photonm4id
31 reviews liked by photonm4id
This feels like middle schoolers putting together a passion project, and your enjoyment will vary based on how much you can appreciate that. There's a lot of really dumb scenes but it had me rolling with laughter at a few points.
Yay! Microtransactions for a game that'll shut down in three months! At least they're making it obvious the global release is a cash grab...
the only way we can save this game is to create a school idol group
My Eyes Deceive
2023
This review contains spoilers
Unraveled Companion
CW: Discussions of Child Abuse, CSA, and Rape
This is an interesting instance, to a certain extent, of how the functions of what a 'game' should do get in the way. For instance even the set up here wants to have its cake and eat it to. The warning at the beginning of the work is a bland and vague warning that the 'topics in the game' may be 'sensitive to some players' but then when you're actually playing it, its pretty clear its about extreme parental abuse and child rape. This is not rape as in 'allusions to extreme creepiness', this directly and bluntly a fiction about CSA and rape. The kid gets impregnated in the route towards one ending or theres a drugging and belt unbuckling sound reveal in the other. You have to signpost this stuff or at least put it in a strongly recommended readme you can't mess around with depictions like this. That's the literary approach. The game developer approach is to hold onto some cards and not 'give away' the impact you're setting up.
Then there's the smaller details: There's a leapfrog leapster clone in the work, but the game there is just a bland minimalist minigame rather than anything a child would actually want to play. The goal marker in the corner is both extraneous and a little odd from a UI standpoint as it always has this little dash marker next to it despite only showing one task on screen at a time. The dots hovering over the items you can interact with and the wait function also feels like a very basic UI element. These are once again game design tricks that impair a more serious narrative.
It may seem incredibly anally retentive to bring this up, but I do so for a very specific reason: Most of the problems for why the game are bad is because the creator has decided to make their very first public project this heavy and is thus borrowing assets and plotlines from other horror games they like. Most clearly the work is borrowing from Presentable Liberty (2014) with the limited 1 room environment, minigame that marks itself as completed and unreplayable after you beat it, and the dual endings with one being a desecration into further abuse and the other being escaping the confines of your imprisonment. The issue here is that Presentable Liberty's tone is way more of a zany scenegirl approach (ala Invader Zim or Llamas with Hats) which allows the mechanics to function fine in line with the tone. These mechanics don't work with this more sombre tone at all and actually impairs it immensely. If this work wanted to do this subject matter effectively it should have been borrowing from the more muted interface of a chrstphfr work like The Space Between (2019). Thereby removing the hackneyed music, the UI overlays, removing button prompts, simplifying dialogue text to silent hanging statements, relegating to a single ending, probably focusing more on sound design, etc. This approach, along with more general refinement, would have garnered the game a lot more staying power and success at what its trying to depict, whereas in its current state it became an amateur youtube flash in the pan horror game of the week.
Obviously I feel we need to bring back trigger warnings as a serious notation to the public in a big way. However, I am also concerned this game is gonna open up a giant 'sexual assault storytelling' commercial portal in the middle of what is generally considered to be videogames indie creepypasta scene. Imagine something like this with this level of attention dropped back during the early days of the SCP, and then you had a bunch of sombre rape stories floating around in there. It would be a mess and it would taint the whole joy of that niche when recommending it to your buddies. 'Oh dont read SCP-1030 that one is a forced impregnation story where the person gets gangraped by the subject'. Like I'm not trying to be histrionic I'm just giving a comparison point for why this reaks.
I'm glad to see the game has gone mostly ignored by this point, but if any more games like this come down the line I'm gonna chew them out to.
CW: Discussions of Child Abuse, CSA, and Rape
This is an interesting instance, to a certain extent, of how the functions of what a 'game' should do get in the way. For instance even the set up here wants to have its cake and eat it to. The warning at the beginning of the work is a bland and vague warning that the 'topics in the game' may be 'sensitive to some players' but then when you're actually playing it, its pretty clear its about extreme parental abuse and child rape. This is not rape as in 'allusions to extreme creepiness', this directly and bluntly a fiction about CSA and rape. The kid gets impregnated in the route towards one ending or theres a drugging and belt unbuckling sound reveal in the other. You have to signpost this stuff or at least put it in a strongly recommended readme you can't mess around with depictions like this. That's the literary approach. The game developer approach is to hold onto some cards and not 'give away' the impact you're setting up.
Then there's the smaller details: There's a leapfrog leapster clone in the work, but the game there is just a bland minimalist minigame rather than anything a child would actually want to play. The goal marker in the corner is both extraneous and a little odd from a UI standpoint as it always has this little dash marker next to it despite only showing one task on screen at a time. The dots hovering over the items you can interact with and the wait function also feels like a very basic UI element. These are once again game design tricks that impair a more serious narrative.
It may seem incredibly anally retentive to bring this up, but I do so for a very specific reason: Most of the problems for why the game are bad is because the creator has decided to make their very first public project this heavy and is thus borrowing assets and plotlines from other horror games they like. Most clearly the work is borrowing from Presentable Liberty (2014) with the limited 1 room environment, minigame that marks itself as completed and unreplayable after you beat it, and the dual endings with one being a desecration into further abuse and the other being escaping the confines of your imprisonment. The issue here is that Presentable Liberty's tone is way more of a zany scenegirl approach (ala Invader Zim or Llamas with Hats) which allows the mechanics to function fine in line with the tone. These mechanics don't work with this more sombre tone at all and actually impairs it immensely. If this work wanted to do this subject matter effectively it should have been borrowing from the more muted interface of a chrstphfr work like The Space Between (2019). Thereby removing the hackneyed music, the UI overlays, removing button prompts, simplifying dialogue text to silent hanging statements, relegating to a single ending, probably focusing more on sound design, etc. This approach, along with more general refinement, would have garnered the game a lot more staying power and success at what its trying to depict, whereas in its current state it became an amateur youtube flash in the pan horror game of the week.
Obviously I feel we need to bring back trigger warnings as a serious notation to the public in a big way. However, I am also concerned this game is gonna open up a giant 'sexual assault storytelling' commercial portal in the middle of what is generally considered to be videogames indie creepypasta scene. Imagine something like this with this level of attention dropped back during the early days of the SCP, and then you had a bunch of sombre rape stories floating around in there. It would be a mess and it would taint the whole joy of that niche when recommending it to your buddies. 'Oh dont read SCP-1030 that one is a forced impregnation story where the person gets gangraped by the subject'. Like I'm not trying to be histrionic I'm just giving a comparison point for why this reaks.
I'm glad to see the game has gone mostly ignored by this point, but if any more games like this come down the line I'm gonna chew them out to.
My Horse Prince
2016
I downloaded and played this game in high school exclusively so I could force people to watch me play it so they'd think I was weird. Little did I know that I didn't need to performatively play this game for people to think that, since my voltron legendary defender home screen would have been enough to convince them.
Anyway, this game is not very fun, it's mostly just force feeding this poor freak of nature food until he gets enough energy to talk to you seemingly forever. I never saw much of a deviation in gameplay while playing it, although I admit I didn't get super far in it since I'd only ever play it when someone seemed like they wanted to engage with me. I'd pull my phone out, start shoving carrots down my equestrian partner's gullet and making him run on a treadmill, and then angle my phone in such a way that the person trying to make an honest human connection to me would see enough of the screen to ask what I was playing. I would then start a conversation about the game, literally lying about some aspects of it to make it sound more bizarre, not make any new friends, and then feel proud of myself believing to have weirded out one of my supposed enemies.
So, in conclusion, this game is good if you're trying to repel people from you, but not so good for much else. So only really give it a try if you like voltron legendary defender, I guess.
Anyway, this game is not very fun, it's mostly just force feeding this poor freak of nature food until he gets enough energy to talk to you seemingly forever. I never saw much of a deviation in gameplay while playing it, although I admit I didn't get super far in it since I'd only ever play it when someone seemed like they wanted to engage with me. I'd pull my phone out, start shoving carrots down my equestrian partner's gullet and making him run on a treadmill, and then angle my phone in such a way that the person trying to make an honest human connection to me would see enough of the screen to ask what I was playing. I would then start a conversation about the game, literally lying about some aspects of it to make it sound more bizarre, not make any new friends, and then feel proud of myself believing to have weirded out one of my supposed enemies.
So, in conclusion, this game is good if you're trying to repel people from you, but not so good for much else. So only really give it a try if you like voltron legendary defender, I guess.
My Horse Prince
2016
As far as being a game goes this thing is absolute trash but I cannot deny that the ridiculousness of the cutscenes between levels and the weird scuffed animations of the horseman surfing/cutting vegetables etc. Made me laugh so much it was hard to put down because I wanted to see what the next one would be.
Dead Plate
2023
true horror is that tables can only be interacted with from a certain angle
Evertale
2019
Like if you got scammed by those meticulous clickbait horror ads.
disturbing and compelling visual novel about an abusive gay relationship, clearly a very personal project for its creator, Lorenzo Redaelli and genuinely unsettling in a way that most straight-up horror games aren't for me. some of the writing is a bit on-the-nose and I'm not the biggest fan of the 2D character art, but the striking use of minimalistic 3D environments, sound design, and stylish UI add greatly to the experience. definitely not going to be for everyone, but recommended for those willing to play a game with this subject matter.
on the downside: the game really should have had a chapter select option. I managed to get the good ending on my first playthrough, but ended up going to YouTube to watch the neutral and bad endings, just because it would have been a pain in the ass to replay the game from the beginning to get to them. Yes, beating the game once does unlock a 2x-speed option for dialogue, but that still doesn't speed things up enough.
on the downside: the game really should have had a chapter select option. I managed to get the good ending on my first playthrough, but ended up going to YouTube to watch the neutral and bad endings, just because it would have been a pain in the ass to replay the game from the beginning to get to them. Yes, beating the game once does unlock a 2x-speed option for dialogue, but that still doesn't speed things up enough.
Rough around the edges and messy in a way that personal art so often is, but stylish, bursting with earnestness and complicated emotions, and deeply powerful. I found a lot of myself in it, in how it captures the feeling of too-fast love that feels like a gravity well pulling you in, impossible to escape, consuming all thoughts around you. The writing here is often clumsy, but in an intentional and effective way that underscores how it feels to handle these raw emotions, and grants real weight and closeness to this story about how idealized, fictionalized conceptions of relationships can set you up to fall into abuse and exploitation, on both sides of the coin, but also why those dreams of fairytale romance are so intoxicating. The presentation, while simple, is also wonderfully cool and evocative, with some of the best sound design I've seen of late.
One note I should mention is that, as mentioned on the game's various store pages, the game is about a relationship with someone with BPD. I don't have BPD, nor do I have the kind of intimate experience with someone who does that is portrayed in this game. I say this to make clear that while I felt that the game portrayed the relationship with nuance and care, I also don't know what the hell I'm talking about, and could absolutely be wrong about that read.
That said, I think an awful lot of this game is intensely relatable anyway. It won't be for everyone, but it shouldn't be. Sanding off those rough abrasive edges would only dull the impact, and I think the game comes close to that already with an all-too-gamey scene towards the end. Still, Milky Way Prince was for me, and it might be for you too.
It hurts, but sometimes, that's what you need.
One note I should mention is that, as mentioned on the game's various store pages, the game is about a relationship with someone with BPD. I don't have BPD, nor do I have the kind of intimate experience with someone who does that is portrayed in this game. I say this to make clear that while I felt that the game portrayed the relationship with nuance and care, I also don't know what the hell I'm talking about, and could absolutely be wrong about that read.
That said, I think an awful lot of this game is intensely relatable anyway. It won't be for everyone, but it shouldn't be. Sanding off those rough abrasive edges would only dull the impact, and I think the game comes close to that already with an all-too-gamey scene towards the end. Still, Milky Way Prince was for me, and it might be for you too.
It hurts, but sometimes, that's what you need.
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