This review contains spoilers

SEVEN ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️STARS
SEVERAL STIRS 🥣

Can mental health services be automated using artificial intelligence in an ethical way? Is technology able to improve the quality of healthcare supplied by corporations? How does the mental health of the people that create new technologies affect us as end users?

ELIZA’s a very polished visual novel. The care shown to so many small details across the scope of this small game is glorious. Being the last game made by Zachtronics, a small developer game known for titles that feature engineering-flavored game mechanics, it’s no surprise that ELIZA is a well-oiled novella. If you click to advance the dialog before the voice actor finishes speaking, it doesn’t abruptly skip over the last words, like some VNs do.

Even though the paintings of the characters aren’t animated at all, they come to life through great writing and realistic performances. While a character pauses to find the write words to say between sentences may say “umm” without that word being included in the onscreen text. There’s a conversational believability to how lines are spoken that brings the voice actors’ performances closer to feeling like a movie.

Many people have criticized ELIZA’s length. I can see how it could fly by for some. For me, the game was like a good book; I often stopped progressing the dialog to ponder the moral quandaries presented. That gave the game a contemplative richness. Who criticizes great games for being too short? Are the joys of poetry lost on them as well?

MINOR SPOILERS BELOW 🚨
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(however, if you’ve read a bit about what’s it’s like working for tech companies—which the protagonist does—or game companies, this will come as no surprise)
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I do like how the game deals with Burnout. I think it in the Kotaku review that I saw the protagonist described as “depressed,” and the reviewer felt that the this game has little new to say about depression. I see this game as not specifically intending to speak about depression, rather, it contains depictions of depressive symptoms within modern professional culture: It’s talking about burnout.

Also, it was cool that a character was into making music using modular synthesizers. I am too!

Reviewed on Jul 31, 2022


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