Adios is a morbid slice of life, as ephemeral and sensitive as its subject matter would suggest. It's a rare pleasure to play a story-based game that doesn't feel the need to run for tens of hours and pad itself out with melodrama and/or Exciting Gameplay Experiences, but instead contents itself with exploring a single character's life and relationships, drifting in and out of vignettes of his life.

It's a touching piece, and while the "criminal underworld as exploration of man's nature" is a trope I've long since tired of in film, it's rare to see one so fixed on the periphery, so uninterested in bombast, and specifically focussed in the life, losses and priorities of a single man. In its ~80 minute runtime, where the average game may have just gotten to the point of giving its hero whatever justification it needs for them to spend the next few tens of hours murdering fodder, Adios manages to explore the fragile nature of being at macro and micro-level; public/performative expectations of grief; hobbies as mindfulness; and the conflict between personal relationships and power dynamics. Amongst other things. That it does all of this without feeling like a parable at any point is all the more impressive.

It's a game with a lot to say, but no conclusions. And it's distressing for me to realise just how rare that is. I can't wait to see what Mischief do next.

(also, the dialogue and voice work throughout was fantastic, and I will never tire of games where I can pick up and rotate items at will; thanks, Shenmue, for setting off that lifelong source of pleasure in games. More in-game handling of inanimate objects, that what I say!)