[archived from a cohost post, originally made on january 16, 2024]
did this game need to exist? probably not. do I want it to exist? also probably not. in the words of my partner, doll,
i feel like we need to have a moratorium on hamfisted retreads of an occurrence at owl creek bridge
this game is an awkward narrative platformer. it begins with the conceit that you start on a camping trip, a pair of girls spending time together, before suddenly, one of them goes missing. the other, j.j., stands up, confused and afraid, and begins searching for her. before long, she is struck by lightning, killed instantly, and then given the power to revive by the (ostensible) doctor depicted in the above graffiti.
from this point on, j.j. can't die via obvious means, only being truly vulnerable after having all of her limbs removed. instead, the pain inflicted on her simply reduces the number of limbs she has to use, or affects her in other ways (eg. when she's lit on fire, she's made unable to drop more than a couple feet without breaking her legs, and when she's concussed, the entire world flips upside down). through these mechanics you slowly find your way through this island, looking for emily and being chased by a dangerous monster wielding a box cutter.
all the while, as you progress, you are texted by a stuffed animal who j.j. was holding in the moment she was struck by lightning (named F.K., because this is a swery joint and he has running jokes to maintain), who bothers j.j. and lets her vent a bit, but rarely ever contributes anything. every time they text you, though, you get more text messages from emily and j.j.'s mom, in which the fact that j.j. is trans and closeted from her mom is eventually revealed.
the "climax", the dramatic high this game aims for, it seems, is catching up with emily at the clocktower, a place where she and j.j. made a promise to each other long ago, finally climbing up as she wonders whether we were only born to have sex, and why any of this matters... and you find her hanging there.
j.j. eventually joins her, her motivations explained by a suicide letter she finds at the clocktower's peak; "if it's been this awful to live like this for 19 years, I don't see how it's going to get better." (spoiler: it can always get better.)
one hundred years later exposits the screen, as it pulls out to view the sky and run a montage meant to evoke the passing of time, as emily fades to ash, and as j.j. seems to do the same. but she regenerates. she can't die here, not in this place.
she slips from the noose, and crashes into a building at the foot of the clocktower, half-formed and unable to say anything with the omnipresent "either interact with objects or call out for emily like it's luigi's mansion" button. emily stumbles into the room, and then runs away, leading the monstrous j.j. to lurch after her. when she finally catches up, emily's got a shotgun and blasts her with it, leading her to fall into the clutches of the box cutter creature that was chasing her before, and then turn into an even larger version of it. which. you control? for some reason? and you have to stun emily with a ground slam and suck her into your body, for some reason, to prompt F.K. to get you to go "hey emily isn't dead she's right by your side"
j.j. breaks free of the monstrosity and is forced through one more chase sequence, in which her acceptance of the pain makes her recover from injuries instantly, and finds her way into a position where she can kill the embodiment of her desire to self-harm, the box cutter demon. she does so by stabbing it with a lightning rod.
she wakes up back at the campsite, running back to where she was struck by lightning at the start, to find emily waiting there. the moose-headed doctor shows up again. lightning strikes and the Oh So Subtle Symbolism falls away to reveal THE LIGHTNING STRIKES WERE DEFIBRILLATOR SHOCKS, WOW SO DEEP (this is sarcasm)
upon waking up, j.j. is greeted by a doctor who informs her (now looking and sounding like the pre-transition person she is) that F.K. was the thing that stopped the bleeding from her suicide attempt enough that she made it. (also correct me if I'm wrong but I do not think defibrillation is something that is done on someone dying of blood loss and nothing else. anyway.) emily shows up and hugs j.j., and then, in the most baffling and egregious part of this game, somehow, j.j. says something along the lines of "I needed that bad dream I had, I finally understand who I am now".
so hey, like, what the fuck is with all of that? the narrative? trite. the gameplay? a chore. the ending? fucked. why is this game? the writers are apparently swery himself and another person who has no other credits on mobygames, and like. yeah. yeah these are two cis dudes writing about trans people in some really tour-cis-ty ways.
this game opens with the message "this game was made with the belief that nobody is wrong for being what they are." and that gave me hope but jesus this felt like an exceptionally grim bad joke even before THE TRANS WOMAN TURNS INTO A MONSTER THAT ATTACKS HER GIRLFRIEND? I feel like I'm going insane but I just. like, this passes a bar people have, apparently. have the trans girl's mom be a transphobic control freak about her child who wants her to undergo conversion therapy, mention that the closeted trans girl has girl clothes, have some people make fake profiles with pictures of her online, and squeeze the pity out of the audience along with the blood from her corpse as you are forced to deal with the fact that this game is fixated on tearing this woman apart for all of its game mechanics. fuck's sake.
having dealt with two games recently, caligula + caligula 2, which flipped over the spectrum of transphobic vs solid trans rep so hard it's a goddamn miracle, I know people can change. I know people can improve. but given that literally all I have heard about deadly premonition 2 is its transphobia, I think that ship has sailed, a bit.
I'm glad this game was short. I don't think it's worth playing.