writing on the 2 of 4 eps that are out so far: i like this a whole lot! direction is just excellent throughout, often frightening and depressing but uniquely sly at times too. a v specific kind of ex-cult christian (or just christian, you COULD take the church in this as a christian church if you wanted) menhera in this; the way religious indoctrination psychologically constricts children, whose trauma then gets internally contextualized through the mythology. also the early 2000s visual influences--drawing from more than just games obviously but love the lines that can be drawn btwn the 3d in this and stuff like sengoku turb or okage or stretch panic--just makes me feel like this is a spiritual successor to hypnospace outlaw in a certain kind of sense that im not gonna elaborate on. cannot wait to see how the next 2 episodes are handled.

as pierremenard says, this game is much more kiyoko kawanaka's--who was behind level design and "project management" for kero blaster--than it is pixel's, and it should be treated as such (not to downplay pixel's contribution since this was made with the kero blaster engine and all, with a 7 mb filesize in 2021!!). titled after a kenji miyazawa poem which could be translated as "spring and chaos", which thematically feels pretty fitting, the game attempts this dreamy philosophical fable atmosphere that can be seen as v loosely influenced by his works, but with some heavier subject matter and a more comparatively violent mystery/thriller bent it. some modestly effective stuff on the fear of suffering and of the faces we show to those we love, though its kind of dry to get through for the majority of it.

BUT it has a kind of fascinating turn in the last third that keeps me from writing it off too hard. especially taken with some really thought provoking use of a silent protagonist, not simply to let you imprint yourself onto chihiro but to call to attention to how his true feelings are themselves masked. you can see his voice in "unremarkable" flavor text, in his thoughts before sleeping, in dialogue choices, but conversations are ambiguously one-sided to us. its one thing to watch the opposite lead deal with his own despair with life and difficulty in recognizing who he himself really is, but its another to also imbue the character we play as with a "specialness" that would seem to remove him from more dramatic and legible expressions of turmoil. he makes a good foil to the opposite lead in that way; it keeps his own issues internal, only found within associations between details, because i think that is how he would like to keep it. to me his own mask is one of assuredness that a self-insert hero would seem to carry, not having to be the other person, like any other, with problems and fears of his own he is running away from.

but he does outwardly express himself at times even within the game's limits, with uncertainty and love alike, and that it comes from his mute self makes it feel louder. everyone's existence is unique especially to themselves, and us taking on chihiro's is notable as feeling less like inhabiting a shell and more like playing within the rigid space of how a person possibly, subconsciously, wants to be portrayed--or maybe how they inherently see themself in a sense--overcoming the mask little by little as cracks show. sharing a specific state of mind. i honestly dont know if ill feel this way on closer inspection, and its not like chihiro is so intricately carved out as a character or anything, but i do think how the systems, both specific to the game and taken for granted from how games have been, shape how you perceive him is so interesting to me, as someone who thinks a lot about the way a player character can be revealed through the language of a game.

on the whole its really not amazing, holds interest just enough despite being kind of lacking in its character drama. however i think its worthwhile for how mysterious it gets largely in the way ive mentioned, even if im blowing smoke and its too illegible for its own good. its at least doing more with its metaphorical world than just the obvious "space between life and death" thing so there is at least more going on than you might expect from the start. if kawanaka does something in the adventure game style like this again, i would be excited to play it, because there is certainly things here i would love to see built upon.

the sci fi tinge and the recontextualized religious iconography and the gay undertones injected by a true fujo-scholar would imply some sinister christian dystopia metaphor, but even if all that does play into that idea of it somewhat, its ultimately way too simple for describing what its doing. while its perceptibly influenced by other horror (read: often surreal/unsettling in tone more than full on genre horror) rpgmaker games, it honestly surpasses the bulk of these games in the confidence and evocativeness of its writing; its truly open and giving to interpretation in a way these games would often like to be but don't really accomplish. i was surprised and impressed by how this 1-2 hr experience could feel immense thanks to its thematic density, and the spaces within its margins that it allows you to occupy.

my favorite aspect of this game might be how it meters out the "truth" behind its framing device. its the most difficult thing here to talk about but basically, what i like about it is how its less like its /revealed/ as much as the curtain gets just slightly lifted up at points, never fully, and from there it leaves you constantly changing the conclusions you make about it in your head. also love how--with the slightest most nonintrusive touch--its the author commenting on their work and their own characters, tying into the theme of how you process your own narrative, and the creation of your own self-identity from there. the way it pushed me "outside" of the story, looking in, is something i'm always captivated by in games.

this is only one side of twc that im grasping at too, there are many different angles it encourages you to approach it from that its actually daunting to get too into. only real problems with the game i had are a couple bizarre puzzles and the checklist towards getting the noise ending not being as intuitive as it might seem in specific places (reading the stack of papers during the time puzzle is a trigger you NEED to hit, btw), so read a walkthrough closely. i got a lot out of this though, not just as a nostalgia trip from playing rpgmaker games years ago but returning to the medium with an ESPECIALLY great one. will be looking into hello charlotte and mr rainer after my time with this, im officially lavenderpilled

there's a lot said already abt the hypnotically repulsive audiovisual presentation with the frantic camera and barebones controls, it made me feel tweaked out and paranoid in a horrifying way and it rocked, but the thing worth talking about for me is the structure of this game, how vitally spartan its character is. how utterly, necessarily devoid it is of much sympathy for its leads. i skimmed through a playthrough of K&L1 after playing this, which i have no desire to ever play, and it just felt very of its time. a pair of antiheroes make a huge mess of things and argue incessantly and ruin lives but you gotta love their camaraderie and attitude!! and then the women in their life dare to nag nag nag at them about all the fucked up shit they get put through because of them until they inevitably get shot, because they talk too much

the second game inherits their disgusting personalities and their capacity for misery--in fact increases that aspect to a fever pitch--and you might look at it as just following in the boring footsteps of its predecessor with a more interesting aesthetic going for it. but the difference is how unsettlingly off things feel from what you'd expect. the cutscenes are so curt, there is hardly any kind of relatable stakes for the characters other than some vague deal to further imperialism (they dont care abt that part obviously why would they). everything happens with hardly any dramatic rhythm, just hot headed banter and death, with things getting worse and worse. the misogyny is still here but even that has a different tone; the women in kane and lynch's lives this time become little more than convenient excuses for them to continue their evil rampaging, not the motivation to do better that they probably tell themselves they are to help them sleep at night. they're in a hell of their making.

the bluntness behind the narrative helps make the bond between the two MILES more interesting. lynch's schizophrenia isn't exploited for :twisted: funny comedy this time but instead to render him as a pathetic crazed animal with a gun. and the stroke of genius of basically ignoring how K&L1 ends gives kane's more levelheadedness by comparison a delusional sociopathic underpinning. they scream at each other about how much they ruined each other's lives (much like the women they love in the previous game hmm [thinks really hard abt this]) yet at no point in the game does that tension come to a head between them like the first game would tease. it always evaporates away awkwardly. there's no bro moments of "heh you're alright" or anything like that ever in sight because they do not deserve that, they just drop their in-the-moment tantrum and go back to doing the only thing they ever know how to do. this is because, despite how they are unable to actually feel love or not destroy things, they ultimately understand each other better than anyone. they NEED each other so bad. AND YET!!! not even this is portrayed with much more than a kind of pity, if that, it's just a human tendency to prefer not being alone in your cosmic punishment. it's nothing to get too attached to.

if this game has anything that could be called a positive human emotion it wants to hone in on, it's this, and it is so incredibly compelling in its smallness to me that it sticks out beyond the rest of the genre subversion in the game to heighten it further. even a couple of rabid dogs will feel loyalty towards each other, when they know neither of them's going to heaven

it's unfinished yeah but i feel like people take that as an excuse to say its not worth it at all. like if you care that much about the story stopping in its tracks fine--at this point i don't care about where swery's plots go as much as enjoying the diversions from the plot--but taken as a piece of idiosyncratic adventure game design there is so much to love in this. the loooads of descriptive text unfurling from interactive points, constantly having to stuff your mouth with snacks like a hamster to offset the stamina trickling down with every move you make, the goofy gestures you make that lend a tactileness to david's rituals and specific actions (the kinect controls aren't good but simulating wagging a foam finger made it worth it 10x over). i'm sad its unfinished more because i wanted to poke around its world more, its such a confident development from the already wonderfully over-the-top sim elements found from deadly premonition into something that's even more of its own unique style. remembering all the ridiculous little things in this game gets me so excited. this was the real deadly premonition 2 if you ask me

a game of two parts. one casts you as a bored insomniac strolling through a drab 1970s paris, doing anything just to pass the time before the other side of the game kicks in: a slow, hard boiled walk towards your escape while you mow down goons flooding in from both sides with quick gun fu. it's "le samourai" without a guiding objective, then it's "the killer" without passion (jean pierre melville and john woo, and louis malle as well, are given special thanks in the credits (the COOL AS FUCK soundtrack by danny spider solitaire in general reminds me of a certain organ-led track from le samourai)).

the first half asks you to improv an aimless life, having the man cross arms on rooftops, or light a cig, or go out for a film you can't watch, or for an exhibition you yourself can't enjoy the art of. yet its significant in that you drive him; you become his will in a very existential sense. you only take tiny actions but they are actions nonetheless, so they become meaningful bits of your own characterization, creating context where there would otherwise be none. its "boring" but i absolutely eat this kind of un-directed roleplay in games up, so it along with the bleak atmosphere did an excellent job of immersing me in the character, even when there is relatively little "narrative" to speak of.

the second half is the adrenaline shot by comparison, but even saying like that makes it sound too "fun" (though it might say something about me that i think this game is more fun than the short amount of the friends of ringo ishikawa i played). it's numbing, in a word. not as hard as its been made out to be imo but definitely not easy either, there is the initial hurdle of feeling out the combat to get over but once you've become accustomed to the flow of enemies, keeping your left and right flanks in check and sensing when it's time to get another gun...you start to feel like a death automaton. the excitement isn't gonna come and you'll have to make peace with that.

if i had to find a fault, it might overstay its welcome a little towards that end, i think the point could've been came across just as well with a level or possibly even two cut, but i still greatly enjoyed this. i don't think ringo can beat the atmosphere of arrest, but i'm interested enough in its greater focus on bonds between boys with this kind of evocativeness going for it to give it a fairer shot now. playing a level or two of this on nights when you can't sleep is ideal.