she danced in the wind like a holographic dream before the world died
This review contains spoilers
I just want to elaborate. I know the developer will never read this but I feel really bad about your struggles. I'm glad you got something from making this, even though it was difficult, and I feel shit that people treated you like that. I know that happens. The internet can be an awful place. I do appreciate/respect this game as both reflection and a statement.
But it is tough to play. And I don't mean the subject matter. This is basically 3 parts.
The first part is just clicking on the screen. There's an ominous atmosphere as you read the poems and see the admittedly inspired imagery. I dug this quite a bit.
The second part, which is most of it, has you floating around in a janky fashion, collecting memories, until the third part opens up. The memories and scenes you witness involve reading through manifestos/poems, clicking lines to move onto the next. This could have been half the length and been way better for it. The game talks about the poet, but there's an art to shortening writing. I understand that as writers, we like to include fluff, but we have to be our best selves and TRY to cut that out. I dug the first while of this part but then the verbosity got to me.
The third part is good shit. Potent but disgusting (not visually, just in the real life examples of how the developer was treated), yet with offered solace. Ends on a great note.
I mean, it's a short interactive poem/game. If the second part wasn't so long relative to what it deserved, I would have rated this higher. But I was getting annoyed while playing it and the stuff that was being said began to run together and I stopped caring somewhat, which is not the intended effect (though unintentionally meta considering part of it is about people not caring).
Anyway, I know other people will treat it less like a game and just appreciate it for its message, and I do to some degree, but I've been beyond just heaping praises onto things for quite some time now, with a few exceptions.
But it is tough to play. And I don't mean the subject matter. This is basically 3 parts.
The first part is just clicking on the screen. There's an ominous atmosphere as you read the poems and see the admittedly inspired imagery. I dug this quite a bit.
The second part, which is most of it, has you floating around in a janky fashion, collecting memories, until the third part opens up. The memories and scenes you witness involve reading through manifestos/poems, clicking lines to move onto the next. This could have been half the length and been way better for it. The game talks about the poet, but there's an art to shortening writing. I understand that as writers, we like to include fluff, but we have to be our best selves and TRY to cut that out. I dug the first while of this part but then the verbosity got to me.
The third part is good shit. Potent but disgusting (not visually, just in the real life examples of how the developer was treated), yet with offered solace. Ends on a great note.
I mean, it's a short interactive poem/game. If the second part wasn't so long relative to what it deserved, I would have rated this higher. But I was getting annoyed while playing it and the stuff that was being said began to run together and I stopped caring somewhat, which is not the intended effect (though unintentionally meta considering part of it is about people not caring).
Anyway, I know other people will treat it less like a game and just appreciate it for its message, and I do to some degree, but I've been beyond just heaping praises onto things for quite some time now, with a few exceptions.
Mini Review: As a personal statement about abuse that ties into an end of the world narrative that critiques how people respond to victims, power/elites and the climate, it feels weird to critique. But as a game, the movement is janky and kind of boring, and it's verbose. And I went in expecting a walking simulator so it's not that. It's the getting from place to place for most of it is annoying, which is made worse by the fact that there are parts where the movement is more fluid.