Recent reviews by Chimerrata

Very fun! Easy to keep playing.

The Beginner's Guide asks the question wether or not we can engage in a conversation with an author through their work. While the answer it reaches is "no", perhaps it's just a poor communicator.

The game can either be seen as a character study, or a larger critique on the nature of art. It doesn't really work as either. A few moments of thought as to character actions and motivation both muddles the central relationship of the drama to the point of incomprehensibility, and paints the true author insert character, Coda, in the most irritatingly narcissitic way possible (when a few moments of though gives Coda a number of flaws the game glazes right over.)

If we view it as a critique on the other hand, it's sloppy, inconsistent, and I find it's message just a little bit gross. Sometimes it argues for death of the author: the work doesn't indicate the authors mental state. But it also champions the idea that any sort of interpretation is impossible, even of the more straightforwardly symbolic games, because we're not the author, and only the author knows the meaning. It's Schrodingers Author! Are they alive or dead? The game also has the incredibly self serving "tortured artist" narrative, not so much in the process of creating art, or the nature of being an artist, but in having to deal with an audience. That contempt, and sense of inflated self worth permeates the entire game. It's also undermined: Sure, Davey (audiences in general) is stupid, and flawed, and selfish, but he's also RIGHT: Should art be distributed, it will have an audience, and an aritst is essentialy a communicator. An artist tries to get an idea into someones head by creating something, a code, that they hope will be decoded. If the art can't ever be decoded, it's ineffective art. If an artist doesn't show his art to anyone, sure, he can take pleasure, in creating, but that's it. That's only half of the artistic process, and typically leads to lazy, self indulgent art. Of course, theres a place for art as a personal escape, but the game conflates that with all of game design, a field almost always with an audience, and commonly with a commercial element (as this game has.) Hell, THIS game attempts to encode a message to be decoded by the audience. It's an inherently self destructive work. If it had more of a sense of humor, and was this self destructive on purpose, you could call it Dada.

I can't really wholeheartedly reccomend it, not on any complaints of gameplay or structure, but merely because I don't think the ideas were fully fleshed out. I had high hopes for this game, and I can certainly see where a lot of good ideas started, but to me at least, the game failed at telling a message not worth expressing.

I laughed, I cried, I cried, I cried, I cried. Just play it. Don't read any more. Just play it.

Its fun, if a tad repetitive. I have fun playing with friends!

Spooky in it's emptiness, infuriating in it's difficulty, and strangely addictive. The game is destined to become a classic on steam, to be repeated in bundle after bundle.