A game I enjoyed today
Nov. 8th, 2017 06:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enemyofperfectThe Uncle Who Works for Nintendo by Michael Lutz, who in discussing the game creation process gave a beautiful summary both of why I love it so much and why horror fans might love it less:
It's thoughtful, humane, and -- depending on the endings you collect -- hopeful. Plus it provides thorough content notes before the start of play, which I always appreciate.
Almost as much as I love the game, I love the author's notes in which Lutz both touches on his unfondly-remembered 4chan days and talks seriously about the real and troubling danger of Gamergate. Talk about a character arc! It's especially interesting to me given that the consensus among players and the author himself seems to be that the branch where you select a female best friend is by far more interesting than the one where you pick a male one, because confronting misogyny -- internalized or otherwise -- is so crucial to the game's themes.
Anyway, I'm really glad I played this game! I was initially wary, because I first saw it mentioned in relation to the visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club!, which is well-written and thoughtful, but also immensely and rather determinedly disturbing.
(Speaking of which, for anyone else who was traumatized:![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Riona's Memory Error uses one last narrative twist to find happy endings for at least one or two of the characters. As someone who wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to sleep after getting DDLC's standard ending, I appreciate this very much.)
But where Doki Doki Literature Club! permits no ending brighter than bittersweet, The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo actively encourages the player to keep looking for a better way. And while both are definitely valid artistic choices -- I know which one I personally prefer.
Assuming I've done my job correctly, what I've made is a horror game that, if it is in the least bit scary when you first play it, manages to get less frightening each subsequent time.
It's thoughtful, humane, and -- depending on the endings you collect -- hopeful. Plus it provides thorough content notes before the start of play, which I always appreciate.
Almost as much as I love the game, I love the author's notes in which Lutz both touches on his unfondly-remembered 4chan days and talks seriously about the real and troubling danger of Gamergate. Talk about a character arc! It's especially interesting to me given that the consensus among players and the author himself seems to be that the branch where you select a female best friend is by far more interesting than the one where you pick a male one, because confronting misogyny -- internalized or otherwise -- is so crucial to the game's themes.
Anyway, I'm really glad I played this game! I was initially wary, because I first saw it mentioned in relation to the visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club!, which is well-written and thoughtful, but also immensely and rather determinedly disturbing.
(Speaking of which, for anyone else who was traumatized:
But where Doki Doki Literature Club! permits no ending brighter than bittersweet, The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo actively encourages the player to keep looking for a better way. And while both are definitely valid artistic choices -- I know which one I personally prefer.
