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Hello. I apologize.. I am the last person on Earth to play this game, and everyone was forced to walk on egg shells around me regarding it because I'm like "no spoilers c:". Unfortunately, even when people aren't trying to spoil Mouthwashing, they tend to talk about it's themes and substance to the point where I knew the twist/core of the story. Unfortunately, I feel as though knowing this spoiled a lot of the interest I could've gotten from the story of the game. Um, though I'm honestly not sure. It was really fantastic, well made game.
I did kind of put this game off knowing it wouldn't be one of my favorites though I did enjoy it. The visuals are awesome. The nightmare sequences are beautifully done though I do think some are unneccessary and overstay their welcome a bit (horse labyrinth). The game did genuinely make me feel fear at times (horse labyrinth, intro section, etc) and frustration at other times. By the end of the game, actually, fear I would've had at certain sections were gone because I was a bit tired of.. the dream sections. Which is strange right? I should love them. You know me. I think the core reason I don't connect with Mouthwashing is because exploring the psychological torment of that particular character interested me very little. So I kept going through these dream sections that were fantastic, but as they kept going, I just kind of took deep breaths and went "you know I get it already." If I was less frustrated with horse labyrinth, baby ultrasound labyrinth, I'd probably be fine. I actually think horse labyrinth is what did me in and baby ultrasound labyrinth was what really did me in HAHA.
The game is good. It was a nice experience. It was a good experience... I just fail to get much out of it. I hate men more maybe? I trust them less? I realize the beauty of low poly first person perspective? Hm, I don't know what's wrong with me. I actually like. Okay. Here we go. For real spoilers now.
It Didn't Hurt People Enough
Hours before playing Mouthwashing, I wrote in my diary entry "i have a lot of fears of getting pregnant against my will and not being able to do much about it, so it'd ease both of those worries." regarding the possibility of birth control. In fact, before, I specifically used the word 'rape' in that sentence but felt it was too harsh a word to use. This is actually one of biggest fears. Giving birth and being pregnant is my biggest fear. So playing as Jimmy in this game when I feel like the narrative doesn't directly focus on Anya and her suffering (which I realize is the point I KNOW) makes it hard for me to really connect the way the story wants me to. That is to say- the way Anya is handled isn't bad. It's just a lot about her suffering is left unsaid in game, but it is there narratively. There is So Much.
At one point, Swansea says he should've protected "the kid" but he's not even referring to Anya even, he's referring to Daisuke climbing in the vent and getting electrocuted and being in a near death state. And in his speech, like, his speech is definitely about what he did to Anya and his other actions onboard the ship, but like, it feels.. like it's not.. enough for me. Like I know her suffering, her closeness with Curly, and all that is a big plot point in the story, but the fact that we're locked to Jimmy's perspective most of the time, and like, even Curly, who is constantly called 'a better man' who protects Jimmy despite knowing he's a RAPIST, HOGLDFUGHJ. I don't know.It feels. painful. Like, it feels like.. I couldn't have written a story like this because I tend to have enough in humanity that I'd assume Swansea would fucking GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANYA BEING RAPED AND THEN KILLING HERSELF.
I guess I kind of like... I am well aware of the actions of evil of men. I know things like this happen in real life- part of the reason I'm considering going on birth control. And I guess, playing this game.. It just kind of made me go "huh, men really are the fucking worst." Curly laughs in his state or Jimmy imagines him laughing when he takes the gun that Anya had been hiding and kills Swanson, proving that Anya's fears would come to pass. And it just feels. There's so much about Anya actually. It kind of just makes me sick to my stomach. It's hard for me to really think. I know the narrative doesn't need to scream Anya's name, and a woman's pain is often silent. To be honest, men don't often come to her side and she does suffer alone. But I guess like.. I know that. I don't know.
I guess this game scared me. Having authority figures who should protect you let the worse possible thing happen to you is horrifying. And then he kills everybody in the process trying to hide his mistake and goes 'Curly they'll think you're a fuck up too,' and this fear makes Curly just hesitate and not stop Jimmy.
Anya says 'I have to believe our worst moments don't make us monsters' but does it matter if someone is really a monster if they take everyone down with them? Does someone's intent matter if they allow someone's wrecklessness and lack of humanity to spiral out of control- endangering everyone in the process? Jimmy still isn't depicted as the worst kind of person, and Swansea seems to view Jim's worst crime as being a coward. Is rape so normal to them that it doesn't cause them to view him as scum. Jim constantly fails to take responsibility, but can a jackass like him really understand what responsibility is in the first place?
I wonder if I wish we could've gotten a nightmare segment where Jimmy experienced the horror he wrought onto Anya. Or maybe I wish for a world where this game doesn't make me even more mistrustful.
I now have more thoughts after asking my friend who I steam shared the game from who said "I hope this hurts." Apparently, the dev was aiming it towards people in the industry (so the players specifically.) I think. It hurts even more now. It hurts so bad. That a tale like this has to exist. It hurts so bad. That people like the protagonist are playing the game. A lot of them won't even realize they're followiing the same path of Jimmy and Curly you know? Or maybe they do? Maybe they don't care. It hurts to know that you all exist. It's kinda funny to me that Jimmy ended up alone in space and Curly got sent out in a pod to probably float in oblivion forever while people in the industry gain wealth through suffering until they die. Most of them will never experience the horror Anya experienced, and I guess that's why Jimmy is never forced to acknowledge her personhood at all.
The final one I'll talk about for now is re:curse. re:curse is a game by devpalmer. It's endlessly interesting- to the point of me wanting to get VX Ace so I can go through the project files. It features Caroline, who appeals to me, a Glados lover (it makes sense if you play.) She's a virus in the shape of pierrot. At some point she explains why she took her form and says something along the lines of 'does the jingling of a pierrot's bells not please you?' SO REAL AND TRUE. Lots of really good lines in this game really.
I think it's fun and it features Joan (heart eyes). There's two endings. Both of them caused me to feel extreme amounts of sadness, especially after experiencing Caroline House, which is an executable that displays content based on some files in your game. This game makes me gooo brrrBRRRBRRRR... I highly recommend it.. And umm.. The door puzzles...... Well... There's not many, and they're pretty easy to do- provided you don't get a headache!
Next is Married In Red. I think Married in Red is the only other Studio Investigrave game I've played so far as the other ones are visual novels, and due to reading many vns recently, I'm taking a bit of a break from them. Married in Red was honestly fantastic. The art is spectacular, and I really enjoy the gameplay. It also reminded me of old gameshed games. The games UI is really beautiful, and I love Bok-su Go. The story is pretty predictable, but that doesn't take away from the fun of it. It's 2010s RPG horror in peak form to me. Fun art, cool sprites, murder, puzzles, memorization! Yay!
I'll probably replay it in the future when my memory of it has faded. I truly did have such a good time. I think it's also an interesting study in making a game that takes place in a smaller environment, as Married in Red takes place in a wedding venue with just a few rooms and a backyard.
Hello! It's been a while since I updated here. I had to read a lot of entries for the menhera vn jam, and originally I was going to write stuff down for all of them but by the end my brain had melted LOL. In the last weeks, my body also started having a series of strange health issues that made doing anything that required energy impossible, so now I've been playing video games. I'll log a few of them here and some I've played in the past because I've played many games since checks date... 11.21.23 lol. Probably not all tonight though. I'm super tired lately.
Since I've been in an RPG Maker mood and RPZinemaker is back, I've decided to check out games that were brought up among applicants. Games by Studio Investigrave were mentioned a lot,so I went to their itch.io page and looked through their things. I'm working pn two games that take place in winter, so I decided to play Cold Front for sweet inspiration. It was a fun game with cool mechanics. I don't think I've played an RPG Maker game with QTEs before. I looked through the files and saw she didn't even use a plugin for it, just used events and pictures, which is pretty awesome. There was also some 2.5D stuff which was nice to look at. Visually it was a very beautiful game.
The writing was fun. The characters were pretty over the top in a way that reminded me of webtoons I read when I was younger. It made me nostalgic. Actually the entire experience kind of reminded me of horror games I'd play as a kid on gameshed... The QTEs.. the big borders.. 2.5D.. It was nice. I could tell it was a gamejam game, but I'm still happy it was my first studio investigrave game.
It's really weird that it took me so long to sit down and play all of .flow. It might've been because one of my first exposures to Yume Nikki fangames was the wonderful but Large game Yume 2kki. I did play .flow once or twice at various times, but never got very far in either session. I was always worried about how difficult the maps were to navigate since the nexus only have four doors. I worried there were long interconnected worlds that I'd get lost in only for a chaser to wake me up.
I am happy to say .flow is designed in a wonderful way. I find the worlds mostly easy to navigate. Rainbow Maze almost made me quit as I found it rather headache inducing, but luckily I managed to find most everything I needed because I spent so long trying to find every place in it. I checked the wiki only to find that I'd done everything there was to do there.
Anyway, .flow is pretty gory and gross at times so be aware. I really liked that the lolrust (the dev) did not shy away from it, and it really inspired me in my own game dev endevours. It is also one of the few RPG Maker games that managed to make me scream haha. Corrupted Schoolhouse.
The concepts in it are really good and exploring Sabitsuki's/Rust's consciousness leaves a lot of questions. Who is Smile and why (redacted)? Who is Rust? Why the fuck am I being attacked by fetuses? What/who are the cleaners? These questions were fun to discover even if they don't have concrete answers.
11.21.23
I found Swollen to Bursting Until I am Disappearing on Purpose while scrolling through the RPG Maker tag on Tumblr. While I didn't promptly forget about it, it faded to the back of my mind as it wasn't completely finished when I laid my eyes on it. I saw the release trailer, but it faded to the back of my mind again. Finally, my friend Kail sang its praises and I decided to run it on my Steam Deck while skipping classes.
I really liked Swollen to Bursting though I think it has an esoteric quality to it. It has aspects of Yume Nikki fangames, elements of ps2 era games such as Chulip, and it has a lot of bizarre elements that I really enjoyed such as a cow you mix for effects or a party of rats witnessing a murder. The bizarre elements did appeal to me, but I was mostly focused on bits of the characters I could understand. As you milk effects, you can use these effects to solve puzzles or make some parts of the game easier, and more things about the protagonist are revealed to you over time.
I really enjoyed Husband. I wish we knew more about him. There's a readme file (that I actually didn't see for a bit because I wasn't played in a desktop environment) that gives you some details on the characters. It made some things more satisfactory while I wish I'd learned about certain aspects of these characters in game itself.
All in all, I really did like Swollen to Bursting. Just a warning, the game may not work on slower computers as it is really pushing RPG Maker to its limits. I am really curious as to what causes it to chug at times. Perhaps it's the 2.5D plugin? It's the first RPG Maker game I've played that uses the 2.5D plugin. I'd really like to play more.
11.21.2023
