Respect to the game for sticking to its guns while I do microaggressions to the weapon-people.
GO AWAY
6 Likes
good lord eric take a fucking hint
2 Likes
To my delight there was a dialogue option that just said “go away” and Jonah backed me up like “uh, I don’t think they’re joking, dude.”
4 Likes
Baffled to see a common response to Eric accusing the developer of negligent failure-to-content-warn (they did) and requesting an opt-out for his story altogether. I’m fairly certain it’s key to the overarching story of the game and I’m sad to see people demanding it conform to their expectations when if anything it’s a little anodyne.
2 Likes
It’s interesting terrifying to see audiences re-negotiating their terms with stories like this. I’d say it slides from the shared authorial control players have in interactive fiction – but how many people go in expecting to be able to choose an outcome, rather than experience one?
I really wonder how widespread this expectation is these days, is it more prevalent among younger people, is it the Mass Effect 3 situation or are there multiple subcultures (blossoming from fanculture) asking for this. Is it more demanded of games than other media, or the same? Is it more prevalent if the authors make themselves available on social media, instead of a Valve-style cultivated remove?
4 Likes
I saw a lot of people linking it back to the mom toggle and they’re missing the point - the mom texts aren’t essential but are particularly affecting to a subset of the audience with mom trauma, so it makes sense to surface a toggle. The abduction/stalking/manipulation plot appears to be woven throughout the entire game, e.g. as I get deeper in the dead mall dungeon I keep finding weapon-people in weapon form with mild memory loss and wounds. About half of the characters have been introduced this way.
I think this is growing out of fandom but I can’t put my finger on which? IIRC Dream Daddy is a kind of totally no-sharp-edges visual novel but I don’t think it’s the norm for western ones at all.
Deeply ironic that I was put off by the “tasteful” descriptor now, of course.
5 Likes
Ah, so you’d interpret the mom thing as, “this is non-essential and somebody mentioned it’d be nice to turn it off, so, why not?”, but that set expectations about what they can and are willing to toggle to still tell their story?
Especially if that prompt is in the first few minutes, the second-most-important time to set expectations (after marketing and store page, of course!).
Yeah, when you start a new file it shows this (even if you already have a save on the same profile):
Then the character creator (these are the defaults if anyone’s curious):
Then mom toggle prompt:
Then the game starts.
Some people are litigating how the content warning is worded w/r/t “references” vs. things the player is subjected to and I suppose I would rewrite it more specifically but it seems sufficient as is because I’m guessing most people for whom these are dealbreakers are going to be boolean in or out from that point on.
I also think the game is much more interesting for having unpleasant characters! It’s obviously coming from the writers’ experiences and feels more real - to the extent that it kind of clashes with the typical dating sim flattery.
6 Likes
yeah, it’s very hard to have drama without ugliness
1 Like
By reading around I’ve also spoiled for myself that Sunder, the Killer Bob lookin guy, is actually not bad news as I was warned, and that’s reflected in the fact that he asked if he should back off and did. It’s intentional misdirection/counterplay against the villanous fuckboi who probably wants to do Get Out to my friends
1 Like
something perversely satisfying about how much this game tried to sand itself down and market itself to puriteens who have never played an otome game but it immediately backfired and the puriteens hate it because they’ve never played an otome game
11 Likes
I can’t get this into the right set of words but - stuff like having a character just named “Mom” that’s totally optional or having the character creator have a lil blurb saying it won’t limit who you can date. Having dialogue options that range from, I have the right outfit to - I don’t own anything appropriate.
All this stuff goes so hard on emphasizing safe self-identification with the protag. If the game suddenly railroads you into interactions that feel decidedly unsafe because the mechanics of the plot demand it, I could see how that would feel like a failure of imagination on the devs part.
7 Likes
I’m not posting much of the “serious” dialogue but I feel like whatever’s coming with Eric is after the plot has introduced other discomforting elements. I can see it either way, honestly. I did look for a way to block Eric for being annoying but I wasn’t upset there isn’t one.
1 Like
OK, finished the first dungeon and opened up the second one! Met Sawyer the glaive at the bottom of the mall.
Me and Sawyer are going to get to the bottom of this cooking business eventually.
I’ve been carrying around a pizza as a date gift the entire game and I had no idea who to give it to until I met them. 
4 Likes
Partner met the other nonbinary character in her game and we’re laughing out loud at the spooky bih writing. It’s so good.
Very sharp/subtle NB thing
Eric calls Rowan, the transfeminine spooky but serious scythe-person, “my dear enby” as a pejorative diminutive.
Sawyer sounds like Tails and Rowan sounds like Shadow so this is quite the ball of string
Learned from reading development history that one D. Squinkifer did sensitivity reading on this for the nonbinary characters.
I feel like such an ass for being cynical about that marketing bullet point but I wonder if there’s a better way to communicate that they’re for-real about it.
And yes, you can’t take Eric out of this game without rewriting the entire game because he’s the antagonist.
It’s a great game. Full of the casual postmodernism it’s passe to talk about in Earthbound, solid action RPG fundamentals, and every character’s story has been delightful.
4 Likes
Read these in more or less Shadow the Hedgehog’s voice
Asked me why I came here, I said I’m exploring the town, reply:
I asked if they’re a witch, to which they responded:
There are also vampires in this game, so, like, fantasy magic witch isn’t out of the question.
3 Likes
Cackling at the boss of the second dungeon: “Dungeon Boyfriend,” a face made out of tiled dancefloor, a neon sign, and finger guns wearing white sunglasses.
5 Likes