Resident Evil: Code Veronica - The Horror of Losing Access to Resources

I've been making steady progress in my Resident Evil marathon and recently finished a lesser known installment in the RE series, Resident Evil: Code Veronica.  This classic-style survival horror adventure combines the static camera angles with some camera movement and focuses on Claire Redfield's journey to find her brother Chris. I've dedicated a few articles about interesting and frustrating parts of the Resident Evil series and I'd like to highlight an especially odd design choice in this one.

Up to Code

Code Veronica plays much the same as other Resident Evil games of its time, requiring you to navigate various locations with tank controls and managing your resources while dealing with the undead and solving puzzles. The moment-to-moment gameplay is identical to other RE games in that regard, but there are a few differences in the presentation and structure.

Like I mentioned in the intro, Code Veronica mostly uses static camera angles, but sometimes the camera moves with the character. On a few occasion, it's used effectively to build tension in a hallway where the camera slowly moves further away from you, or zooms in on a point of interest, but it usually feels unnecessary and unnatural. It doesn't add or detract much when it really comes down to it. The presentation itself is passable. It's clear what everything is supposed to be, but the colors are generally muddy and muted, with a fog hanging over almost everything. It's saved from being poor by some great music, character designs and a handful of interesting areas - the Private Residence comes to mind.

In terms of structure, there are larger separate areas like in Resident Evil 3 or 0, but the game makes you backtrack through earlier areas a lot like in Resident Evil 1. This is not too big of a problem if you know what you're doing, but increases the frustration tenfold if you're not sure where to go or what to do because the solution could be anywhere you've been up to this point.

With the exception of a very shoe-horned in Albert Wesker, the story is quite interesting. In her search for her brother, Claire Redfield is captured and brought to mysterious island that she has to escape from. The antagonist is an interesting and somewhat tragic character and the twists and turns along the path of this game's narrative might surprise you.

All in all, RE: Code Veronica is similar to other Resident Evil games, with some odd design choices in its structure and visuals.

From Claire to Chris

Some time after the midway point, the perspective switches and you take control of Chris, Claire's brother. He starts with his own resources, but I immediately noticed that he could access the items I put into the item box as Claire. This is a departure from the character switch in Resident Evil 3 where Carlos has his own item box and cannot access Jill's items. This gave me a headstart as Chris, but at the same time, I felt a little worried about carrying Claire's items around as Chris. If this character switch segment worked like any of the Resident Evil games so far, we would finish Chris' segment and switch back over to Claire for the finale.

To prevent a situation where Claire wouldn't have the necessary resources, I went out of my way to put all of Chris' items into the item box when the switch was about to happen - and I felt pretty smart about it when we did indeed switch back to Claire and she was fully equipped with enough firepower to knock down three final bosses and then some. So you can imagine my surprise when, after a brief segment as Claire, the game switched right back to Chris - instantly putting me in a boss fight with zero resources. To prevent an unwinnable situation like in Resident Evil 0, I had put myself in an unwinnable situation.

It required me to redo a segment, but I decided it was fair enough - this situation occurred because I overprepared for something that ultimately didn't happen. I let Chris keep most of his resources, went through Claire's segment again and defeated the boss when we switched to Chris. I was satisfied that I had given Chris enough to make it through the boss, while still leaving Claire with the most firepower. So imagine my surprise, again, when we never switched back to Claire and all her weapons were permanently out of my reach. For some reason, the entire finale is played as Chris, even though the game started out as a story about Claire. Story-wise, I thought it was a bit disappointing that Chris robbed the finale instead of letting Claire do it. Design-wise, it's just deeply flawed. To get the most out of all your resources, you need to put them in the box before switching characters, but doing that can get you locked into an unwinnable boss battle (both Claire and Chris have to fight a powerful boss in their segments). It's also just natural to assume that you'll finish the game with the character you started as, but that doesn't happen either - so if you gave up Chris' resources for Claire, too bad! You'll have to do the final boss with your knife and some scraps.

This problem was so easy to prevent, too. They could've just given you a prompt that you would not be playing as Claire again, or they could've automatically put everything in her pockets in the item box. Yes, it would reveal ahead of time that you're going to end the game as Chris, so I understand why you wouldn't want to do it for narrative reasons, but this is a situation where good game design should be valued over keeping secrets. A good compromise might be to put all of Claire's items in the item box if you die to the final boss a few times - at that point, there's nothing left to hide.

With all that said, the final boss was still manageable. It took me a few attempts, but it wasn't a brick wall like Resident Evil 0 - and if my resources had really proven completely inadequate to complete the final boss, I would've had to redo a far smaller segment than Resident Evil 0 made me redo.


Closing Thoughts

I enjoyed Resident Evil: Code Veronica. It's a lot longer than other Resident Evil games, to the point that its original release required two disks, and tries a few new things to varying degrees of success. Aside from the fatal design flaw I discussed in this article, I'd say it's a challenging but fine installment in the Resident Evil series. I'll remember the challenging bosses, story and music for a long time to come, but I've already forgotten the visuals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxq5ymqPAsQ

_

It feels nice to be getting my thoughts out about some of the classics I've experienced lately. Thank you for reading! I hope you'll join me for whatever's next, and of course, your suggestions and feedback are always welcome.

Silent Hill 2's Best Ending

Spoiler warning. Silent Hill 2 is well worth experiencing for yourself, and reading this article before playing it could really damage your experience. I strongly recommend playing it first.

Silent Hill 2 is considered one of the finest horror games ever made, and some would argue, one of the best videogames in general. A lot of this can be attributed to its engrossing story and characters. Like so many games with a strong narrative, Silent Hill 2 has multiple endings, and there are many strong opinions about which ending is the best. I'm going to share my own opinion on this matter.

All Consuming Guilt

Silent Hill 2 tells the story of James Sunderland. He receives a letter from his wife Mary asking him to meet her in the town of Silent Hill, but she supposedly died of an illness three years ago. Even so, James comes to Silent Hill to find out for himself. 

As we find out near the very end, Mary did not die of an illness three years ago, but rather, James killed her just three days ago and has been in complete denial of this reality through the entire game. Everything that happened in Silent Hill was a manifestation of his own guilt.

So why did James do it? Silent Hill called to him, so it's clear he feels guilty about it. Was it mercy? Mary was suffering after all, and outright stated she wanted to die. Was it revenge or an escape? In the late stages of her illness, Mary became angry and verbally abusive and taking care of her consumed James' life. Or was it desire? The feminine figures that haunt Silent Hill imply that James was sexually frustrated, so did he simply remove Mary so he could himself a new relationship?

Means and Ends

The powerful thing about Silent Hill 2 is that each of its endings puts James' motivations in a different light. The 'Maria' ending, for example, has James escaping Silent Hill with the Mary lookalike 'Maria' he met there. Maria is almost identical to Mary, but more seductive. She seems to be a creation of Silent Hill designed to tempt and torture James. This ending probably puts James in the most negative light, as it seems to prove that he simply wanted to move on from Mary. During the ending, Maria starts coughing, implying that she's also ill and James will be punished for his mistakes by experiencing the exact same thing he experienced with Mary once again. Powerful and tragic, as James has already been forced to see her die multiple times throughout the story.

The next ending is the one I've seen a very vocal part of the fanbase call the best. It is simply called 'In Water.' In this ending, James and Mary have a final talk, and James admits that 'part of him hated her for taking away his life.' Mary concedes that this may be true, but that he's suffered enough. She dies again, for the last time, and James comes to the conclusion that he cannot live without her. Taking her body with him, he drives his car into the lake, thus committing suicide.

This ending is powerful and tragic and certainly feels natural. Silent Hill 2 is James' journey to face his guilt, and then act upon it accordingly. After all, the others who were called to Silent Hill, Eddie and Angela, passed away as well. 

But in my opinion, the best ending is the "good" ending, 'Leave.' I admit I'm biased in favor of happy endings, although Silent Hill 2 has no truly "happy" conclusions, but I have a few valid narrative reasons why this ending is the best conclusion to this story.

In Leave, James and Mary have their talk just like 'In Water', but when Mary throws James a bone and justifies his actions by saying 'She wanted to die,' James doesn't take it and fully faces down his own guilt. He doesn't say that "part of him hated her" this time, he comes out and - in an anguished voice - says:

The difference is subtle but important. And Mary's response to this always makes me teary-eyed.

"James... if that were true, then why do you look so sad?" 

This ending paints James in the most positive light. In all of the endings, that impulse, that desire to get his life back was present, but him admitting it clearly - in spite of how much it hurts him and how wrong he knows it is - redeems him. That's why he can overcome his guilt and move on in 'Leave,' with Mary's blessing.

On top of the perfect way it finishes James' arc, Leave is also the only ending that wraps up Laura's story. Laura is a little girl James meets around Silent Hill several times, and she was friends with Mary before she died. In Leave, you appropriately see James leave Silent Hill with Laura, taking her with him and thus carrying on Mary's wish that they be friends. Her fate is left ambiguous in the other endings, which I think makes them feel a bit incomplete.

At the Core of Silent Hill (Conclusion)

The monsters of Silent Hill are never just simple monsters with a thirst for blood, and neither is the town itself. Silent Hill 2 is the story of James facing his guilt - that's why Silent Hill called to him - and the reason why the 'Leave' ending speaks to me the most is because it is the only ending where he truly faces it. In 'Maria', he runs from his guilt and the 'In Water' ending concludes with James ending his own life because he is unable to life with his guilt. In 'Leave', James fully sheds light on the darkest parts of his psyche and starts on a path towards redemption, with his penance being a responsibility to take care of Laura as Mary once did. And it ends beautifully with those final words in Mary's letter:

_

Hey, thank you for taking the time to read another one of my articles. This one was a bit shorter, but definitely on a subject I'm passionate about. I've been thinking about why I love the 'Leave' ending for much of the past year and I finally got to put it into words here. Please let me know which ending you liked the best and why! 

Resident Evil - Saving as a Limited Resource

I recently started playing the Resident Evil games, starting with the HD Remake of the first installment in the series. The game is often discussed as a great example of survival horror, and most of its qualities have been thoroughly discussed. That's why I want to take the approach I did for my Mario Odyssey article and focus on something specific I thought was interesting about the game: The fact that there is a cost to saving, that keeping your progress is a finite resource. 

Running out of Ink

Resident Evil is possibly the biggest horror franchise in all of videogames. The first game didn't just define what the rest of the franchise would look like, but had an effect on the genre as a whole. One of the cornerstones of this survival horror classic is limited resources. There are only a finite amount of healing items and bullets, and only a few spots of inventory space to keep them in. I was aware of that, but I wasn't aware of one other resource the game limited.

In their journey to escape the zombie-infested mansion, Jill or Chris - depending on who you picked to play as - need to use typewriters to save their progress. But it's not as simple as approaching a typewriter and hitting the button; you actually need to use an Ink Ribbon to use the typewriter. And Ink Ribbons are a resource you need to find, put in your inventory and take with you just like bullets and healing items. And once you've used them, they're gone.

This idea really caught me off guard. I've seen games that reduce your ranking if you save, or games that have a super hard mode with finite save points like LISA: The Painful, but never a game that requires you to use a specific finite item for each time you save.

Inky Black Horror

Limited resources have a way of building the tension. You don't want to waste all your bullets, but being too stingy will just get you injured or slow you down a lot. It's the same for healing items, and in this case, for the Ink Ribbons as well. Waste too many Ink Ribbons and you'll have to go long periods of time without saving until you find more... but if you're too stingy and wait a long time before you save, you'll lose significant progress if you run into trouble and die. I both loved and hated this idea.

People with a passion for videogames often declare that the best games communicate their atmosphere or aesthetic with their mechanics, not just their presentation. To clarify, for example, a horror game shouldn't just be scary because it looks and sounds frightening - playing it should be a frightening experience in and of itself due to how the game actually works. The limited Ink Ribbons definitely made playing the game a lot scarier because every enemy was now a huge threat to my progress. In one of my streams of the game I ended up stuck for a few hours and wasted too many Ink Ribbons on small bits of progress - I ended up having to cross two new areas filled with new enemies before I could finally save, and that hour of excitement was one of the scariest experiences I've ever had with a videogame. Because your progress hangs in the balance, you need to be twice as careful about your other resources and be intimately familiar with the layout of each area - and even that won't protect you entirely, because some rooms in the mansion change over time.

Good ideas and effective scares, however, can eventually turn into mere frustrations when you're exposed to them too often. We saw a bit of this in Silence of the Sleep, where a certain frightening monster appeared so often and reset your progress so often that it lost its impact and turned into an annoyance. The situation with the Ink Ribbons eventually became similar, though not quite as bad. You see, the fear that comes from limited Ink Ribbons is at its strongest when you haven't lost your progress yet. The true brilliance of the idea shines in those moments of tension where you decide to bite off just a bit more and see if it pays off, or when you're desperately going from room to room with zombies on your case. But once you've actually died and lost your progress, the tension is released and replaced with frustration and disappointment. Now you have to retrace your steps, and though you're more efficient about it, it gets old fast if it happens multiple times.

The Ink Ribbons really are a double edged sword in this regard. Ideally you'd have a situation with the same tension, but not the resulting frustration, but there's no way to change the Ink Ribbons that would make that a reality. The fear of losing your progress and the frustration of losing your progress are two sides of the same coin. If you died and you didn't lose your progress, then the tension wouldn't be there, but the fact that you do lose your progress inevitably leads to frustration and repetition. As a designer, a possible middle ground I could suggest is that the Ink Ribbons are required to save major story progress, but minor things like killing zombies and gaining resources are preserved. Of course, this could easily be exploited and break the game, so I understand why they didn't go for that.

All in all, Ink Ribbons really increase the tension and really put the survival AND horror in "survival horror." But having something as necessary and usually taken for granted as saving depend on a finite resource could be very frustrating for some people. The threat of losing progress is great for horror, but actually losing your progress can lead to repetition. I think how you feel about Ink Ribbons will ultimately come down to preference, but while it's a love-hate relationship for me, I love it more than I hate it because of the exciting experience it gave me. I'm excited to experience the rest of the Resident Evil franchise and see if the way resources are handled changes much throughout.

_

October's over, but I couldn't resist writing another article about a spooky game! Since I'm planning to do the whole franchise, you can probably expect more Resident Evil articles in the next few months. I hope you'll stick with me as I experience another series I missed out on. I want to thank the people on Steem again for all their support; you've made writing a lot more fun for me.

What do you think? Is it fair to have a function like saving your game depend on a finite in-game resource? Is that brilliant horror design or irritating artificial difficulty? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Scary Rant About 'Uncanny Valley'

I decided to try another indie horror game. Today's subject is Uncanny Valley, released in 2015. This one was a lot more obscure than the others I've played, but it was reasonably well received, so I decided to give it a try. I got to an ending, of which the game claims there are many, but there were so many frustrations along the way that I don't know if I'll be returning to it.

Credit where Credit is Due

Before I launch into the main point of this article, which are my complaints about the game, I do want to point out some of its positive qualities. For one, it looks and sounds great. Its visuals use pixel art, but it doesn't necessarily draw its style from a specific retro game.

Pixel art combined with complex lighting is an aesthetic I can appreciate, and the game sounds good as well. I also enjoyed the player character's expressive animations, especially when running. And even though the characters' sprites are basic, good design ensures you'll always tell them apart.

I've mentioned in the last few horror articles that a lot depends on when the game puts its cards on the table and reveals exactly what the deal is. This is another point in Uncanny Valley's favor. It has a few dreamlike visions involving scary shadowy figures, but in terms of the 'real world,' there is a lot of build-up. In the game you play as a recently hired security guard. You're tasked with looking after a building that recently fell out of use and make sure nothing bad happens while the powers that be figure out what to do with it. To get to work you have to walk through a dark forest every night, and you can't properly use your flashlight while running, so it's always a little tense, even if nothing ever happens. I spent several nights patrolling the abandoned building and piecing the information together before anything scary happened.  You could even find tapes and listen to them to find out more about what was going on, and initially, it was satisfying to interact with the characters and start figuring out what had really happened in this old building.

But when the building lost power in the story, the game completely lost its momentum and all the small but frustrating design problems came crashing down on top of it.


Bad Communication Kills

For context, I'll give you a quick explanation of how the game works. It's another 2D puzzle exploration game that functions much like a point and click adventure. It comes closest to Silence of the Sleep, a game I played recently, as you can also run, use a flashlight and use items on objects.

The text boxes in Uncanny Valley are rather small. This would be fine if the characters barely spoke, but they actually have a lot to say. This results in sentences getting cut off in the middle a lot and forces you to press the button to continue the dialogue constantly if a character has more than a three word sentence to say. In spite of the importance of the dialogue, the developer decided not to let it interrupt the gameplay - so you can walk around and interact with things with the dialogue box still overhead and can only progress the dialogue with a separate key from the interact key. To be specific, you interact with E and progress dialogue with the space bar. Problem is, moving around or interacting with stuff can overlap the dialogue, and in some cases, even glitch it out to the point that two dialogue boxes appear on top of each other.

This separation between the dialogue and gameplay caused me endless frustrations as I played the game. Sometimes my character would be right on the edge of a screen transition. A dialogue box would suddenly appear and I would instinctively press E to progress it, only to move to a new screen and skip over the dialogue entirely - or a character would be talking to me, I'd press E to progress, which accidentally had me examine an object and skip the dialogue as well. In a game that revolves around mystery and figuring out vague clues, it's completely unacceptable to be able to just easily miss dialogue like that. There was even an occasion where I, somehow, managed to go right back to bed after waking up. I interacted with the bed, the character said "I shouldn't be sleeping on the job," I pressed E again and then he proceeded to sleep on the job. No separate question or option, just the fact that I pressed interact twice had me make what could've been a fatal decision against my will. The game also aggressively autosaves at every step to ensure you can't just jump back a step.

At one point, a major story progression occurred, and the lights in the building went off. I received an objective to fix the lights by turning on the power again, but it was very unclear how. I don't know if the lack of clarity was because the developer failed to write proper instructions, or if the weird way the dialogue was implemented caused me to skip over the explanation. Regardless, I found myself stuck on this objective and actually think I got an ending before ever resolving it.

From this point onward, I'm not sure if the game was glitched, but the player character went from regularly speaking to barely speaking or interacting at all, even when he really should. For example, at one point, I found the corpse of a recently decreased person, but could not interact with it. The player character never acknowledged it and continued on his merry way without this gruesome discovery affecting progression in any way, even though it really should have, as the body was in the same shed I needed to go to to fix the power. The player character also refused to try to fix the power, simply stating that he didn't want to "mess with it."

The way I reached an ending seemed like a series of complete non-sequiturs. I found car keys in one of the apartments, used them on a car parked in front of the building, crashed into some gangsters, got beat up and then woke up in a home with a wife the player character didn't know, even though she identified him as her husband. I found another corpse that I couldn't interact with in the storage room, tried to use a glass shard on it just to see if anything would work, but apparently I dragged the item too close to the main character because he proceeded to attempt suicide with the glass shard. This then led to an ending that was much, much more horrifying than the suicide would have been. I won't spoil it, but it was bad enough that I might not want to go back even if the game wasn't a frustrating mess. I remember sighing and rolling my eyes in exasperation several times in a row during that sequence of events because I had no idea how my choices had let to any of what had happened, and the ending managed to actually spoil some critical details about certain characters that I probably would've found out had the story progressed normally.

This is a situation where the old saying "Keep it simple, stupid" applies. Just let me progress dialogue with the interact key and just stop the gameplay for the dialogue. The player won't mind if the dialogue is important and well written. And if you're going to have them separate, make absolutely sure nothing is permanently missable. If you set goals, make them easy to find - not insultingly easy, just make sure it's clear. And if ANY interaction is going to lead to something you can't go back on, like deciding to sleep on the job or committing SUICIDE, you could at least give me a little prompt asking me if I'm sure, or you could at least not autosave every time something happens. I don't even know if I got the ending I did because of a bug, a glitch or sheer bad luck, but in choice-based narratives you never want the player to think "I don't know how my choices affected this at all" at the end.

Out of the Valley

That was my initial experience with Uncanny Valley. I wish my experience hadn't been so negative, but I can't lie and say I enjoyed it so far. But like I tried to emphasize by starting the article with some positives, there is a good game under there somewhere. Maybe the skipping dialogue and confusing interactions were partially my own fault; maybe one or two freak accident glitches that normally never happen somehow got in the way. So I do think I want to give the game another chance at one point. If I do and my impression of the game doesn't improve, I'll leave it here, but if the game redeems itself, I'll owe it another article. We'll see, but until then, I'm moving onto the next spooky experience.

Scary Thoughts About 'Pony Island'

It's still the month of Halloween, so I had a look at the 2016 indie horror game 'Pony Island,' a self described suspense puzzle game in disguise. The game represents part of a recent trend for games to amuse or horrify using meta game elements - that is to say, the game is aware it's a game and uses that to its advantage. It's hard to review a game like this in the traditional sense, but I still wanted to share my experiences with you. The order is going to be a little different than usual, but please bear with me.

Equestrian Evils (Premise and Metanarrative)

Pony Island gets 'meta' right from the get-go. The premise is that you're a person playing a game on a haunted arcade cabinet - so you're playing a videogame on your computer, wherein you play as a person playing a game on an arcade cabinet. That's where the rabbit hole - or pony stable - starts, and it only goes deeper from there.

Pony Island drops the cute act really fast; there's no long con here. It's interesting to compare it to 2017's Doki Doki Literature Club, which takes a few hours before it gets scary. Pony Island describes itself as a game in "disguise," but the shenanigans begin as soon as you get to the menu proper, which forces you to fiddle with the settings before the game actually functions. One way of doing it isn't better than the other; Doki Doki would have no tension and basically just be an edgy jumpscare game if it played its cards too early, but Pony Island would get tedious and annoying if it just let you play the basic runner game that 'Pony Island' supposedly is for an extended period of time.

So that's how it starts. You're stuck in an arcade playing on a haunted arcade cabinet, and trying to escape by making your way through the dark depths of Pony Island. There's only one way to achieve your goal - seek out the game's three core files and delete them to destroy the game for good.

While the game hinges strongly on the idea of being a game inside a game, it doesn't actually do stuff like mess with files on your PC. You won't be required to dig through the game's files or find a clue posted on your desktop like certain other games with meta elements that I won't name specifically. There are only a few really strong stand-out moments, and I will admit, the game really did get me with those. There's one particularly brilliant moment of deception that you'll know when you see it.

There is a hidden background story to be found about the player character and their history, but that's optional and will require you to dig a bit deeper.

All in all, I like the game's story and meta elements, even if the latter are mostly limited to what happens within the borders of the game. The setting is interesting and distinctive right off the bat, but it keeps you grounded by giving you a clear and easy-to-understand goal. What? Escape. How? Delete the core files.


Struggle Against The Creator (Gameplay)

The way Pony Island controls is very simple - you mostly use the mouse, and on some occasions, the keyboard. What's interesting is how the context changes how you use the mouse completely. After fiddling with the settings and solving a few basic puzzles, the arcade cabinet finally starts Pony Island, and it's an endless runner. Now your mouse isn't used for selecting options, but rather, you can use the left mouse button to jump.

The gameplay during the runner sections is very basic, but the game continues to evolve. As you play, you're constantly addressed and berated by the developer - Satan. He constantly changes the game, often adding unfair or tedious elements, and you have to "hack" around those with little programming puzzles. For example, after you've cleared a level in Pony Island, he adds devil heads that circle around you and kill you and there's nothing you can do, so you hack your way through the options until you unlock a cheat that lets you shoot lasers.

A lot of the game's puzzles involve changing things around the actual runner game to progress, but I don't want to spoil too much of it - this game is at its most fun when you let it surprise you. But I will say that the majority of puzzles - the programming puzzles I talked about earlier - essentially have you figuring out the and changing the flow of a simple program to make it work for you. You do this by dragging around simple commands represented by icons, like arrows that change which lines get read, to different places. It's funny that Human Resource Machine, a puzzle game revolving entirely about simple programming puzzles, was released just a few months prior to Pony Island. The two games have completely different ways of going about it, but it's an interesting comparison nonetheless.

Pony Island's gameplay is fairly simple when you learn how the programming puzzles work. The runner gameplay is a basic two-button affair and there are many moments where you simply explore menus looking for another way forward. On rare occasions, you're asked to type a password or ask a question, but don't expect it more than a handful of times.

You can lose at Pony Island, but it's not very punishing and usually sets you back only a small bit. Some of the runner stages do drag on a little bit, and it can be frustrating if you lose your focus and die near the end so you have to do the whole thing again. The game's simplicity is to its advantage almost 100 % of the time, but I would say the longer runner stages are the exception.

All that's left to say is that the game is quite short, but there are optional tickets to find throughout the game, so there's plenty to do for players that love to discover secrets. You'll really need to think outside the box for some of them.

All in all, Pony Island's gameplay is simple but effective, consisting of simple reflex-based gameplay, mouse-based exploration and puzzling, with occasional typing and a lot of secrets to discover.

Back to the Arcade (Presentation)

Pony Island's presentation is basic, but effective. There are a few layers to it; the game is actually in 3D, but you spend almost all your time with your face stuck to an arcade cabinet, so you'll only catch glimpses of the arcade around you or the hand of your player character if you acquire a ticket.

But most of the game's sights and sounds happen right there on the arcade cabinet, so let's discuss those.

Once the game starts properly, the visuals are much like what you'd expect from an old arcade cabinet, maybe even a bit more basic. The sprites are simple in shape and the visuals are mostly black and white until Satan adds some colorful visuals to the game a bit later down the line. The clever use of filters and visual effects will convince you you really are looking at an arcade cabinet.

Basic though it may be, I really liked the designs in the game. You'll encounter a few demons throughout your adventure, for example, and they're portrayed in various ways - from simple sprites to ASCII art. They're all recognizable and interesting looking, which is praiseworthy considering the lack of detail.

The sound design is right up there with the visuals. Most of it is distinctly retro, but there are many fun details to it - for example, different characters making a different sound when the words they say appear on screen. The game has many punchy and glitchy sound effects to emphasize your progress and the corruption occurring within the haunted game. There are also a few good music tracks, including the one that plays when you finally play Pony Island for the first time. It's really communicates the tension that what you're playing is not just a cute runner game.

The game really does look good, but I will say that it's never all that scary. At best, it'll unsettle you or fool you a few times, but most players will probably not feel any genuinely fear or terror when playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBv-2IeTK2M

All in all, the presentation can be summarized as simple but effective. It keeps it all very basic but good use of effects and interesting and creative designs really elevate the game, even if it's not all that scary.

Conclusion

Pony Island is a short, fun puzzle horror game with an interesting spin on having a 'meta narrative,' with a few meta moments that'll really throw you for a loop. It doesn't do anything crazy with its story, but it's entertaining and will probably surprise you a few times as well. The game has unique puzzles, many of which revolve around "hacking" the game by fixing the broken programming with your own logic. It also hides many secrets for the enterprising player. It wraps all of this up in a retro presentation that'll convince you you really are at the arcade playing on a haunted arcade cabinet. The runner segments are basic, but they aren't really what the game is all about.

Considering its short and sweet nature, I can recommend the game to anyone who loves puzzles, meta narratives or horror in general. The game is on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/405640/Pony_Island/

_

Another Spooktober article complete. I played another game just earlier today, but I haven't decided if I'm going to write about it yet. Stay tuned for more content in October! 

Scary Thoughts about 'Detention'

It's (almost) October again, and the month of Halloween always inspires me to experience and write about new horror experiences. The first game we're talking about this month is Detention, a puzzle exploration game set in 1960s Taiwan under martial law. You take on the role of Fang Ray Shin - called Ray for short - a girl who wakes up in her school with seemingly no one else around. She has to find a way out while avoiding various supernatural dangers.

Extracurricular Lessons (Gameplay)

Detention is a point and click adventure where the character moves along a twodimensional plane. In that regard, it's very by-the-books; you interact with objects by clicking them, you can drag items from your inventory onto interactable objects in the environment to use them and so on. You similarly enter doors simply by interacting with them.

The gameplay differs where the horror comes in. In Detention, you'll mostly encounter two types of ghosts - the Lingered and the Lantern Ghost, both of which must be avoided in a specific way. The Lingered are common humanoid ghosts that stalk the otherwise quiet halls of the school and will attack anything alive they come across. To avoid them, you need to hold your breath when they approach and they will simply pass you by. Holding your breath slows you down, however, and is only temporary - so you need to watch the Lingered carefully and pick the right moment to start holding your breath. Lantern Ghosts are much less common but also harder to deal with; when they approach you, the only way to avoid detection is to turn away, hold your breath and don't move. The Lantern Ghost will smell Ray, detect no signs of life and move on... unless you fail to take the proper steps, in which case she'll get grabbed and killed. Food offerings can be put down on the ground to lure away the Lingered, but this is required only once - when the mechanic is first introduced. I never needed it again after that, though I suppose it's nice to have for people who find the patrolling Lingered too unpredictable.

The enemies initially make the game rather tense, but they lose their impact pretty quickly. Having to hold your breath may seem scary, but the time period is generous and even if a Lingered detects you, you don't die immediately. All in all, they're easy to avoid and the penalty for detection is mild for Lingered. The Lantern Ghost is more threatening because it can kill you instantly, but it's very slow and uncommon. I died only once in the game, and this was due to an instant death trap that I thought was a bit cheap. I won't spoil exactly what happens, but I needed to hold my breath in a situation where it was never implied I should - the danger was not properly introduced like with the two aforementioned ghost types.

As quickly as the fear from the enemies may fade, the game's saving grace is that it is pretty short to begin with, so the enemies disappear once you start to get used to them. In fact, about halfway through, the game's focus shifts almost entirely to puzzles. The atmosphere and visuals are still disturbing at this point (more on that in the next segment), but the gameplay doesn't resemble a horror game anymore. There are no more hostile ghosts at this point. There are story reasons for this, but it makes the pacing feel strange; the 'hold your breath' mechanic loses all relevance at this point. If they wanted to shift the focus to puzzles, it might've been a cool idea to use holding your breath in a puzzle; like maybe a secret message will only appear if you're not making any sound. At least that way, the mechanic would've stayed relevant instead of being tossed out just like that after being your main method of self defense. Even so, the puzzles represent one of the game's greatest strengths. Many of them are interesting and inventive, though none of them are very hard.

One last nitpick: Certain rooms have important scenes or a particularly frightful atmosphere, and the main character cannot run in these rooms; she'll just slowly shuffle forward. This is fine for the most part, but sometimes you can enter these rooms before you have what you need to activate the scene, causing you to shuffle all the way into the room at a snail's pace only to realize you don't need to be there yet. You then have to slowly shuffle out of the room again. It's a slight waste of time, but nothing serious.

All in all, Detention plays like a point and click adventure. It has a few interesting mechanics to represent the horror part of its genre that certainly build tension when first introduced, but it gives up on them shortly before they get stale. During and after this, it focuses mainly on puzzles which are easy but entertaining and inventive. There are a few problems with the gameplay, but it works well enough.

Oppressive Atmosphere (Presentation)

The game makes a strong visual impression. People often describe life under totalitarian reign as "grey" or "colorless," something reflected in the game's muted color scheme. Its graphics are built up from both drawings and what seem to be cut out photographs, leaning strongly into the historic realities the game portrays alongside the supernatural horrors.

The animations of the characters are slightly robotic, although this is actually to the game's benefit when it comes to the monsters. It's hard not to feel a chill when you see a humanoid figure run in from the dark, back bent at an awkward angle and arms outstretched toward you. In terms of appearance, the monsters aren't terribly inspired - they are all essentially undead humans of varying sizes - but the sound design really picks up the slack there. When you're in a hallway with one of the Lingered, you can't miss the distant sound of their alternating coughing, wheezing and laughing. This is what makes it really tense when you're holding your breath and sneaking past them - you never know if a sudden cough or chuckle is just incidental, or because you were noticed.

There isn't a lot of music, and when it's there, it's mostly diegetic (for example, there is actually a radio playing the music that the player character can interact with, rather than the music only existing for the player). It's all authentic Taiwanese music, and I've been told many of the tracks used were actually banned in 1960 - a nice touch. The sound design compliments the visuals well, each major area has its own atmospheric sound with the occasional noise that'll make you question if it was just in the background or actually an enemy waiting just around the corner.

The game's visuals are mostly gray, but it makes good use of splashes of color here and there. Most of the game is pretty grounded, but you'll run into some rather surreal setpieces as well, which all look very impressive once you wrap your head around them. I think the environments are the strongest part of this game's presentation, strikingly depicting both the totalitarian state of Taiwan as well as the frightening supernatural setting.

All in all, Detention's presentation does a great job of building a powerful atmosphere. Sparing use of color, frightening sound design and surreal rooms and locations compensate for slightly weak enemy designs and animations.


Freedom of Expression (Story)

In Detention, you play as two Taiwanese students in 1960. They are called Wei and Fang. One evening they wake up in their school and find it abandoned. It seems everyone left because of a typhoon warning, but the bridge to town is out so they're stuck. You are mostly in control of Fang, a senior student to Wei, and it's up to you to find a way out of the school while avoiding the supernatural horrors and finding out what the cause behind it all is.

While Detention is a horror game, its story is more tragic than scary. It revolves around the lives of students trying to get by in a society where even a vague or merely speculative association with China or communism could get you imprisoned, tortured or killed. The story focuses on how this affects the lives of Wei and Fang and the choices they make under this brutal regime as young people trying to find their way in life. I'm keeping it very vague here because I want to allow you the opportunity to experience this story for itself.

Not unlike Silent Hill, the game employs a lot of symbolism and wants you to think about the meaning behind certain scenes without giving you an explicit explanation for them. And like Silent Hill, the game has multiple endings. They key difference here is that the ending you get depends entirely on how well you understand the story. Without clarifying the context, near the end of the story you are asked a few questions. Answering these questions correctly means you properly understand the story (or got lucky) and this will lead you to the good ending. Answering them incorrectly will lead you to the bad ending. The puzzles are tie in with the story directly, however, so if you can get to the end, you can probably figure it all out.

I don't want to harp on this too much as the game was obviously not made by native speakers, but the English translation has several grammar and spelling errors. It's not a game breaker, but the game is short and doesn't have that much text, so I feel at least a little more time could've been spent on polishing that part up.

All in all, Detention has a strong story that is more tragic than scary, and revolves more around students trying to get by under a totalitarian regime than about kids running away from actual monsters. It misses the mark a little as a horror story, but it's a great story nonetheless. It's sad and beautiful in its own way.

Conclusion

Detention is a solid game and starts out as very unnerving and tense, even if it gives up on being a horror game after a while. Its inventive and surrealistic puzzles and engaging story will compel you to keep going long after the monsters have exited the stage. Its atmospheric presentation, solid story and unique setting make it more than worth a look. However, there are minor problems with its animations, errors in its text and it's quite short - around 3 and a half hours - so take note of that. If you love horror or point & click adventures, you can't go wrong with Detention. It's on Steam here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/555220/Detention/

Other Thoughts

That's all I had to say about Detention, but there are interesting stories to tell about the developer, RedCandleGames.

This was news some time ago, but they actually developed and released a second game called Devotion. Unfortunately, due to a controversy involving something in the game that was interpreted as an insult towards the Chinese president, the company's right to sell the game was revoked and it was removed from sale on Steam - but not before it was also review bombed, apparently by sympathizers of the Chinese government. It's painful and tragic that a company responsible for such a beautiful story about freedom of thought and expression had their work censored from the Internet because of something so petty. I really hope Devotion will be sold again one day so I can share my thoughts on it as well, because seeing art get censored like this - now that is some real life horror.

_

That's all for today. Thank you for reading! I can't say for sure how many Scary Thoughts articles will be released this month, but at least I got this one done.

A Few Thoughts On Pinstripe

It's October, so I decided to take this opportunity to catch up on a few scary games I've been planning to play. These articles won't be full blown reviews - more like rants, really.

So, let's talk about Pinstripe. Pinstripe is a short puzzle platformer about a minister called Ted whose daughter is abducted, and he has to journey through a hellish winter landscape to save her.

Pinstripe's greatest virtue is obvious from the get-go: its presentation. It has a distinctive style with simple shapes like you'd see in a children's book, but the images depicted are disturbing to say the least. You could call it 'Burtonesque.'

The environments are visually powerful, but so are the characters. There are several characters - some of which are voiced by YouTube celebrities like PewDiePie and JackSepticEye. The game's antagonist, Pinstripe, is the standout character - a man with a sophisticated, polite air who seems to fly into random bouts of swearing and aggression when questioned or challenged in any way.

The story itself is another of Pinstripe's strengths. Who Pinstripe is and why he kidnaps Ted's daughter - there's enjoyment to be had in figuring out the clues as you explore the world. I don't want to give away too much beyond that - the game is pretty short, so it's best experienced for yourself.

It's sad to say, but I think Pinstripe's weakest part is probably its gameplay. That isn't to say it's really terrible; it's just rather basic and a bit rough around the edges. It has quite a few puzzles, many of which are rather fun to figure out. The game controls in 2D, but you can examine the clues you find in 3D much like in a detective type game. There's something to be said for finding a note, turning it around and finding a hidden message on the back. The puzzles never get terribly complex, however, usually requiring a simple number code, hitting switches in a certain order or playing a game of 'spot the differences' with two paintings. Complex or not, though, it's entertaining enough thanks to the way the puzzles are presented.

The game also requires you to do some platform challenges - and there is some polish missing there. More than once, Ted got his feet stuck on a small outcropping or nothing. Ted has very little sense of momentum, just starting and stopping instantly. The general issues with collision and physics were pretty minor all in all, but noticeable.

Later in a game, you are asked to backtrack through the world to acquire a large number of the game's signature collectible, frozen oil drops. There are a few new interesting puzzles on this return trip, but in most of the areas you'll be performing the exact same action - fire your slingshot through the fire onto flammable mushrooms so they explode and yield more collectibles for you. Considering it was required to progress the story, I felt this amount of backtracking was a little unnecessary for so short a game - but since the world was also pretty small, I can't say it was a huge bother.

Speaking of the slingshot, it is your primary means of self defense and environmental puzzle solving. It's basic enough, you aim the cursor and release to shoot a pellet where you aimed - and you can do this while moving as well. Beyond using fire to ignite your ammunition, the slingshot wasn't really expanded upon, but perhaps it's unfair to ask when you consider the game's length. You can acquire a better weapon and some neat extras on a second playthrough and some new areas can be accessed, so there is replayability in that regard.

Minor gameplay missteps aside, though, I had a great time with Pinstripe. Minor gameplay problems couldn't stop me from enjoying its story and presentation to the fullest, and I'm not going to lie, the ending made me feel some feelings. My overall impression of the game is positive, in spite of the prior rant - it's just nitpicking, really. So, in conclusion:

Pinstripe is a beautiful, short-and-sweet indie puzzle platformer. Its presentation and writing are excellent and supported by simple but fun puzzle gameplay and serviceable platforming. If you really like what you see, don't hesitate to get it. If you're not sure, wait for a sale and give it a shot then. 

A Few Thoughts on SOMA

It's October, so I decided to take this opportunity to catch up on a few scary games I've been planning to play. These articles won't be full blown reviews - more like rants, really.

First up is SOMA by Frictional Games, the creators of the famous Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Amnesia played a major role in bringing horror games back into the scene but its sequel, developed by The Chinese Room, disappointed a lot of fans. Now that Frictional itself has taken the reigns again, can they measure up to their prior achievement? 

I won't leave you in suspense - the answer's no.

I don't always agree with the general consensus, but in SOMA's case, I think the critics' and audience's overall impressions are pretty spot-on: The game has great writing and visuals and deals with some powerful uncomfortable themes, but it's bogged down by problems with its gameplay. 

I won't get too deep into spoiler territory, but as its marketing material shows, SOMA is set in a more futuristic time era. In your journey, you'll be met with robots and AIs, some of which believe they are human, and others were human once. As the border between an AI and a human being becomes more and more blurred, you're presented with the notion of copying someone's "brain" leading to two "instances" of a person. Is the copy a real person? Is it the same person? For the questions and uncomfortable scenarios it presents, SOMA is well worth checking out. It also has varied and beautiful setpieces, with a lot of time spent on the ocean floor to my surprise. In those regards, I'd say it's ahead of Amnesia.

But that's about the only thing it has over Amnesia.

Amnesia and SOMA both include large areas to explore with the threat of monsters, but the exploration in SOMA is endlessly more frustrating and less rewarding. It all starts with the mechanics. Amnesia and SOMA both have a 'sanity' mechanic, but only Amnesia has real 'health.' You could check out your menu at any time to observe both in Amnesia. Additionally, you had much more influence on your sanity in Amnesia as well. How? The answer is light. To contextualize, standing in the dark slowly drained your sanity and the game offered tools to combat this:
Tinderboxes and lamp oil. A tinderbox would allow you to ignite a light source like a candle permanently, but it was fixed in place. Lamp oil gave you a mobile light, but the oil would run out eventually. This added a dynamic where light would protect you from the dark, but it would also allow monsters to see you more easily.

Not only did the sanity mechanic allow for many interesting risk/reward considerations, it also made the exploration more rewarding. Exploring the sprawling, huge areas before making progress could improve your chances of survival by finding precious medicine, tinderboxes or lamp oil. To bring it back to SOMA, there's none of that. You have a flashlight which never runs out, and although you can suffer some kind of sanity damage, you can only repair it by single use interactable objects placed in significant areas. This also takes away the elegant logic of Daniel (from Amnesia) recovering his sanity because he solved a puzzle or made significant progress, though I can't get into exactly how SOMA justifies it without spoilers. But the point here is that there's only one reward for thorough exploration: more story. It's not an insignificant reward if you're hooked on the world of SOMA, but the lack of immediate connection with the gameplay made it less impactful than finding a few tinderboxes and a note detailing Daniel's backstory.

But having just story as a reward for exploration isn't necessarily a flaw, if only the exploration itself wasn't so frustrating. Where SOMA really falls flat on its face is the monsters. Though their designs are cool and they'll certainly give you a fright the first few times you see them, the means to avoid them will soon turn them into nuisances. The rules for the monsters are generally:

1. Don't look at them.
2. Don't make any noise around them.

That's really scary at first, but the monsters are mobile enough - some of them teleport - that you'll encounter them very often. The charm of hiding in a corner for a minute until a monster passes wears off really fast. SOMA doesn't offer dedicated hiding spots or doors that need to be broken down like Amnesia, and most monsters will catch you if they're after you, so it feels like there's little to no room for strategy beyond just quietly waiting. This turns a thorough search of a complex area from a tense rewarding experience into a frustrating waiting game. Additionally, when you're caught, the monster usually leaves you for dead, giving you a second chance to escape. You only die if you're caught twice in a short time or at certain story moments. This might remove even more of the tension for some players, though it was ironically probably implemented to prevent frustration.

That about sums it up, I think! Ignoring the frustrating monsters, the game has plenty of interesting puzzles and cool areas to explore. The game actually has a version that excludes the monsters, which you may want to try. That doesn't really solve the problem, though; with no looming threat at all, the tension is completely gone. SOMA does need monsters, it just needs better ones.

To summarize this incoherent rant, SOMA is a horror game with interesting themes, beautiful setpieces and interesting puzzles, but the experience is ruined in part by obnoxious monsters who will initially scare you but eventually do nothing but slow you down and block your progress. The monsters and exploration are a huge step down from its predecessor Amnesia: The Dark Descent, even if it is the latter's superior in terms of story and themes.

Doki Doki Literature Club - Narrative Empowered By Its Genre

In my last article, I shared my summary and thoughts on Doki Doki Literature Club. In this article,  I'll examine in-depth how Doki Doki Literature Club's approach to a 'meta narrative' is something only a visual novel could do.

This article was written with the assumption that the reader knows and understands Doki Doki Literature Club. There will be many spoilers past this point, so please consider playing the game for free on Steam before reading this. There are also spoilers for EarthBound, Undertale and OneShot.

_

Allow me to get straight to the point: Doki Doki Literature Club is a dating sim wherein one of the characters, who is not a romantic option to the player, becomes aware she's in a game and that her role is simply that of a supporting character. This realization frustrates her to the point of manipulating and eventually deleting the other characters from the game's folder, just so she can have an "ending" with the player. Her manipulation of the characters leads to many glitches, disturbing situations and horrific imagery, such as Sayori and Yuri ending their own lives. To me, this represents the best 'meta narrative' I've seen in a game as of yet. To explain why, please allow me to discuss a few other examples.

Games acknowledging the fact that they are indeed games, being played by a player, have existed for some time.

The Onett police force offers some quality advice.

Many games over the years have made a point of breaking the fourth wall, generally for the sake of comedy, but sometimes as a part of their story as well. EarthBound is a good example of a game that does both, and its finale includes a special moment where the player is acknowledged as separate from the game. Please be aware that this is a spoiler, but you can view this particular moment here. EarthBound was extraordinary in how it reached out to the player, but it was limited by its technology. It had to ask for the player's real name at some point in the story, even if it did so in a subtle way and never mentioned it again until the end.

As technology marched on, so too did games find new ways to reach out to the player, or to acknowledge and make use of the medium they were part of. To name two good examples, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.

Eternal Darkness is a horror game, and one of - if not the - first game to employ a sanity mechanic. Eternal Darkness had the usual tricks we associate with a sanity mechanic up its sleeve, such as whispers and distorting visuals, but it also messed with the player directly by pretending to lower the volume, unplugging the controller or switching the channel.

Unfortunately, this hasn't aged very well.

source: NintendoComplete on YouTube

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a stealth game starring Solid Snake. There are a lot of strange characters in the game, but Psycho Mantis is one a lot of people will remember, mostly because he activates the rumble on your controller and tells you about the contents of your memory card. He does this on top of also pretending to change the channel and requiring you to move your controller to a different port to defeat him.

Psycho Mantis is judgmental about your taste in games.

source: patrikklason on YouTube

The Metal Gear Solid example is particularly strong because the game uses the controller and memory card to its advantage, just to mess with the player. There have been other examples of games using the technology at their disposal to acknowledge or mess with the player, but these have usually been less explicit.

In recent years, we've also seen more and more indie games find creative ways to use the medium and its technology. A particularly popular example was 2015's Undertale, which parodied and questioned the conventions of RPGs and remembered certain player decisions, even if they hadn't been saved explicitly.

Flowey will know if you took a life, whether you saved or not.

source: Rynny Ryn on YouTube

Undertale's is a world where it actually means something to SAVE and LOAD. These aren't merely game functions, separate from the story, but a very real power that the player - not the main character - has as a part of the story.

Lesser known but even more appropriate to mention is OneShot. Much more explicitly than in most other games, the player and protagonist are acknowledged as separate entities. You, the player, are considered God, and Niko, the protagonist, is seen as your chosen Messiah. Niko will even talk to the player and ask him or her questions. OneShot sometimes communicates to you through error messages, and to solve some of its puzzles, you will need to actually look for files on your PC or do something with the game window. That's just scratching the surface of what OneShot has to offer, as it included some of the most inventive puzzles I've ever seen.

OneShot isn't afraid to poke fun at you if you try to solve puzzles without thinking them through.

So, what does all of this have to do with Doki Doki Literature Club? To explain that, I'll go over my examples one more time. EarthBound and Undertale reached out to the player to enhance their narrative. Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid used the technology at their disposal to startle or poke fun at the player. Lastly, OneShot spoke to the player and used technology because both its story and puzzles were entirely centered around this concept of the game being a game running on the player's computer.

Though they almost couldn't be more different, in my mind OneShot and Doki Doki Literature Club are closest together when it comes to their use of a 'meta narrative.' Both games feature an entity within the game that becomes aware and begins to interfere with the player and other characters. Both games end on a sour note but can then be replayed with a radically different story. In both games, glitches occur as part of the story. Both games feature a pivotal moment where the player must interact with the characters' files on their computer. Now, these are shallow parallels, but those are simply the reasons why I associate the games in my mind.

So why did I state that I find Doki Doki Literature Club to have the best implementation of a meta narrative? It's finally time to bring up the topic of genre. Breaking the fourth wall or calling the player by name is great, but any game can be self aware or self referential. What I was personally looking for in games that used some kind of meta narrative was:

1. The meta narrative plays a critical part in the story or makes up the entirety.

2. The meta narrative interacts with the gameplay in a meaningful way.

OneShot met these standards, but I felt like there was something missing. OneShot's moment to moment gameplay very much feels like a canvas for its meta narrative. The actual game has little gameplay beyond top down exploration. This, of course, is perfectly fine, but it also means that the game has no genre or genre conventions to play with. The complexity and novelty of its meta elements surpassed Undertale's, but the way said elements tied into the story and particularly the gameplay did not.

confused cat noises

This is where Doki Doki Literature Club picks up the slack. The game is very explicitly a dating sim, a fact it smartly uses to set expectations in the first act which it then proceeds to break later. In fact, you're probably not even aware that Doki Doki Literature Club has any kind of meta narrative until you reach the end of act 1 and witness Sayori's suicide and subsequent deletion.  

In other words, the meta narrative plays a critical part in the story, but the game only reveals this once you're in deep. 

For this reason, tt's a treat to replay the first act of Doki Doki Literature Club. Many of the things you see pushed to their extremes in Act 2 are hinted at in Act 1. Sayori and Monika's poems are particularly good examples, with the former demonstrating her depression and the latter showing her awareness that she's part of a game.

Of course, defying expectations is one thing, but it's the content of the narrative itself that truly elevates Doki Doki Literature Club. Many of the aforementioned meta narratives or puzzles could feasibly be tacked onto other games without too many changes, but DDLC's narrative cannot. Monika's frustration is a direct result of the fact that she's a supporting character in a dating sim, without a route for the player to pursue her. It is for this reason that she ends up changing the other characters to make the player dislike them and even taking away the player's options. At the very end, she even hijacks the poem creation mechanic so you can write a poem all about her.

In other words, the meta narrative interacts with the gameplay in a meaningful way that could only work with this specific genre. 

In conclusion, a lot of games have had a lot of great ideas about having their story or gameplay reach outside the boundaries of their software, but none did it in a way that had its genre cleverly tie into the meta part of its narrative and gameplay. None, that is, until Dan Salvato created Doki Doki Literature Club, where all the fourth wall breaking events are a consequence of an in-game character's frustration with the game and its genre conventions. Because the game establishes the formula of its gameplay and story in the first act, the changes in act 2 are all the more frightening and interesting. 

_

Thanks for taking the time to read my personal thoughts on the meta narrative of Doki Doki Literature Club and various other games. Did I articulate my point well? Or wasn't I making much sense? Please feel free to post your own thoughts in the comments.

If you want to support this blog, consider having a look at our Patreon.

_

MONIKA:
"You know..."
"This is just some kind of tacky romance game, right?"
"I kinda have to ask..."
"...What made you consider even playing in the first place?"
"Were you that lonely?"
"I feel a little bad for you..."
"But I guess everything worked out perfectly in the end, for both of us."
"I got to meet you, and you're not lonely anymore..."
"I can't help but feel like this was fate."
"Don't you feel that way too?"
"I'm so happy we have this ending together."

(source)