This week, I played With Those We Love Alive. WTWLA is a choose-your-own-adventure text game with unsettling vibes. Almost all of the game takes place on the same screen, where the pink words are links to other pages:
As a player, all you do is “traverse” the world by clicking on the links and seeing what text options have changed (if any). While playing, I discovered a few things:
1) There are dead people that appear in different locations on different days. Sometimes there’s a dead person on the balcony, other times they’re under your workbench, etc.
2) There is a Slime Kid who you can play with in the city. They only show up occasionally.
3) The Empress never made an appearance in the throne room. But the weapon you craft for her does appear above her throne.
4) There is at least one religious ceremony that can happen in the city.
5) Eventually the dream distillery opened up and I got a sip of dream juice once per day.
Over the course of the game, there are breaks in the narrative in which the screen goes black and we seem to be removed from the main storyline. These moments often call upon the players to draw “sigils” on themselves. However, you’re not told what the sigils look like, only what they represent. So, you’re left to draw them however you choose. These were mine:
Now, I liken this game to tarot cards. Tarot cards are revealing because each card falls into archetypes and themes to which many people can relate. The human brain is very, very good at finding patterns and making connections, which is why tarot cards are often “revealing” – they prompt self-reflection. I think this game falls into the same kind of vague mysticism as tarot cards. For me, the haunting, limited atmosphere created a sense of entrapment, powerlessness, and loss that I do associate with being a woman. However, this emotion was never explicitly conveyed, it’s just how I interpreted what I was experiencing based upon my own life. I think that’s why this game can be considered feminist. I imagine there are male players who would feel the same thing as me, so this game can give them a real emotional insight into my lived experience. Personally, I’ve found that fiction can be an amazing way to explore new perspectives, so it’s interesting to see a game that does it seamlessly with only text, music, and yourself. Furthermore, to pull a quote from Chapter 4 of the reading, “In facilitating a desire and audience for different kinds of gamers, the industry itself will be forced to transform. By demonstrating that women do want to play games— both games that are currently out there and ones not yet even conceived of— we get to force the industry to rethink what games get to be.” I think that WTWLA is a good example of how feminism can transform the industry by bringing new ideas and opportunities for interesting experiences.
As a side note, I actually loved the sigils. Maybe it’s a little silly, but I found that having to come up with and draw sigils on myself significantly increased my immersion and investment in the gameplay.
Finally, for my discussion prompt, I wonder: how long will it take for feminist ideology to actually take root in the gaming industry? Is it even possible under the current work and economic conditions?
