Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? I wanna give her a big kiss 🙈

A friend showing me that you could make two men woohoo in this when I was a kid is how I learned about gay people.

One time I made myself and my brother in this game, as well as a highly accurate recreation of the tiny apartment we shared. It was super nightmarish and I regretted it immediately as I wondered which of the two mirrored lives had more substance. Other than that I just always made large italian families I pretended were in the mob.

I have to be honest, I witnessed someone I care about have one of the most heartbreaking emotional breakdowns I've ever seen as they lost to the computer in this game. Haunts me to this day.

This whole era felt like it was written in the Pimp my Ride font, and this game is a big part of that.

it's nice to have a reminder that video games are for children

Wanna unlock the level where you trample chibi with a push mower.

Not really but he's a shitty little robot.
I respect that the game convincingly simulates being a tiny, stubborn/limited body where simple tasks take foreeeever. But the rest of the design shouldn't have also followed that principle. There are so many little quality of life fixes that could've made the game the "stop and smell the roses" game it seems to want to be. Just being able to skip through dialogue you've heard a million times would cut hours out of the playtime. I know a lot of gaming is just burning hours of your life on fake achievements but there's only so much scrubbing imaginary stains with a toothbrush I can take before I remember I'm not a prisoner of war being forced to do this.
The writing is bad. The character designs (with the exception of chibi who looks incredible) are mostly ugly and off putting. The sound design is a CURSE! Those atonal footstep variations are so brutal. Boot up the game and walk across a carpet if you think I'm exaggerating. And it is literally and emotionally a chore of a game.
It gets points for being such an oddity and for nostalgia, but it's not the overlooked gem I remembered it being.

a game about how having a wife will only slow you down

This review contains spoilers

if your jaw didn't drop when everything went wireframe you're dead inside

This game is so genius and, as far as I know, is the only game Jason Rohrer's made that's not about him hating his wife and kids.

A game written by people who can only write like how they post. Eternal, almost all-powerful beings who talk like terminally online twenty-somethings. A eulogy at a funeral where a mourner praises the deceased's "vibe". An ancient, demon who tells the protagonist he doesn't want to be "toxic" etc etc.
The first problem I have w this is the lack of imagination. The game can't imagine a cosmic eternity that doesn't reflect a work-from-home style existence (a witch who writes listicles for a galactic newspaper, eating weed brownies and ordering space takeout, etc.) And for a game striving to be political (I'm not talking about it's inclusiveness, but it literally culminating w electioneering) it reveals itself as being the same old lukewarm, middle-management, bureaucratic liberal muddle. It's middle class, it's symbols over substance, it drains the magic out of magic.
This extends to the ways the game twists itself into odd shapes to make sure every character can stay friends, can say "I love you" over and over. It wants to be positive, it wants to be affirming so badly that these characters not only feel unrecognizable, they're uncanny to the point of becoming nauseating. They all speak with the frozen smiles of HR office managers.
Then there's the way the consequences of your choices in the game can't remain consistent with themselves. They overlap in conflicting ways that undermine each other. This is not just poor foresight and poor design, it's more bad writing. In a game about writing! In a game about cause and effect! I actually can't imagine anything more embarrassing.
Then there's the problem of the cards themselves. Besides the artwork being underwhelming, the correlation between card types, elements and readings is vague and so difficult to play with in any robust way.
I get it, it's a vibes game for people who will eat up this aesthetic and this kind of virtue signally no matter what. But it tells on itself more than it thinks. In how, despite it's pretend idealism, it can't imagine a better future than what's currently in it's tumblr feed. Fantasy writing becoming the domain of deviantart and fanfic enthusiasts is so brutal and should be stopped but oh well, it's already too late.

random find w my brother cause we wanted to play a mario party clone. Never expected the bug trading system to go so hard. Some other game should steal it fr

Sorry but this thing is flawed potential at best. It shouldn't show you unavailable choices, what does this serve besides creating frustration and a sense of 'not playing'? Many of the relational statuses become irrelevant based on story beats also (like having a character who is -1 indifferent to me or whatever declare their desperately in love with me). I'd rethink the unlocked door symbol next to options also, and this sense of having "unlocked" or "earned" new choices. This is too gamer-y imo. The idea of unlocking something will also feel like a positive in a game context, instead of choices being presented simply as consequences or results, like how they are in life. In the end the game is unbalanced in the way it will always funnel you towards middle-of-the-road, compromised and schizophrenic (your character is inconsistent/incoherent as are the ways characters react to him) playthroughs. Why is this idea of making compromises seen as interesting? Why not design paths that are exciting and make you feel full ownership of your choices every time?

Truly the product of an evil time and culture. One of the most Iraq War era games of all time. Where James Bond quips become rape jokes and saving the world is as easy as calling terrorists retards. The gold AR trophy referencing Saddam is an insane inclusion. And as always in video games, we must suffer a bunch of nerd's ideas of how hot, badass people would talk, as if they've ever met any. I really love that this game exists. The craziest thing about it might be that they stuck with calling their superspy, assassin protagonist Mike. So funny lol. Mike the spy.