we do indie game reviews here now ig

[kradeelav]

confession: I don't really ... do indie itch.io games (sorry). (i know, despite hosting zines there).

trying to change that, but it's hard to overcome the initial sensations of 'what's the point of this? this doesn't make me feel anything.' and 'there's not enough real gameplay/story meat here so i might as well play (pre 2010's favorites) for the 45225664th time'

and yet - i saw "He Fucked the Girl Out of Me" listed on the recommendations page, and had a feeling by the thumbnail that this was going to be a little more hard-hitting, a little more self-aware and timeless than most of the ones on there. I was right.

it's about trauma, transness, and sex work, and there's a steel-core level of emotional honesty to it that really makes you just sit there and be aware of the broken pieces that the author willingly asks you to be empathetic about, and share in that understanding. it is the total opposite act of judging, and imo brilliantly executes that sort of medium that games are best at: putting the player in somebody else's shoes, because the sheer act of playing ignites that innate empathy.

things i appreciated about this on a technical level: 

• the visual aesthetic and gameplay here is somewhere in between OFF and if NGE was a pixel game. (I think the thumbnail itself is a direct nod off of a NGE shot). which is really apt on both instances, since NGE was so massively about mental trauma/depression and executed it very well despite the colorful, high-ho robot apocalyptic drama. OFF -- because the simplified pixels and the whole eerie, surreal underlying themes about "purity" (and the mockery thereof) kinda dovetails here in obvious ways when you've played both.
• this is really a beautifully crafted one. i know it hurt/healed to make. I hope the creator finds themselves in a lighter and peaceful place of healing, year by year.
• this is basically a visual novel where you keep clicking forward, and walk around ~10 or so very bare-bones scenes with obvious prompts. the sparse ... raw.... quality really worked in its favor, because there's some choices that go right for the throat in terms of sharing the emotion with the creator.
• the "glitch like" degradation of the player through some walking scenes was some real visual poetry. this also reminds me of that book of prison poetry in a lot of ways, come to think about it. completely open-faced about (experiences).

(there's another game on the list that immediately caught my eye but given it looks like to be a very sharp, visceral mix of how handy military visuals are wrt trauma that is uhhh a little too familiar, i may have to .... save that one for a more fortified night or it may not happen.) 

anyway. i'd encourage folks to play it, if you've got the emotional bandwidth.

Comments

[tempural]

Ooh the games you're looking at seem cool, dark and personal... Always good to see people using the wrapper of a game to tell stories :] no need for triple AAA when our peers are telling the stories we crave.

What doya mean by "indie itchio games"? I don't really browse itchio idly unless there's something specific i got recommendeded. So I don't know what that general vibe is.

[kradeelav]

That's a really great way to put it, a wrapper of a game. Honestly one reason why this was so easy to dive into ... there was 0 friction (if anything, tons of easter eggs with playing it this way), and there's some nostalgia I'm sure you're aware of inherent on playing games in-browser.

And you know, that's a fair question! Trying to put my perceptions tastefully, sometimes I get a sense that a lot of indie games on there feel "unfinished"? In the sense that a lot of them make a wonderful candy-flavored aesthetic moment ... but not a story with actual bite to it. Totally get that a lot of it is due to how grueling gamedev can be - it's a bit hard if not outright impossible to make Ocarina of Time on a single person's bandwidth.

Suppose it's also simply tastes clashing, since I'm a weirdo that almost plays pre-2010 games exclusively for the specific stories that crop up then.

[queenlua]

that was really good. and affecting. and yeah.

thanks for reviewing this; glad i was able to experience it myself~

[kradeelav]

For sure! Heavy, but in a needful way <3