its design, it's clear that every aspect around this piece of kitsch revolves around making mihoyo money. And to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that. What I take offense to is the idea that this is somehow a game. Call it a digital experience, a interactive simulator, whatever, but don't call it a game. It lacks any sort of artistic merit or creative vision needed for pixels on the screen to be classified as a game by me.
The story, while better than genshit, is still hilariously bland and generic. Characters pop out of nowhere and are introduced with gaping holes in the plot and lopsided development, all for the sole reason so that they can later be sold as 5 stars a few months down the line. The environment and world, while beautiful, is hollow and static: there's no life to be found in the scenery here, only eye-candy setpieces and window-dressing that fades in the midst of time. For all the expansive set of characters and lore, there is nothing to keep me caring or invested in any of it due to the stylistically uneven and overly flowery writing and bad story. The gameplay, while passable (another reason why it doesn't get a 0.5/5 star rating), has almost zero connection to the story and feels forced in, like at a boardroom meeting a bunch of mihoyo executives looked at a chart and determined that the target audience wanted turn-based combat rather than considering whether said turn-based combat would work in the context of every other part of the game.
And really, that's my main concern with this game. Up until I abandoned it out of pure disgust, the entire game felt...constructed. Every single stylistic and gameplay choice made in this game felt formulaic and -- again -- made with the goal of monetization. Every single dialogue line felt forced and made with some ulterior goal or motivation rather than being spoken for the sake of speech itself.
If you want to play a "game", don't play this, because it simply is not one. It's a highly elaborate interactive gacha simulation with all the beauty, creativity, vision, and perspective that makes games one of my favorite artistic mediums ripped out and replaced with shady monetization and shameless sexualization.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
Yet, this "game", or rather I should call it, kitsch, goes against all of those values. Yes, the waifus are hot, which is why this gets more than a half star rating. But in terms of its design, it's clear that every aspect around this piece of kitsch revolves around making mihoyo money. And to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that. What I take offense to is the idea that this is somehow a game. Call it a digital experience, a interactive simulator, whatever, but don't call it a game. It lacks any sort of artistic merit or creative vision needed for pixels on the screen to be classified as a game by me.
The story, while better than genshit, is still hilariously bland and generic. Characters pop out of nowhere and are introduced with gaping holes in the plot and lopsided development, all for the sole reason so that they can later be sold as 5 stars a few months down the line. The environment and world, while beautiful, is hollow and static: there's no life to be found in the scenery here, only eye-candy setpieces and window-dressing that fades in the midst of time. For all the expansive set of characters and lore, there is nothing to keep me caring or invested in any of it due to the stylistically uneven and overly flowery writing and bad story. The gameplay, while passable (another reason why it doesn't get a 0.5/5 star rating), has almost zero connection to the story and feels forced in, like at a boardroom meeting a bunch of mihoyo executives looked at a chart and determined that the target audience wanted turn-based combat rather than considering whether said turn-based combat would work in the context of every other part of the game.
And really, that's my main concern with this game. Up until I abandoned it out of pure disgust, the entire game felt...constructed. Every single stylistic and gameplay choice made in this game felt formulaic and -- again -- made with the goal of monetization. Every single dialogue line felt forced and made with some ulterior goal or motivation rather than being spoken for the sake of speech itself.
If you want to play a "game", don't play this, because it simply is not one. It's a highly elaborate interactive gacha simulation with all the beauty, creativity, vision, and perspective that makes games one of my favorite artistic mediums ripped out and replaced with shady monetization and shameless sexualization.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
This review contains spoilers
SPOILER FREE REVIEW: not gonna go much into detail regarding actual events, but there's plenty of info online and even in this review section lol
Rex might just be the worst-developed character in any video game I've ever played. I've played games with characters that had more nonsensical developments, but they at least had development of some kind. Rex's development, on the other hand, is paper thin and lilliputian in nature.
I am not even going to go into the moral quagmire of...the entire fucking game. Plenty of people have dissected and analyzed the absolute and utter disgustingness that is the implementation of Blades into this story, the very-obvious veneer of sexism that it entails, and the frankly-creepy implications it has on the world and the characters. Plenty of people have already criticized the inclusion of Poppi, which is meant to be a joke, as being sexist and insensitive and in very poor taste. Those people have played the game in greater depth than me, and are generally better than me at writing reviews. Many of those people are here on this very website, in this very review section, and I highly recommend you read their analysis.
What I will say is that, in a character-driven narrative, if your characters are so under-developed and flat that they make the term "one-dimensional" sound like excessive praise, you have utterly failed as a narrative. When your gameplay is so barren-boned and tedious that you'll develop carpal tunnel before having a single enjoyable combat encounter, you have failed as gameplay. When your world is so empty and littered with trash mobs designed to waste your time with no incentive for exploration or discovery to the point where it would make Genshin Impact and Assassin's Creed look like good game design, you have utterly failed at environmental storytelling and game design. When the overarching story of your narrative also has excessive plot holes that continuously get worse, especially after you try to tie the game to Xenoblade 1...then you become a David Cage game.
Indeed, the more I think about it, the more it dawns on me: this is exactly like a David Cage JRPG: bad combat, terribly bad story, and horrendously bad characters, all with questionable morals and extremely questionable objectification and treatment of women. Except it's worse because David Cage games go on sale often, can be modded to be funny, and don't include gacha mechanics out of the box. I've seen countless praise of Xenoblade 3, but I've been betrayed by this game so much that I'm not sure my soul and mind can handle another iteration of this. On the bright side, Xenoblade 3 will undoubtedly impress me in a twisted sense, because after the mess that this game is, my expectations for this series as a whole has dropped below the Mariana Trench.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
Rex might just be the worst-developed character in any video game I've ever played. I've played games with characters that had more nonsensical developments, but they at least had development of some kind. Rex's development, on the other hand, is paper thin and lilliputian in nature.
I am not even going to go into the moral quagmire of...the entire fucking game. Plenty of people have dissected and analyzed the absolute and utter disgustingness that is the implementation of Blades into this story, the very-obvious veneer of sexism that it entails, and the frankly-creepy implications it has on the world and the characters. Plenty of people have already criticized the inclusion of Poppi, which is meant to be a joke, as being sexist and insensitive and in very poor taste. Those people have played the game in greater depth than me, and are generally better than me at writing reviews. Many of those people are here on this very website, in this very review section, and I highly recommend you read their analysis.
What I will say is that, in a character-driven narrative, if your characters are so under-developed and flat that they make the term "one-dimensional" sound like excessive praise, you have utterly failed as a narrative. When your gameplay is so barren-boned and tedious that you'll develop carpal tunnel before having a single enjoyable combat encounter, you have failed as gameplay. When your world is so empty and littered with trash mobs designed to waste your time with no incentive for exploration or discovery to the point where it would make Genshin Impact and Assassin's Creed look like good game design, you have utterly failed at environmental storytelling and game design. When the overarching story of your narrative also has excessive plot holes that continuously get worse, especially after you try to tie the game to Xenoblade 1...then you become a David Cage game.
Indeed, the more I think about it, the more it dawns on me: this is exactly like a David Cage JRPG: bad combat, terribly bad story, and horrendously bad characters, all with questionable morals and extremely questionable objectification and treatment of women. Except it's worse because David Cage games go on sale often, can be modded to be funny, and don't include gacha mechanics out of the box. I've seen countless praise of Xenoblade 3, but I've been betrayed by this game so much that I'm not sure my soul and mind can handle another iteration of this. On the bright side, Xenoblade 3 will undoubtedly impress me in a twisted sense, because after the mess that this game is, my expectations for this series as a whole has dropped below the Mariana Trench.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
2011
To the moon is what happens when someone makes a story entirely out of melodrama. Literally. Every single "sad" moment is rinsed for the maximum amount of screentime, every single word and sentence is not written but calculated, and every single character seems to be tailored towards their most tragic flaws to exploit the audience's emotion. The game beat me over the head with so much melodrama and "sad" moments that the only way it could try to force me to cry more is if it tried to beat me in real life.
Yet, for all the melodrama, I didn't cry once. At the end of the day, after all, what reason did I have to cry for the characters when I could barely remember their names? Every character is stuffed to the brim with overused tropes, shallow personalities, laughably amateur dialogue, and incredibly simplistic motivations. I had no way of emphasizing with any character in this game when none of them were written well enough for me to care about and connect to. In fact, none of them were even written well enough to resemble a living, breathing person. And with no gameplay to speak of, the only action one can take to advance the game boils down to reading countless lines of sterile, uninspired dialogue.
Yet, for all the melodrama, I didn't cry once. At the end of the day, after all, what reason did I have to cry for the characters when I could barely remember their names? Every character is stuffed to the brim with overused tropes, shallow personalities, laughably amateur dialogue, and incredibly simplistic motivations. I had no way of emphasizing with any character in this game when none of them were written well enough for me to care about and connect to. In fact, none of them were even written well enough to resemble a living, breathing person. And with no gameplay to speak of, the only action one can take to advance the game boils down to reading countless lines of sterile, uninspired dialogue.
2023
this is absolutely incredible.
EDIT: replayed, it's still a unique and temporarily momentous experience but there's definitely significant faultlines underneath the surface.
EDIT: replayed, it's still a unique and temporarily momentous experience but there's definitely significant faultlines underneath the surface.
2019
The first thing I will say in regards to Outer Wilds is that it is...different. Outer Wilds rejects all sensibilities of form and structure--and for that reason alone, your enjoyment of the game is largely dependent on whether you can attune to the game's quirky and often-arbitrary ideas. As such, it's very hard to give Outer Wilds an arbitrary rating, because the game itself fundamentally eschews conventional notions of what a "good game" should be.
To put it more simply, Outer Wilds is less of a video game, and more of an experience in video game form. Yet, paradoxically, it's perhaps the best example of an experience that can ONLY work in video game form. It's something that for many people, will simply not make sense. For the people who can adjust to its ambiguity and erratic structure, however, it's an experience unlike anything--past or present--in the medium of video games.
Therefore, despite the multitude of five-star reviews that lace this page (including mine), Outer Wilds is unfortunately a game I cannot recommend to everyone, despite my belief in it being amongst the greatest titles in this medium. It is something that takes a certain mindset and experience to appreciate, and without that mindset the game will just feel meaningless. It kind of reminds me of "Waiting for Godot"--one person might see the pinnacle of 20th century drama, while the other person might see two people sitting under a tree for two and a half hours. This is the video game equivalent of that.
To put it more simply, Outer Wilds is less of a video game, and more of an experience in video game form. Yet, paradoxically, it's perhaps the best example of an experience that can ONLY work in video game form. It's something that for many people, will simply not make sense. For the people who can adjust to its ambiguity and erratic structure, however, it's an experience unlike anything--past or present--in the medium of video games.
Therefore, despite the multitude of five-star reviews that lace this page (including mine), Outer Wilds is unfortunately a game I cannot recommend to everyone, despite my belief in it being amongst the greatest titles in this medium. It is something that takes a certain mindset and experience to appreciate, and without that mindset the game will just feel meaningless. It kind of reminds me of "Waiting for Godot"--one person might see the pinnacle of 20th century drama, while the other person might see two people sitting under a tree for two and a half hours. This is the video game equivalent of that.
2023
Putting JK Rowling and transphobia and the game's neo-nazi creative director aside, let's just talk about the quality of the game itself, eh?
Because one of the big things I see regarding discourse about this game is its development, the people behind it, etc. And while I personally don't support it due to the morality issues that the development entailed, I think it's even more important to note that even if this was developed like any other game with any other team, it's simply not a good game. By any stretch of the imagination. I feel like many gamers have just wrapped themselves up in this mass hysteria to "own the libs" without stopping to even think if the game that they're circlejerking just because the trans community protested about is even something worth circlejerking over, which in this case it isn't. A laughably bad story, bland sidequests, a dull and monotone open world, unredeemable characters, clunky combat, and convoluted systems show that this isn't the wizarding game you've always dreamed of. No, it's just another middle-of-the-pack shovelware generic open-world RPG with the Harry Potter brand slapped on top. If you hadn't told me this was developed by WB games, I would have thought this was the next fucking Ubisoft game. It's an egregious waste of time on all fronts possible, and not worth your time in the slightest. Open your eyes from the realm of AAA kitsch and play something more artistic instead.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)
Because one of the big things I see regarding discourse about this game is its development, the people behind it, etc. And while I personally don't support it due to the morality issues that the development entailed, I think it's even more important to note that even if this was developed like any other game with any other team, it's simply not a good game. By any stretch of the imagination. I feel like many gamers have just wrapped themselves up in this mass hysteria to "own the libs" without stopping to even think if the game that they're circlejerking just because the trans community protested about is even something worth circlejerking over, which in this case it isn't. A laughably bad story, bland sidequests, a dull and monotone open world, unredeemable characters, clunky combat, and convoluted systems show that this isn't the wizarding game you've always dreamed of. No, it's just another middle-of-the-pack shovelware generic open-world RPG with the Harry Potter brand slapped on top. If you hadn't told me this was developed by WB games, I would have thought this was the next fucking Ubisoft game. It's an egregious waste of time on all fronts possible, and not worth your time in the slightest. Open your eyes from the realm of AAA kitsch and play something more artistic instead.
Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)