Disco Elysium

ok I know this forum is more or less moribund but I can't hack it around Serious Gamers, I can't, but I happened to hear about this game called Disco Elysium and it intrigues me. Mostly because I thought it might actually involve disco, which it seems not to? But it sounds interesting anyway. Some kind of Estonian no-combat RPG, this seems kind of up my alley honestly... I don't know how I feel about the Chapo Trap House cameos but they are cameos at least?

it seems like a game for people who like the Meaningful Dialogue Choices part of crpgs and wish they'd throw everything else away to focus on that

me personally i don't care about Meaningful Dialogue Choices but I do enjoy walking simulators and the style of the game intrigued me. so i took a chance and i'm enjoying it so far! it reminds me of Gate's version of Saturday Night Fever.

does look cool actch

it reminds me of Gate's version of Saturday Night Fever.

dang now i want in

It has it's own thread! So yeah 20% at the moment, due to it winning an award, if yer interested

https://kotaku.com/disco-elysium-developers-shout-out-marx-and-engels-1840403603

Man someone finally got round to making that video game with 'good writing' huh

It also has the prettiest title screen to date

it seems like a game for people who like the Meaningful Dialogue Choices part of crpgs and wish they'd throw everything else away to focus on that

― ciderpress

Well, I know that's meant to be disparaging but it's pretty much me, yep, and the more I read about this the more desperate I am to play it.

The text is as advertised, but the game also looks great. Some of the character animations are very funny.

Man someone finally got round to making that video game with 'good writing' huh

What's with the scare quotes?

its good writing in the sense that it's super adaptive without showing a lot of seams. i'm not a huge fan of the style

i don't know what that means

What's with the scare quotes?

― Camina Burana Drummer (Leee), Monday, 6 January 2020 22:56 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Idk just that a lot of games touted to have good writing do not

I was fully ready to find DE grating or too self-conscious but I'm frequently quivering with mirth at some of the dialogue options it offers you, and the skills-as-internal monologues thing is handled well

its good at adapting to your dialogue choices and stats without being obvious about whats going on behind the curtain is what i mean

I liked the writing a lot more as a low int high physical character. Which I think is an achievement.

MINOR SPOILER MAYBE

the v pretty title screen is the view the shooter would have had of martinaise

this game rules

yep

Still waiting for PS4 version ;_;

Still waiting for it to go on sale, but I very much look forward to my first playthrough.

Hardcore!

Hardcore to the mega!

Internally coherent!

hurry up and release this shit on PS4 ok

Have there been any status updates? These dudes and Team Cherry re: Silksong have been pretty quiet. I guess they've been busy!

this game is amazing

I know a few of us just started playing this business, so I’m bumping

I'm just waiting for it to go on sale again, which is bound to happen by mid-December at the latest.

waiting for switch/pS4

I really want to go back and play this again using a significantly different character roll and political direction, but man is it addictive and I'm not sure I want to get sucked back in

Still waiting for PS4 version ;_;

― emil.y, Wednesday, July 8, 2020 3:07 PM (four months ago)

hurry up and release this shit on PS4 ok

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Wednesday, September 23, 2020 12:48 PM (one month ago)

waiting for switch/pS4

― Four Seasons Total Manscaping (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, November 10, 2020 7:20 PM (three hours ago)

Still waiting, waaaaa.

put a few hours into this over the last couple of days and i’m very much enjoying myself, although my character’s tendency to die of despair after touching some stuff in a car or kicking a trashcan is... confounding

I have died zero times, but I feel like you’re still playing it a correct way

i have worked out that my character's pitifully low volition was what was causing him to regularly die of the vapours when confronted with a petanque ball

another hour or so into this now, enjoying it even more now that i've decided to become solely responsible for reviving communism

One thing I didn't realise early on is that if it warns you your volition is dangerously low in response to some traumatic humiliation, you can click one of the healing items in the bottom left to get it back immediately

yeah, i didn't realise that until a few hours of embarrassing deaths - i should have mentioned it here to spare others the same miserable fate

How does this game compare to something like, say, Oxenfree (which is fun enough but basically a story-based game where you pick dialogue options and they slightly affect what happens in the end)

never played that one, nor the often-mentioned Planescape: Torment which is mentioned in hushed tones as a parallel experience

worth noting that the conversation trees (and the Thoughts that come to you while conversing) can be very engrossing and wordy. many words

PS:T is the watershed, a verbose dark fantasy Memento avant la lettre. Very much worth playing if you enjoy DE.

Feels kind of weird to me that they're announcing some sort of definitive special edition of this before it's come to any of the consoles in the first place. Supposedly PS version comes out in March 2021, and Xbox/Switch version in summer of 2021, though I wouldn't put much faith in those latter two, which is too bad, since I'm sure this could be a good Switch/portable game. I'm still super intrigued, though.

Is full voice acting really necessary for such a reading-intensive game? I hate how it's become an absolute must these days.

you can turn it off! I do when playing dragon quest xi

Sure, but it's not a binary. I like partial voice acting to highlight key narrative moments.

a lot of jrpgs still do the "main story scenes are voice acted, incidental dialogue and sidequests are not" thing but people always complain about it so apparently it is necessary

i suspect its usually more a budgetary than directorial choice

switch performance will likely be dogshit : /

Which sort of makes me more intrigued. There have been some downright magical Switch ports (Ori, apparently Witcher 3, a lot of the Bethesda stuff). Then again, speak of the devil, Doom Eternal clearly ran into a million problems on Switch. But they got Control running on the Switch, right? Granted, it's on a server, iirc, but that's a game that doesn't even always run well on more powerful consoles, maybe they will do something like that?

Am I right, though, that this seems like a big open-world game that might benefit from portable Switch play? I've been avoiding spoilers, because the praise has been so fervent, but I kind of get the sense the PS4 might not be the right fit for this. I could be wrong, though.

Some beautiful art in this game, seems reason enough to play

Disco Elysium’s map is... not big

It takes a while to walk your ass from end to end because of circuitous paths but there are basically just a handful of areas

I finally picked this up on Steam thanks to the Noah Caldwell-Gervais appraisal, and I'm loving it. It's revealed that at heart, I'm a Moralist Sorry Cop, and that's about right. I do regret terrifying a bookship owner who was minding her own business.

Looking forward to the Final Cut version as well: 150,000+ words of new content, free to all present owners, fully voiced including personality traits. It may not need the additional voice acting, but I'm a fan of most of the current characters, especially the internal monologues, so I'll have something to look forward to for supercop, sad sack, and savior of communism playthroughs...

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut arrives March 30! https://t.co/Lqd6q39QOq

— Disco Elysium (@studioZAUM) March 17, 2021

oh my god oh my god oh my god

I'm glad I waited.

Yesss

xbox this summer....please hit game pass...

when i got my PS5 last week i checked to see when this was coming, definitely on my want list

Tbc I only care about the final cut on PC because I am one of *those* snobs.

the turn of the ending was one of the most emotional experiences I've had playing a video game

Hmm, comes out on Switch this summer, doesn't it (supposedly)? Seems like a good game for handheld, for once.

I am torn between waiting for Switch port (greatly increasing the chance I will actually, ya know, play it) or just biting on inevitable 50% Steam sale. And it's on Mac, which I also like to support.

Lol, by the time it actually comes out on Switch it will be, like, less than $20 on PS4.

Actually, tbh the one potential negative of the Switch I think I've heard is that it is so text based that seeing everything on the small screen could be a real challenge.

if all the text is spoken now, you can just patiently listen!

A small pity that all of the "skills" will share the same voice, but at least will get all of the wit and wisdom of Cuno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N84rQcnAbaA

just sitting here refreshing the Playstation Store

So, clearly not live, no? Have they stated a price?

not yet. it says it will go live between 3-4pm uk time

I see it now, $40 USD: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP6758-PPSA03268_00-6401393671841114

still can't see it on the UK store. Disco Elusive more like

ah it's finally popped up. £32.99, not too bad

although now the PS Store keeps crashing

We don’t need a liveblog of this

I do

Update: Got it. Downloading. Don't forget to click and subscribe to hear the latest

i'm only here for the top 10 video game betrayal reaction video notifications

Okay this game

Only played about an hour and already LOL'd several times. "It doesn't have to be murder. It can just be sex"

The PS4/5 version is extremely buggy - to the point at which, when you can’t complete plot elements, it’s effectively unplayable by day three. There has been one patch already but it hasn’t fixed the key issues. They’ll have to patch again but, unless it’s on sale, it might be worth holding off purchasing until they do.

Oh no. That sucks. Not encountered anything yet myself. But I did die from kicking in a door and giving myself a hesrtattack and the game started me back quite far before that point. I had to dolefully go back through several conversations I'd already had because I was worried I'd miss something important if I skipped them. Have resolved to save my game a bit more often

If you’ve made it over to the other side of the bridge and collected items from the car, you might be lucky. It’s not clear whether the bug affects every player, but it’s a substantial proportion at least.

thanks for the heads up here, will wait.

The only bug I’ve encountered on PC (using a controller might be part of it) is getting locked on dialogue where the “next” prompt doesn’t show up.

It appears to be an issue where you’re close enough to trigger the dialogue but it fails the check to continue the conversation. The workaround that was effective for me the first time was to make sure I kept walking even after the dialogue prompt showed up until it actually stopped me.

That didn’t seem to help when it happened a second time, but I’m basically at the endgame already so I’m willing to sit it out until the patch or, god forbid, plug in my mouse and see if it’s a controller-specific glitch

I also encountered the glitch where the zoom-out after an interaction goes extreeeemely slowly before the game returns control. That can be alleviated by closing and reopening the game.

Only played one "day" of DE and I'm really enjoying it so far. There's so much to love about this game. The internal and external world-building are mindblowing, and with any luck I'll be playing this through multiple times in order to get different outcomes.

Have encountered a couple of glitches and mild frustrations - nothing game-breaking, but still just enough to affect suspension of belief and grind me down whilst playing:

- Sometimes audio dialogue plays late, doesn't play at all, or occasionally the wrong audio dialogue plays*.
- Can be a bit confusing when character dialogue text appears with narrative interjections, but only the character audio plays
- Text is small for a game that requires a lot of reading, even on the largest setting. Coupled with conversations that can take several minutes' worth of dialogue trees, it can be exhausting. As such, I found I couldn't play for long bouts without starting to fall asleep and lose track of some of the longer conversations. At this point, I would have saved my game and gone to bed, but you can't do this if you're in the middle of a lengthy interrogation. If I had a Switch and this were on it, I'd much rather play Disco Elysium in bed on a small screen than sitting on my sofa squinting at the telly.
- UI is very fiddly. The way dialogue options are highlighted in white, red, ever-so-slightly paler red etc, isn't intuitive and on several occasions I've made the mistake of choosing the wrong option to the one I wanted
- I'm finding the object menu really hard to use. It's not entirely obvious what I'm highlighting or what direction I'm meant to press to highlight the thing I want. Could be a bit clearer.
- I like the way there's no manual or instructions whatsoever; it complements the main character's amnesiac nature, but I did have to look up how to interact with things in my hostel room when I first woke up as I was just staggering around clutching my head and trying to press every button. I swear I fucking pressed the R3 stick a bunch of times along the way, but yeah, first little stumbling block.
- I still don't really understand how the Thought Bank works. If I stop thinking about something after I've finished the Thought, will I be able to retrieve the Thought later? Like, does it disappear once I've finished internalising it or is it stored in my memory bank? The first Thought I completed was my way home, but the instructions were long and prosaic and didn't really help a lot. I figure I'll just stumble into my house one day on my travels.
- A quirk of the isometric viewpoint is that it's not always obvious how to get from one point to another. There'll be a narrow passageway which I can spend a long time navigating into without luck before simply letting the computer do it for me by selecting an interaction point on the other side of the screen and letting my character walk there by his own volition.

*The acting is brilliant though. Quite interested in the accent/dialect choices here. Only a handful of US accents here and there; lots of Francophone accents; while the rest seem to be a mishmash of regional UK accents. Nevertheless, a lot of the dialogue is US-centric and it's a bit strange hearing Cuno and Cunoess employ slang terms like "pig" and "ass", which I wouldn't associate so much with the UK.

I think the thoughts confer status bonuses as long as they're in the bank. You can unlock new slots by spending skill points or use skill points to remove thoughts that you no longer want to have.

Thoughts have a before/after state where they have one effect while they’re internalizing, and a different effect when complete.

The tip I recently read that hadn’t occurred to me is that you can pause them during the process, which is great for the couple that actually give a nice bonus during that phase. It’s also worth noting that, while it spends a point, you can forget thoughts after they’re internalized but no longer useful. In case you don’t want to permanently get race realist dialogue options.

Yep, I'm experiencing the same small glitches as dl but no big bugs. Not got through a day yet but I've already started rebuilding communism!

Same, comrade!

I bought this game a while back because of the rave reviews and the Planescape: Torment namechecks and the promise of innovation in my preferred video game subgenre (isometric RPGs) but even now that the final cut is out I can't bring myself to play it due to the setting, which, if I'm being honest, doesn't really appeal to me all that much. Guess I played myself.

what is it about the setting you're not into?

The overt poli-sci. Just not my jam when it comes to video games – I only really play them for escapist purposes.

I getcha. Well, I can tell you it's a vastly escapist version of political science which has little-to-no resemblance to the real world beyond a bit of satire. Magic realism in an inveted world through-and-through

Good to know. I'm sure I'll enjoy it, I just need to tune into the right headspace first.

So far it's been a lot less about politics than a surreal Twin Peaks-ish murder-mystery

please shout here when it's patched?

fwiw I was able to finish it (again) on PC without issue when I swapped over to mouse/keyboard for the scenes that had glitched. something to sort out in the pathfinding/dialogue triggers, it seems

I also fucked up and triggered the endgame before doing the new secret communist meeting content, ffs

PS5 patch has released, though people are reporting that it hasn’t fixed some of the plot-curtailing bugs.

The PS4 patch is still pending with no confirmation on when it’s expected. I think there’s more than enough good will towards the developers at the moment that it won’t lead to huge numbers of people demanding immediate refunds, as with Cyberpunk, but it’s not great.

It's a bummer, because I was super excited, so excited I was going to buy it on PS4 rather than wait for the Switch. But now I have the feeling the PS4 version won't be totally fixed until closer to when the Switch version is scheduled (is it even scheduled? "summer"?), and that the Switch version will be delayed or released but buggy and needing lots of patches as well.

Btw, I know this stuff is hard but I don't know enough about how buggy releases happen. Whether Cyberpunk or this or lots of other stuff, it takes just a few days, if not a few hours, for players to assemble long lists of everything wrong. Do developers not see these bugs or glitches, or do developers see those thing but choose to release the buggy games anyway, quietly getting to work on patches before people even start complaining? Or is it a forest for the trees sort of thing, where the developers are so drawn into the details - the coding, tiny aesthetic aspects of the game, etc. - that the big picture becomes almost invisible? Like, so focused on a character's eyebrows that they don't notice its feet don't touch the ground, that sort of thing. It's all kind of mysterious to me.

if i had a Switch, I'd get it on Switch (assuming no bugs and it's legible). Game is similar to reading a book and I'd feel a lot happier playing it in bed or a comfy chair than on my sofa squinting at the TV

i'm waiting for switch bc the amount of time i can use the family tv to play grown-up games without kids trying to watch is negligible

The 1.2 patch was released a few days ago for PS4 and, more or less, gets you to a point at which you can finish the game, albeit without doing all of the side quests.

It's worth waiting for the fully patched version to be released before starting, imo.

Still not crossed the canal yet, but still encountered a few weird glitches, like the game suddenly failing halfway through a conversation. Always seems to happen at a point I didn't save the game, which is mildly frustrating.

I got to Day 2 without having enough Real to pay for my hostel room. The clock stopped at 2am and I couldn't progress the game and it wouldn't let me sleep on the bench (as a few online fora suggested), so I had to sell a bunch of postcards and my shot-put ball to progress the game. Not sure if that was meant to happen or not, but it was a bit puzzling.

Patch 1.3 is now live on PlayStation! This fixes a myriad of bugs, soft locks, and interaction errors. We’re hard at work on 1.4. Thank you everyone. pic.twitter.com/wxBpEgBYKY

— Disco Elysium (@studioZAUM) April 12, 2021

That was quick.

I've still not experienced anything more than those initial couple of minor bugs but glad it's got the patches going now anyway.

I can tell you it's a vastly escapist version of political science which has little-to-no resemblance to the real world beyond a bit of satire...

So far it's been a lot less about politics than a surreal Twin Peaks-ish murder-mystery

Man, I completely disagree with this assessment, dl. It's... very very political. In the most depressing way. In the nihilist "all political ideals are bad because humans are inherently bad" way. It's such a good game but so grim.

the strain of capitalism has been felt by dog latin, I see

I agree with you Emil.y, it's definitely political. I meant that it wasn't rooted in real-world politics and that the politics in DE are a very incisive satire on political factionism. I've only just started the third day, so maybe I haven't quite encountered the grim realities yet, but I've found these caricatures of left/right/centre more funny than grim so far:

The far-right elitists, so convinced of their intellectual and physical superiority that they become engines of unfalsifiabie dogma during any argument.
The radical leftists, so narrow-minded in their doctrinism that they're constantly having to swerve away from all-out genocidal thinking.
But by far the most interesting caricature/parody is of the centrists, who've become so high on the smell of their own farts that they exhibit an almost cult-like belief in the financial structures and institutions they've built up for themselves, often turning a blind-eye to the very idea that these might be their own type of totalitarian brutality.

Yes, it's grim, but it's darkly comic in every way. No one gets out alive, and I have to concede that the parts where my own beliefs are challenged and taken apart are the funniest bits.

I've finished my first playthrough as a Communist and will start a Radical Centrist 'what would Wes Streeting do' one when everything's patched.

It definitely feels like it gets heavier and darker as the game progresses. The balance between humour and bleak horror isn't always an easy one but it's an incredible achievement overall.

had to sell a bunch of postcards and my shot-put ball to progress the game.

Bought this on xmas sale and haven't tried yet. Can't wait.

So, I finished the game last night. What a ride. I laughed; I cried; I became Dance, the destroyer of worlds. I still think the politics are more grim than funny, for me they're really not that far removed from the real world and the real world is Not Fun. Which is maybe why I alternated between Sorry Cop and Apocalypse Cop so much (with a tiny sprinkle of Art Cop thrown in for good measure).

There were definitely some bugs in the PS4 version that I played but only one that caused me to almost rage-quit (one character refused to show up at the appointed time no matter how many buildings I went in and out of, no idea how it fixed itself but it did eventually).

Somehow, in the middle of playthrough number three, my character became... inadvertently racist? I swear I didn’t internalize the terrible racism thoughts, but at some point — I suspect due to lacking skill points in some of the thoughts that would have warned me — I ended up only having dialogue options that would alienate poor Kim!

Everything ended up OK, though. It was probably payback for choosing to be an ultra-liberal who loves money.

I'm not enjoying this. The pungent voice isn't by itself appealing to me, but where it really feels like a slog is the sheer amount of dialogue I struggle to maintain interest in. Maybe I should try to suppress my min/maxing urge and only pursue dialogue options that interest in me?

absolutely not a min/maxing game, imo. especially not on the first run

you’re meant to fail, mortifyingly and hilariously, at times

Well I'm stuck in this game after several hours and I'm a bit cheesed off about it. Can't seem to progress at all

What bit, dl? The bug I mentioned was with The Pigs not showing up, had to do a bunch of going in and out of locations and reloading the game before it fixed itself. And if it's not a bug but you getting stuck I could maybe give you a hint?

Leee, it's a ridiculously text-heavy game, which is good for me as I love text adventures, but maybe not good for a min/max type. And yeah, you do have to learn to not choose every single dialogue option - definitely go for the ones that interest/entertain you, or the ones that suit the playstyle of the run you're doing.

i def think this looks like the sort of thing where if you like that sort of thing it's gonna be the best thing of that sort of thing but if you don't like licorice it ain't happening

So without wanting to spoil anything, there's a day when Kim goes away to do something and during that time there's a check that fails to appear and you can't progress the game until he comes back. Had to do a lot of digging around Reddit to work that one out

This game is yes, very text heavy. I often find myself playing it till the wee hours and falling asleep. In a way that's cool though cos you can play it at your own pace

Not sure if I'll play it through twice though. can't imagine it being especially different the second time round. Maybe?

I'm playing it through as a Physique/Psyche apocalyptic cop: my failures are the most entertaining part of the game. Next time, high intellect pedant, so I can lecture the characters of Revachol on correct thought. But perhaps I'll wait a year before returning.

Okay so I completed this tonight and uh... well that was... tonally abrupt. It just kind of ended with a grouchy argument and a "well I guess that about wraps it up, let's go home". But disappointed as I felt that, despite having done a he'll of a lot, there were still things I'd wanted to do, things to explore, checks to be tried. But no, you meet the perp, chat to him for ages then meet your colleagues and then go home..
I figures I'd try again immediately with different skills, but there wasn't anything strikingly different about my encounters or conversations beyond a few things. I found myself barrelling through dialogue trees and skipping lots of cues because I can't really be bothered to listen to everyone say the same thing again... I dunno, should I keep going in this way, or is it a waste of time? Maybe give it a while and play again?

I'm enjoying this a lot more now, now that I've figured out some of the mechanics and how to progress through the checks. Also, I've found some tasks where the wiring really does move me. I will say that it's hard to fully commit to role play, and the minmax urge can be hard to resist (thankfully I have the thought that gives you extra XP for Commie responses).

Finished!

As to dog latin's point: I agree that the narrative pace slams into a wall at the end, and as far as murder mysteries go, having the two most damning suspects not even in the picture until lateish in the game is unconventional -- and I had quite a few additional skill points left over that I hadn't spent yet.

BUT, I was still transfixed by the exchange with the Deserter, for reasons aesthetic (that voice) and for the cautionary tale that (I think?) the game was trying to tell? Like, I was trying to be a pinko, but then comes this comrade with revolutionary bona fides, washing away all the ultraleftist posturing that I'd been engaged in prior... but he's basically a fascist, an example of this idealized past, a symbol of Communism done right that's incredibly seductive and evil.

The UI sux though.

lol ah hell the spoilers.

this game is pretty clunky on the switch - it lags, you can see graphics loading, it has full-on crashed a couple of times (which i don't think i've ever seen happen on a switch game at all before) - and there's so much loading! there's a part where you have to go back and forth between two characters to compare their stories, and they're in the same building, but there are three load points in between them, and it takes so long just to travel from one character to the other!

that being said, i love this game to point that i don't even care about all of that. it's so good and fun and weird. it looks really nice when you zoom in all the way, but i have to keep it mostly zoomed out most of the time so i can see where i'm going and what's around me.

Yeah, that's partly why I caved and got it for the PS4, though god knows when I will actually play it.

The load times even on the PS4 were quite infuriating.

finally got a bug that kept me from advancing (nothing was interactable, including doors, so i got stuck in a space i couldn't leave) and the worse part it was in a section of the game where you can't save, so now i have to do that whole chunk over

i think i'm near the end though? really enjoyed the part of the game with the church and the electronic musicians

Yeah loved that bit. Shame about the bugs. I really wonder if I'll replay it and if I do whether it'll be a very different experience or not

YEKOKATAA THE PLACE TO BEEE!

Dialogue heavy RPG’s not typically my thing, so this being almost entirely dialogue was a tough sell, but I was looking for something low stress last Sunday afternoon and took the plunge. Totally grabbed me, found myself playing way too late into the night this week. Just finished it up. Easily the best writing in a game I’ve played. Kind of a Pynchon thing going. A+, glad I picked it up.

I played the “definitive” version. On PS5. Load times were super snappy (could see that being obnoxious otherwise) but still hit a few, thankfully not game-breaking, bugs along the way.

A TV series of Disco is in production on Amazon Prime

Well that is entirely unexpected, but I’m curious.

honestly i would take a whole season that is all about converting the beat down building into a ghostly EDM venue

somehow i never finished disco, but i'm close. i had a computer change just as i was near the end and don't really feel like starting over again.

Easily the best writing in a game I’ve played

same. i have never so consistently smiled or laughed or just paid attention to writing in a video game before. It's hard to pull off for 20 hours! the breadth and depth of it is very impressive.

The church/club section was definitely my favorite bit. Once that peaked I honestly would’ve been totally satisfied if the game ended right there. But there were some great things to come. Loved the phasmid stuff.

I picked the brainy path, seemed like the obvious choice for a dialogue driven game, but I am super curious about how this plays out as a physical character. Probably run through it again down the line.

yeah, it would be nice to just run over the big racist dude who blocks the bridge pretty early on.

that reminds me, though, that the only way the writing/story occasionally lets me down is the caricatures of the different paths you can go down, communism, fascism, the union, etc, are sometimes just a little too exaggerated and oversimplified. i think it works for the most part, though, because in general, the game does a great job of making you feel a little bad about every decision you make, like everything you do is both kind of a good decision but also clearly not what you should be doing, all the time. it's so fucking good

Measurehead (lol) is just very committed to his race realist ideology

did anyone else play the shameful way i did? if there was some kind of important skill check and i had a reasonably good chance of passing but instead failed, i'd re-load and do it again until it worked

:(

Oh totally. I was rarely onboard with any of the didactic political paths and the game makes a point of calling out the dangers of centrism and/or not choosing sides all the same. Like there aren’t really “good” options most of the time, it’s a big mess, everything’s challenged. It kinda rules.

I still ended up as a maybe half assed communist, apocalyptic art cop.

That was an xp to Karl’s previous post, but yes, I scummed and reloaded constantly to pass a check.

Why I mentioned how great it was that load times were zippy on PS5 lol.

I wouldn’t be able to stomach it, but seriously interested in how the game plays out as a full on fascist, racist meathead. Surely all points lead to some same-ish kinda endpoint, but I wonder what kinds of divergence are built into this thing.

What’s great is I can perfectly imagine Kim hating your guts in that scenario and constantly talking shit in the most moderate way

Kim is one of the best sidekicks in game history, although it is difficult to directly compare them to like, Luigi

Haha, for real, I was bummed on the days Kim wasn’t around. Dude was my ROCK.

I know it's possible to offend Kim and he disappears for the rest of the day, but I'm not sure if you can keep doing that

Playing this and really enjoying it. I’m on day 4 and haven’t had a drink yet - is that bad? Anyway I love everything about this game. Just resolved the church disco situation.

Recently finished this, it absolutely rules and is one of the most engrossing gaming experiences I've ever had

So it turns out that most of the original creators of Disco Elysium have been involuntarily pushed out of the company, including Robert Kurvitz, the lead designer and writer(!)

This is super fucked up, but unfortunately not particularly surprising for the indie games industry. https://t.co/Op1R46drgJ

— Joachim (@JDespland) October 1, 2022

Every week I have a moment of sadness realising there is no game like this and that I cannot play it again for the first time.

Church disco situation is a classic in a game of classics. I think Evrart Claire saying “Harry” is the best part of the game though. An Evrart Claire x Phoenix Attorney type crossover would be my dream game.

A friend gave me this game as a gift (PS4 hard copy that I'll play on PS5), so I guess I'll have to play it now. Hoping it will be a fun game to go through with my wife, after we finish Inscryption (been taking that verrry slowly, only just got to act 2).

Excellent wife game. Wish I could rope mine into single player games

Just got this to play on my 8yo's Switch when she's asleep. Very barely into the game but enjoying it greatly, though I have died numerous times already because I didn't understand how to raise my health from 1 point and thus keeled over after kicking heavy curtain, etc. I do feel it could restart you after death from just before the thing you did that killed you, though maybe I have taken more of the arcane backstory onboard by clicking around every point of interest in the bookstore four or five times.

I absolutely love the fact that if you min/max your character, you are vulnerable to some of the absolute silliest ways to lose a game imaginable (at one point I lost the will to continue because I put on a cost that was too dirty)

yup!

I hadn't played for a while and tried making a character that was uh, not physically inclined, and managed to accidentally electrocute myself by trying to turn on the ceiling fan in the first 30 seconds

Started this last night, created a mostly average character and in an hour we got as far as the ground floor of the hostel. I think my wife bailed, the amount of dialogue makes the pace too slow for two people (with different reading/processing speeds). While normally dialogue (and especially the process of exhausting dialogue options) is my least favorite part of a video game, and it appears to be the entire game here, it's obviously extremely well-done and I think I'm going to keep playing on my own.

I do like the skill checks/dice rolls, it really gives that feeling of playing D&D without the awkwardness of having to play D&D with people.

Yeah it starts slow but gets weirder and more interesting as you go. Kinda felt like reading a book more than playing a game.

I had a blast playing a character with high Inland Empire and Shivers skills; it heightened the weirdness and gave my investigator a real Dale Cooper vibe, w/r/t strange intuitions and picking up on vibrations.

I also recommend inland empire as a main skill - if you're going to play a game that's heavily influenced by twin peaks and lynch, might as well see what they got imo

to anyone playing the game for the first time, though, i highly recommend starting with an extra point in Endurance, which directly ties into your health. it is not fun to die while looking at a ceiling fan after reading half an hour of text at the beginning of the game

Or… IS IT?

it's one of those things that is very fun in abstract

Lol, at least I made it past the ceiling fan boss. I'll try to play it weird.

i think the bummer about dying to the ceiling fan boss is having to go through all the dialogue at the beginning again, without a way to skip. i get why it works that way - the skills you choose at the very beginning probably change how that opening dialogue goes (?), but holy crap it's pretty demoralizing

it also makes you think that the rest of the game is also going to be filled with gotchas and gamebreaking decisions, but after that it's much more forgiving! (particularly if you're willing to cheat like me and reload a recent saved game when things when failing certain checks)

I made it past the ceiling fan but shortly afterward died of shame because Cuno made fun of me. I had to redo a lot of progress but I laughed the entire time

I blacked out crashing into the wheelchair lady, but I'm not sure if that counts as a death? Also not really sure how saving works yet, I haven't picked it back up since that first session.

why in god's name do you not simply come back to life just before you did the thing that deaded you? haven't had a chance to play it again since my first couple of hours on it, but i must admit the prospect of rerunning all the sections i'd already played through twice before isn't exactly making me salivate.

You can save your progress before you interact with things, in fact I’d say the game goes out of its way to encourage you to do so by murdering you in comically ludicrous ways

Oh, do you start at the beginning if you die without saving? Are there no auto-saves?

I’m pretty sure there are autosaves? I never relied on them, though. After death-by-Cuno I treated the game like it was Microsoft Word circa 2000 and hit save every 5 minutes or so

it's relatively easy to save once the game gets started for real. for some reason, though, they don't give you an autosave just before the ceiling fan boss, and it's sooooo early on, one of the very first non-text things that happens, that it's easy to forget to manually save

I treated the game like it was Microsoft Word circa 2000 and hit save every 5 minutes or so

same here and heavily recommended

you can do a little save scumming as a treat, but anything short of death should be accepted and moved on from imo

there are at least a couple moments where you can really piss off Kim unintentionally because your character is simply incapable of being competent

I’m pretty sure there are autosaves? I never relied on them, though. After death-by-Cuno I treated the game like it was Microsoft Word circa 2000 and hit save every 5 minutes or so

henceforth Dan you shall be my disco guru

Ok I'm fine with failure, I just don't want to die and have to re-do a bunch (this isn't Dark Souls, lol). I'll check out the save system on PS5.

I finished Day 1, and apparently I'm a "sorry cop" (I have a hard time playing these games like an asshole) with a side of paranormal communism. It's certainly an achievement in terms of the writing and style, although some of it still feels a bit like busy work (go talk to everyone, trigger the right thing to progress, etc) in a way that makes me a little antsy. I'll probably keep going slowly throughout the year, it's hard to pick up for just a few minutes (on PS5 at least). And I'll probably get sidetracked by the pure dumb fun of the upcoming RE4 remake.

New update lets you make your own scenes and dialogue? Crazy, I hope that's the hot new meme format.

(midway through Day 2 now, got the body down and finished some side quests, figuring out how to progress next)

(OK now seeing the whole thing going on with the creators and the company, that's too bad)

Dis game got me stressing about virtual rent
I’m not interested in making a living

Beautiful Iraqi review of the beautiful Disco Elysium pic.twitter.com/VVgiE5bQWT

— Zett Jukassa survived and died on Alderaan (@Zett_Jukassa) July 25, 2023

this is really cool. i'm working so hard to try and love this incredibly fucked up life which was, five years ago, my worst nightmare, and the best parts of it just aren't anything i know how to explain to anybody who hasn't lived it.

i love my friend who reaches out to me every day to say "hi", even when she's feeling awful. i love whenever i see another Birdie Wing meme. I love when my girlfriend comes over and we don't talk about our emotions, we just cook dinner together. I love the little ironic catchphrases we have, like Really Good Ally or There Were No Signs. I love girldick. I love the car my girlfriend's next door neighbors drive, a Subaru pickup with two huge trans flags trailing out the cab. I love that the most offensive thing about that car is that the custom plate ("TRNS UWU") is a California plate. I love the trans bus driver who drives the nine. I love how every grocery store clerk here just calls everyone "my friend", not just because they don't know other people's pronouns, but because it doesn't really matter.

I could go on forever. I should play more Disco Elysium.

Picked this up again yesterday. Last save was July... Found a woman to date but was advised to explore the coast first

Really enjoying my first playthrough of this, even if it is making me feel like a hopeless dumbass (much like point-and-click games always do). Just survived the shootout and it was an absolute shitshow.

I forgot about this game. I haven't played any games for ages, I didn't really have a clue what I was doing when I played this though so I probably already fucked it up. I don't even think I've got to a shootout tbh. I already got shamed to death by Cuno

Cuno is a little punk. Brilliant game though. Want to go back and replay it with different stats and politics. I recall playing it on Windows, curious if there's a Mac version now

There is

It is a little difficult to make progress sometimes - I guess I mainly resolved that by talking to people a lot.

I love the little details of the alternate Earth, reminds me of Wings of Honneamise a little

I Think maybe my only complaint about this game is that it's too easy and tempting to "game" it so you can exhaust almost all the dialogue options. I have only really played through it all once, and then started a new game with a totally different kind of build (a big unga-bunga strength build that let me lay-out Measurehead in one go), but ultimately I wasn't finding too much difference in the two playthroughs. Would anyone with more experience say that's not true?

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/game-development/for-a-while-it-seemed-like-miracles-were-possible-and-with-them-redemption-a-follow-up-to-the-legendary-disco-elysium-might-have-been-ready-to-play-within-the-next-yearzaums-devs-loved-it-management-canceled-it-and-laid-off-the-team/

The ongoing clusterfuck that is ZA/UM post-Disco Elysium, the money people messing with the structure, etc. means we'll probably never get anything as intriguing from that entity, but who knows?

This part is interesting:
That last canceled game, described as "a spin-off about one of the most beloved characters in Disco Elysium" and spearheaded by one of the first game's principle writers, wowed other teams at the studio in an internal demo at the end of last year.

Sad that we'll never get Cuno: The Game now

Haha

I bet it was the other cop. Who else?

I am impressed by that URL

unique urls are important

my brain has been ruminating on the "who else?" question and I keep thinking
MEASUREHEAD

(oh no)

Haha oh no indeed

not a fan of the real time mechanic, the game isn't real life. I want to just digitally chill by the waterfront

Evret Claire undoubtedly the best character in this game full of best characters

I'll have to replay this in a while as I obviously missed out on stuff - I never got to meet the light-bending guy or the strange lady who bought my gun. Anyway what an amazing game. I'm surprised at how sad I felt about that cranky old soldier...

Who the fuck is evret Claire

I can't spell.

Mega Rich Light-Bending guy was great. Nice little dialogue telling Mr. Claire about it too

Finished it today. Banger obv.

I have a really weird false memory of it first coming out long before 2019 though. We're talking mid-00s. Or is that just my Shivers going haywire?

Dropped this almost as soon as I posted above two years ago, probably due to the constant brokenness on Switch. Picked this up again a week or so ago and am loving it. Are there more games like this out there, esp for Switch? Will definitely give it multiple playthroughs I think.

I get the impression it's pretty unique

I love the bit with the hipster creative who was made permanently homeless because he locked himself out the house.

Ha, yes! Made me think of Burt Lancaster in the Swimmer

Anyway, am playing this like Harry wants to mend his ways, though I have dabbled in the occasional snort of speed or perihelion when I need to accomplish a dice-roll. He's died on me a couple of times and I just had the scene with the gunfight where most of the Hardie boys get shot. Be interested to know if a different playthrough would avoid that moment. I still haven't got me gun, though I know who has it and was going to apprehend them before the gunfight made everything bad.

A horrible mirror this game for my own internal dialogues, sometimes

I follow a Bsky account that posts fragments of text from the game, and it's all very haunting and bleak. I'm sort of up for replaying, but can't quite bring myself to do it.

I'm on a break because

it's not unexpected

the accuracy is a lot

wandering around at work mumbling Measurehead quotes

did anyone play ‘esoteric ebb’? looks like a kinda medieval DE

Yes, me. It is very DE in its format - you are a sad loser whose traits talk to you, often fucking you over in absurd ways. It is also quite political in a similar way to DE, but it's a lot simpler in its approach to those political topics. Also would say it's less mediaeval and more D&D fantasy, which obv takes tropes from mediaevalism but, y'know, it's not about history, it's about goblins. I had a great time with it, some very funny moments, good gameplay, very much worth a go, but DO NOT go into it expecting it to match up to DE.

A horrible mirror this game for my own internal dialogues, sometimes

― the Don King of donking (Noodle Vague)

I feel you on this. Still stand by my comments upthread that DE is much more grim than funny (and it is very funny).

the dragon that must be chased

in a way it's remarkable that the games I've played since have (just about) measured up to it - albeit I've been *incredibly* picky about which ones I've played

feel like user emil.y could probably advise well on where to take myself next, but here's a ranking of my nascent Steam library:

DE
Undertale
Return of the Obra Dinn
The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
The Excavation Of Hob's Barrow
Slay The Princess

All at least very good. But where can I find games with this level of writing? Especially with this level of grimly funny writing? I have friends who've advised me but besides all the above they've also recommended stuff that doesn't quite trip my sensors. Maybe I should just trust them...

ftr Pentiment doesn't run on my computer >:|

Don't know what's on PC but maybe

A Space for the Unbound
Danganronpa - this is crazy divisive and my brain is broken so I might be way off
Indika kind of annoys me but I think you might dig it

Dredge maybe too

None of those are as, um, portentous as DE but I don't know what is. If your main interest is things that are *writerly* and not necessarily gameplay forward then maybe look at the world of Visual Novels but again that stuff is pretty divisive

Oh you might get a kick out of Doki Doki Literature Club but you have to go in spoiler free

Appreciated, ty!

I like Writerly but I also very much like solving, making choices, responding to clues, feeling like I'm in a private tussle of wits and expectations with the game designer...I will research these later yes

Blue Prince then for puzzling

A lot of my other suggestions are more story/meta in terms of experience

esoteric ebb maybe

how are we feeling about the new ZA/UM game? ‘fuc dem scab bastards’ or ‘I’m installing day 1’

The Case of the Golden Idol and add-ons/follow-ups might be a good bet too, very different in style and without much in the way of nostalgia or whatever it is that DE captures but great puzzling and very atmospheric

similar in graphical style to Hob's Barrow too

ty all. have weighed it all up and decided to go for Scarlet Hollow even though it isn't finished yet

Ach, such a shame about Pentiment. Did you give Lorelei a go yet?

If you can stand a text adventure, my favourite from last year was Type Help, which you can try for free by following that link. As I said on the poll thread, it's being remade by the same people who remade Roottrees (which you might also enjoy for the Obra Dinn style puzzling and the slightly mysterious story), but I think the text adventure on its own is one of the best I've played. Puzzly and spooky.

Recently also enjoyed The Seance of Blake Manor - it's not quite up there with Elysium or Stanley Parable but I'd rate it alongside Hob's Barrow for quality story with a side order of puzzle (also yes, once more it is spooky).

You might also like some of the language-deciphering games that are out there: Heaven's Vault for character and story, or Chants of Sennaar for pure puzzles.

Danganronpa - this is crazy divisive and my brain is broken so I might be way off

― Wildfowler (Noodle Vague)

I really like the Danganronpa games and I am so fucking embarrassed about that fact. Not sure it would be imago fare, but I just want to admit my shame.

how are we feeling about the new ZA/UM game? ‘fuc dem scab bastards’ or ‘I’m installing day 1’

― ||||||||

Basically not going to support it... unless it turns out it's exceptional, in which case fuck it, throw my morals out of the window.

I would have bought The Seance Of Blake's Manor earlier if it ran on my system either :( the same friend who recommended me Barrow (user tangenttangent) recommended me that too. And she recommended me Chants of Sennaar! All squaring nicely...

2h into Scarlet Hollow, it's wonderful, a big step up on StP which is already great

Lorelei eh...okay...I might give Type Help a little go at some point soon too, ty!

Norco

Ah dang, system requirements can be a pisser. I have a mac but my bf lets me use his laptop for windows games (lots it still can't run as it's not a dedicated gaming machine), and he's also a massive nerd so we have a gazillion consoles too, hence my vastly increased gaming experience over the last few years.

If you like Type Help and don't find the fact that there are no graphics off-putting, I can recommend SO MANY good text adventures. The only problem is that thanks to our government, IFDB is geoblocking all UK users from the actual games (you can still use it as a database, and some games can be found elsewhere, but it's an absolute fucker).

Glad you're enjoying Scarlet Hollow! I love it. Btw strongly recommend doing a run with the 'talk to animals' trait if you're not already using that one.

I chose Keen Mind and Hot, what can I say

(obviously I'll try all of them, this feels like just about the most replayable game of all time)

I chose Keen Mind and Hot, what can I say

looooooool

i didn't know that about the IFDB

for fuck's fucking sake

I also very much like solving, making choices, responding to clues, feeling like I'm in a private tussle of wits and expectations with the game designer...

blue prince is what you want then

type help is getting a remaster as 'the incident at galley house' later this year fwiw

reports seem to be that zero parades is surprisingly excellent and manages to be its own thing instead of just being a second string disco elysium imitation. i'm curious and will probably get it on sale because i have other stuff to play for the moment.

some people seem to like esoteric ebb as a de-like so i guess that's worth looking into but i didn't find the demo compelling at all.

Will def consider Blue Prince yes, hopefully there's a narrative element to it (which I'm realising is probably important to me)

My first SH playthrough was incredible, devastating, joyous and terrifying. It's going to be one of the greatest things ever made and I've barely scratched its surface

there is a strong narrative element to BP but it's scattered and mostly not on the surface

Ooh okay, that's good

I wonder about playing this through again. I was quite thorough on my first playthrough, so i'm wondering if a second one would be significantly different beyond a few dialogue options.

A little while ago I started a pure strength build and managed to knock out Measurehead in one punch.

All at least very good. But where can I find games with this level of writing? Especially with this level of grimly funny writing? I have friends who've advised me but besides all the above they've also recommended stuff that doesn't quite trip my sensors. Maybe I should just trust them...

ftr Pentiment doesn't run on my computer >:|

― imago, Wednesday, May 20, 2026 11:04 PM (six days ago)

how do you feel about mouthwashing lol

i got a friend who is very very enthusiastic about a particular brand of visual novels... her favorite stuff is doomed yuri, stuff like SIGNALIS and 1000xRESIST. i think she also likes, uh... heaven will be mine? "hypnospace outlaw", you might dig "hypnospace outlaw". idk, how do you feel about the classics? stuff like psychonauts? that's got great writing. or fallout: new vegas?

ummm, let me see.. "to the moon", fucking amazing writing on that, i kinda still need to play the followup games but i think they're probably good too. we're talking... that's kind of along the line of what's called "visual novels". "we know the devil", i fucking love "we know the devil", for instance. it's very short but excellent.

i also really like the writing in Spiritfarer, again it's not something i'd call _funny_ but i do think it's very uh... it's not a "doomy" game despite the subject matter, i don't think. very well written. "hatoful boyfriend"? maybe? idk how you'd feel about that one. it's kinda along the lines of doki doki literature club. there are definitely superficially "funny" elements to it, i mean, it's a pigeon dating sim so...

interactive fiction is one that i really used to play a lot and i lost touch with. emily short is, like, a legend now and i'm still like "oh yeah, she did galatea". there's this weird kind of divergent/convergent evolution with IF and visual novels, at least in ludic terms. in storytelling terms western "IF" tends to focus less on visuals. i remember... i can't remember the name haha but i tried a couple of games from the IFComp a couple years ago... ok I looked it up, it's called LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST. haha looking up the rankings in the results summarizes it well, it made 11th place (out of 67) but the ranking curve is what's interesting, as opposed to the other games near the top of the list, which tend to have a curve peaking around 8 and 9, the mode of this game (the most common score) is literally 10... it ranks where it does because there are a lot more low and VERY Low scores than anything else on this section of the list.

i've actually for a long time been wanting to start a thread on how excellent the writing in the "powerwash simulator" games is. it's really fascinating to me because of the _subtlety_ of the writing. are there people out there complaining about powerwash simulator's "woke agenda"? i don't really follow discourse lol. these games are woke as fuck though and the character writing here is really fucking good imo. the rec for chants of sennaaar made me think of a video i saw that recommended scriptorium: master of manuscripts, which just came out and i haven't played much but which sounds AMAZING.

probably _my_ favorite out game in terms of writing, though, just incredible game, is "kentucky route zero". god. such a fucking great game. anyway here's this post in list form:

MUST TRY
Tux and Fanny
Kentucky Route Zero

CLASSICS
Psychonauts
Fallout: New Vegas

OTHERS
Mouthwashing
Spiritfarer
LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST
We Know the Devil
Hatoful Boyfriend
To the Moon
Powerwash Simulator and Powerwash Simulator 2

HAVEN'T PLAYED MUCH
Hypnospace Outlaw
SIGNALIS
1000XRESIST
Scriptorium

final recommendation: my single most trusted source for games is the recommendations by the steam curator Wholesome Games. they're never going to recommend something like Mouthwashing or LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST (which isn't actually on steam i don't think), but the stuff they DO recommend is often very well-written, they recommend a lot of top-notch indie stuff that slips under the radar of a lot of other folks.

emil.y, since i haven't kept up with interactive fiction at all since, the early '00s, i'd love to hear any particular recommendations of yours!

oh shit i left Little Inferno off that list, sorry Little Inferno :( i distinctly remember writing about it in my post and i guess i must have deleted that bit and never added it back. it doesn't initially seem like a story focused game but there's a VERY LONG coda that's basically all story, i'd call it more than half the game. i haven't played the more recent update, despite FULLY INTENDING TO.

there is a strong narrative element to BP but it's scattered and mostly not on the surface

― Wildfowler (Noodle Vague)

Yes. The question of whether or not there would be a strong enough narrative hook was huge for me before going into Blue Prince, and the demo didn't give a strong indication that there would be, but I definitely feel like there was a very rich story in there, often hidden but always bubbling away under the surface. Narrative is deeply important to me and I feel like it delivered well. I said on the dedicated thread but I was playing it together with my boyfriend, so our play experience was slow and we ended up only playing to the first win condition, but that was honestly satisfying enough! I am tempted to try to explore the other layers on my own, tbh.

I wonder about playing this through again. I was quite thorough on my first playthrough, so i'm wondering if a second one would be significantly different beyond a few dialogue options.

― rameau in the main room (dog latin)

I did this recently, just feels like a Disco Elysium kind of time period. I was also very thorough on my first playthrough, so I don't think I experienced anything notably different, but I did allow my rolls to fail much more (I was terrible about savescumming the first time). Went for mystical over smart this go around, which gave me some different options and dialogue. Possibly the main thing that stayed the same was that I couldn't bring myself to play any other way than communist, not even ultraliberal, never mind fascist. My loyalty to Mazov cannot be swayed. Apparently if Kim gets injured there's a way to have Cuno be your partner, but I won that roll so didn't get to explore that.

how do you feel about mouthwashing lol

I keep wondering if I should try it, but it just seems so... edgelordy. Would you make a case for it?

emil.y, since i haven't kept up with interactive fiction at all since, the early '00s, i'd love to hear any particular recommendations of yours!

― Kate (rushomancy)

Well, you mention Emily Short in your post, and I would say anything by her is a mark of quality, but especially Counterfeit Monkey. I think you specifically, and quite possibly imago, would love Eat Me by Chandler Groover - it's a limited parser game and the writing is just INCREDIBLE, very, uh, sensory. His Midnight. Swordfight. is much shorter but similar in tone and quality (seriously though, play Eat Me, you will love it). If you want something sad, both Of Their Shadows Deep by Amanda Walker and The Absence of Miriam Lane by Abigail Corfman will get you sniffling. Ryan Veeder's games are always fun, love him as a creator. Oh! Cannery Vale by Hanon Ondricek, I remember that one being wild.

Also, you mentioning Hypnospace Outlaw reminded me that I used to always rep for Digital: A Love Story by Christine Love. Haven't thought about that one in ages but I bet it stands up!

Digital is still great but definitely on the border where IF and VN meet

I keep wondering if I should try it, but it just seems so... edgelordy. Would you make a case for it?

― emil.y, Tuesday, May 26, 2026 7:11 AM (forty-four minutes ago)

sure. framing matters - when talking about extreme content, it's not just about what a game says, but how it says it. honestly i'd say that in its themes and setting "mouthwashing" isn't a million miles from "Analogue: A Hate Story" - ultimately it's a study in the effects of patriarchy and capitalism on human beings, _especially_ women. of course the risk of a lot of these games is that of "preaching to the choir", which i _don't_ think "mouthwashing" is. the upside of games like these is that if done well they can be really validating, they can be a mirror through which we can understand and emotionally deal with the fucked up world we live in. that's the way i've always related to "edgelord" content. sometimes in doing that i'm cutting against the grain of the authorial narrative, and sometimes i'm going with the grain. if the creators and i have the same approach to the material, it can be cathartic in a good way.

for the record i do think "mouthwashing" is a better-written game than "analogue". that's not me putting down christine love, who i think very highly of as a creator.

gonna spoiler this cuz it's not directly related, but thoughts on "perfect blue" (with spoilers for that film):

i went to see "perfect blue" in theaters with a friend for the first time a couple days ago and talked about it and she reacted EXTREMELY emotionally badly to it. she hadn't really seen any other Kon films except for Paprika when it came out, which is a LONG time ago, and looked at "perfect blue" as an example of the pitfalls of "men writing women". in particular she was unhappy that the movie boiled down to a fight between Mima and Rumi, that Rumi was "revealed" as the "killer", and that the film suggested that this was because of Rumi's 'dissociative identity disorder'. My friend is a singlet, but in our community, plurality is very common. my friend also didn't like that Me-Mania was presented as being physically deformed.

my take on the film was very different... though i thought it was flawed and ambiguous, ultimately i saw the film condemning the way idol culture fetishizes youth, the trauma it inflicts on people, including rumi, a failed idol trying to live her dreams vicariously. it echoes a lot of the themes i saw of generational abuse in Akira - the larger issue is not that rumi is a woman, but that both rumi and the men rumi kills are replicating patriarchal patterns of abuse. a lot of the ambiguity i think comes from the dialogue in the "show-within-a-show" "double bind", which takes the form of a shitty patriarchal "crime drama". you know, 'edgelordy' in a kind of, like, SVU way. it has all these tropes of, like, saying that the killer is a 'man who wants to be a woman', and then pivots, when the story starts to center around mima's character, to say that the killer has 'dissociative identity disorder' - rumi definitely does have some psychological thing where she has this persistent belief that she's the 'real' mima, but i think that's very different from the way it's presented in the film, which is much more similar to (the infamously misogynist) alfred hitchcock's coda of "psycho". actually writing it out i _do_ think it's interesting that the killer switches from "man-who-wants-to-be-a-woman" to "dissociative-identity-disorder" when the (again, very clearly misogynist) writer changes the story plot to center around mina. it says something about the ways patriarchy medicalizes and pathologizes the effects of the trauma it inflicts on us.

---

i was looking through my unplayed games and ran across once upon a jester (which is on ridiculously good sale for a game that just came out, i feel dumb paying full price for a game i haven't played but also money is fake and i had the fake money in my bank account so) and wondered if that was a game i should recommend and it's in a bundle with "techno banter" which is a game where you're a bouncer in a berlin club and you decide whether or not to let people in and it's got a dialogue-based battle system, like the swordfights in Monkey Island except presumably Orson Scott Card had nothing to do with "techno banter". anyway i mean lj if you don't know lucasarts seriously so many of those games have great writing. like grim fandango too. really tim shafer...

ok i just found out about shafer's credit on Star Wars Episode I Racer ("never actively tried to sabotage the project") lol

yeah i definitely know Digital and its followup Analogue, love went on to do Ladykiller in a Bind which I played a little of and was interesting but didn't blow my mind or anything and then "Get in the Car, Loser!" which i don't think i've played. i didn't know that she published a novel last year, which seems pretty interesting. honestly my bias is towards work in a Certain Demographic, i also love the writing on Anna Anthropy's old games haha. i do find VNs really interesting, it's not the milieu i come from but something like "white album 2" is something i probably should play at some point. and of course like, uh... what's the acclaimed anime where john titor is a character... steins;gate, that started out as a VN. most of the VNs amelie doree talks about in her videos aren't games i'd _play_, i'm not really interested in eroge (i guess L.L.L.L.L. is probably some sort of eroge but it doesn't have graphics which hits different), but, i mean... you talk about danganronpa, VNs often have the same kind of strengths and weaknesses.

the last IF game i really remember playing in loving before, idk, shit changed for me, was varicella, i really liked that one, people seem to mostly not remember that one these days even though "photopia" was a big fuckin' deal in the community when it came out. "photopia" didn't interest me but "varicella", that one i liked.

Will def consider Blue Prince yes, hopefully there's a narrative element to it (which I'm realising is probably important to me)

it has a narrative beneath the surface and it's compelling enough for a while but sort of spirals out unsatisfyingly and goes in some odd directions. it's one of the weakest aspects in the end though i wouldn't say it's terrible or anything. if you go into it wanting a narrative more than anything else you will be disappointed. if you want ~80 hours of a very elaborate puzzle box that happens to have an ok narrative as part of the puzzles then you will be absolutely delighted