Goal	Status
🏆 Finished game	✅
💯 Completionist	❌
📋 High Score	N/A
📺 Video	❌

Review

There's no sugarcoating it, this is a bad game. There's so much that doesn't work narratively, mechanically, technically and artistically. It's by any definition a mess of a game. But I finished it and I remember it because it's a singularly, unselfconsciously weird piece of art. It's one of the strangest games I've ever played, and by abandoning pretty much all the rules of game making, this stands out as a rare artifact, a crystalization of one developer's totally unique set of influences and ideas, unconcerned with commercial norms. I'll always remember York, Emily, George, Thomas, the pot lady, the punk store clerk, the rich weirdo in the skull mask, his assistant who translates his inaudible mumblings into cryptic rhyming clues. I'll always feel fondly when I think of the weird shouting conversation at the giant table, the quest for one particular squirrel keychain, the cans of pickles, the clockwork routines of the Greenvale citizens, the car trip monologues about whatever movies happen to be on York's mind at the moment. And a million other little surprising and delightful details.

That the plot swerves into some pretty shocking queerphobia (arguably transphobia—not my place to litigate) at the end of the game puts a big damper on my enthusiasm, and I hope this twist can be attributed to ignorance rather than hate. I don't want to believe Swery had hateful intentions, but I can't know what's in his heart. All I can do is acknowledge the harm and try to accept my complicated feelings.

Score

❤️❤️️🖤🖤🖤

← Home