Mento's Month: October '24

Game of the Month: Umineko When They Cry: Answer Arcs (07th Expansion, 2017)

That's right, I played the rest of the visual novel series that's 10% about murders, 20% about freaky supernatural witch and demon nonsense, and 70% about rich jerks arguing over succession rights, inheritance, and business ventures. Despite being an incredibly slow experience for the vast majority of its run, the Question Arcs (episodes 1-4) of Umineko When They Cry made the occasional overture towards some satisfying twists and turnabout arguments as the dopey protag Ushiromiya Battler continued to clash logic against fantasy with the antagonistic "Golden Witch" Beatrice who had trapped his family on their ancestral island of Rokkenjima and murdered them one after the other, offering different variations on the same slaughterfest that Battler had to grimace through before he could start putting together the particulars about how those crimes were committed. If he decides they couldn't be done without the witch's magic, or else forfeits the contest, the witch wins and the entire dead family becomes the "canonical" way things went down; if Battler can prove how it was done absent of any "deus ex magica", though, he would be allowed to pick a timeline where most if not all the Ushiromiya family survives the ordeal including himself.

That's essentially the set-up for the first game's four episodes and their divergent spins on Rokkenjima's two nights and three days of serial killings, but rather than seeing a proper explanation for all the seemingly impossible closed-room murders the game's been more content to keep chugging along and throwing new wrenches into the works whenever it can, introducing even more of Beatrice's supernatural coterie including a demon butler and some bitter witch rivals with their own ideas about how the "game" should be played. The Question Arcs, true to its name, left a lot of mysteries left to solve and now, after almost a year of waiting, I was ready for some explanations by way of Answer Arcs.

I've written some thoughts on the individual episodes, jotted down while playing and left as-is to prevent corruption by any future knowledge, and I've naturally spoiler-blocked them here. If you've already been through this series before by all means check them out, but I'd recommend anyone curious enough to play through the games themselves. It is a mystery game, after all.

Episode 5

Episode 5's whole thing is that Beatrice, the previous antagonist, had a little bit of a meltdown at the end of the previous episode and now two of her witch peers Lambdadelta and Bernkastel, who are even more childish and cruel than she is, have taken the reins. Battler's having none of it, so it ends up being a contest between these two new witches for a while until the galoot wanders back to ensure a minimum amount of suffering for Beatrice. I guess that's his compassionate side at work; I'd be fine with a maximum amount of suffering for Beatrice given everything she's put his family through, but he wouldn't be much of a heroic protagonist if he was that vindictive. As I've said before, this dude is mostly just Adol Christin in a flashy white suit after all.

This episode also introduces Knox's Decalogue as its newest bit of meta trickery: ten commandments written in 1929 concerning detective fiction to prevent copout denouements like "the detective did it" or "it was done through some amazing drug/invention no-one's ever heard of". Since this is an anime game, these commandments are enforced by an angelic regiment of half-dressed women who show up to cut down any possibility that might violate the rules, including the bunnygirl Chiester sisters from previous episodes. (Incidentally, owing to the era in which they were written, at least one of these commandments involves "no Chinamen", but naturally the game excludes that one.) I kinda love that the author of these games presumably got fed up with the game's online discourse suggesting hacky explanations that they invoked this list to nip any easy solutions in the bud. It's also getting harder to keep track of all the non-humans in this parlor mystery: I suspect the obfuscation is the point, though.

The episode ends on a downer as Battler is thoroughly defeated by the coalition of mean witches and their overly literal angel pals, but the post-script then switches things around and positions him to be the Game Master next time, taking over Beatrice's role (who's disintegrated or something) and going up against the bratty know-it-all Furudo Erika (Bernkastel's "piece"; her human clone but with more insecurities) for Episode 6. If I could follow anything that was happening I'd be pretty stoked about this new development. Starting to think I should seek out the anime adaptation and see if its truncation process helps all this make more sense.

Oh shit, Umineko predicted SpaceX. Actually, I could totally see Krauss and Elon Musk getting along.

Haha, but they're just kidding about the game's weird incestuous overtones, right? Right?

Episode 6

I wondered what would happen if you put a hormonal teenage boy in charge of one of these "games" and, sure enough, as soon as Beatrice appears she's calling him "daddy" with big doe eyes. All right, so I'm being flippant here: this Beatrice is a "piece", that is to say a creation of this particular game rather than the actual Beatrice who has since "died for real" for whatever that means in this world, and for whatever reason she's not only completely innocent of the world and its cynical tricks but utterly devoted to her creator Battler. Honestly, this whole episode has some weird vibes as the new Battler-ized version of the Rokkenjima murder game plays out, which sadly has to pay even more lip service to the completely uncompelling relationships of George and Shannon as well as Jessica and Kanon as their respective fights to be allowed to be the "one true pairing" metaphorically become the twilight murders. The game keeps doing this, framing the murders as being the byproducts of some other supernatural contest, and while it's an odd framing device it's one I suppose makes sense if you're going to keep replaying this murder mystery over and over with slight variations and needed some way to keep things fresh.

New antagonist Furudo Erika really gets unhinged here trying to sabotage Battler's first spin as the Game Master, sort of like the nightmare participant in a D&D game vindictively looking to tear down or derail a carefully-built campaign one way or another, and it even gets into some hinky sexual domination stuff at one point as the villains' plan becomes to take away Battler's ring that signifies his status as Game Master after they trap him in an endless prison due to a potential logic error (when the witch side can't explain the murders as being possible with human ingenuity, since that's apparently cheating). Curiously, while Episode 5 did its best to humanize and make Beatrice sympathetic—which they tried once in 3 (I think?) with the fake compassion play to trick Battler, making it even weirder they went for it again but more sincerely this time—Episode 6 is trying to do the same to the other two irredeemable witches Lambdadelta and Bernkastel by implying they both went through what Battler did, trapped inside a logical paradox to go slowly insane as they try to solve an impossible problem, which is why both have a few screws loose now and love torturing others the same way (after all, you can't be the victim and the perpetrator simultaneously, so by being the aggressors this is proof that they actually did escape their hells). Fascinating idea but it's real hard to feel too sorry for either, or for Erika who is slowly heading the same way with the verbal abuse she suffers from her "master" Bernkastel.

Also, we have another new character in the guise of Featherine Augustus, who I'm to believe is an even older witch in charge of theater and drama and she's taken on something of a Greek (or maybe Roman?) chorus role with Battler's sister Ange as her "miko". My understanding of Mikos is that they set themselves on fire a lot while yelling obscenities at people, but maybe that's not the case here since all they did was interject with pointless conjecture every so often. As with many of these tertiary characters, she could have serious relevance to the plot or none at all, but the game loves to have its wide variety of viewpoint characters. I'll admit, this game is starting to wear my patience thin with how these have all become 15 hour long lore dumps withholding anything of actual narrative value, but since there's only two episodes left I suppose I can only keep going and hope for one mighty pay off. The last revelation of the main story mode—that there's only actually 17 humans on the island, including Erika—does leave an intriguing question to be answered in the next episode, specifically: which two of these cast members aren't actually real? (I'm going to say Nanjo is one of them, that Santa Claus-looking ass.)

Oh, last note: I find Battler and Beatrice hooking up to be a truly revolting development. They better jump through a lot of hoops to explain all this in a satisfactory way. Seriously, the game's depictions of love might be the most unsettling literary weapon it has, and I'm talking about a story that at one point had cannibalism and a tasteful sculpture made out of human viscera.

Episode 7

As has been the norm for this series, as soon as Episode 7 starts I'm bombarded with bullshit. Suddenly we're introduced to the creator of SimCity himself, Will Wright, as a handsome taciturn drifter who once belonged to the same heavenly inquisitor organization as Dlanor and co., as well as a mysterious 6th grandchild to Kinzo: Lion Ushiromiya. At first, Lion seems like an invention to put all the Ushiromiya inheritance talk to rest—he (or maybe she) is beloved by all in the family, including most importantly the head himself, and so the matter of succession is more or less a done deal and everyone can relax about it instead—so the game can switch focus from that old canard, but of course nothing is ever that simple.

There are online gooning tutorials that involve less withholding than these damn games (uh, I've heard). What's wrong with talking about how all the closed room murders so far have happened? Or anything about Battler's and Beatrice's background, since they clearly had some history the game has been tiptoeing around since the end of Episode 5? Seriously, the "fuck this game"s per minute ratio here is high enough to make Hidetaka Miyazaki envious. Well, funny I should say all that because this episode eventually proves very elucidating even without any major cast members at the wheel, using the framing device of Beatrice's funeral as a means of questioning the extended Ushiromiya family about their relationship with this mercurial blonde. For one, Lion learning they're both the baby that canonically gets murdered by Natsuhi (who he believed to be his mother) in almost every other timeline would already be a big hit to their psyche were it not also coupled with the revelation that they're the product of father-daughter incest (you sure went there, huh, Umineko? I hear there's even more deranged shit in Higurashi). Tough break, kid. Incidentally, we also learn that the real Beatrice—the first one, not the regrettable daughter-wife second—was the child of a major Republic of Salo VIP, meaning she probably had tea with Mussolini at some point (wasn't there a movie about that?). The famous Ushiromiya gold is actually bullion embezzled from the Italian fascists, so that's fun.

The rest of this episode is dedicated to the backstory of the culprit to the murders, whose identity is purposefully kept secret but eventually makes itself known after a bit of clever misdirection. Turns out Shannon is just a big ol' yandere. Shandere. She had a thing for Battler due to some cheesy line he fed her back when they were twelve and she's been crying herself to sleep with unrealistic expectations ever since, even though Battler is long gone from Rokkenjima due to his family squabbles. Recall when I said this game's takes on love are the worst? This chapter really hammers it home between the childhood friend promise bullshit and, oh right, lest I forget, all thedang ol' incest.

Episode 8

Episode 8 follows the true protagonist, which is to say a character introduced in like the fourth episode: Ange Ushiromiya. The Game Master Battler set up a special game for his little sis as a way of teaching her the "truth" of what actually happened, as opposed to the actual truth, and man does the game have some fun being all schmaltzy for a while with a Disney-fied version of the Rokkenjima family conference full of pleasantries including a genial Kinzo who gifts Halloween presents to his grandchildren and a gregarious Beatrice who I guess is shacking up with Battler now (the dude made the game, he can insert however many fantasy wives he wishes). Ange, to her credit and my gag reflex's relief, immediately discards this happy fantasy version of the events and follows the still vindictive Bernkastel in hunting for the real truth, the one not even her own brother wishes her to know.

So finally, we get the truth of what actually happened on Rokkenjima on those two accursed days. The truth that Ange eventually sacrificed everything, even her own future, to discover. And that truth is... the friends we made along the way. That's actually what the game gives us, more or less. And it goes one further to make it seem like we're the assholes for caring about what actually happened in that closed room murder mystery, presenting the final battle as between Bernkastel, her pawn Furudo Erika, and a whole group of mystery fiction fans eager to witness the true retelling of events—Eva wrote it all down in a secret diary in the future Ange is from—and the dream Battler and Ange fighting to recover it in time before the diary is unlocked and revealed to all. Metaphorically, the truth getting out will kill the Schrodinger's "cat box" of endless possibilities of the Rokkenjima incident and lead to the true and final deaths of the cast, turning this final conflict into an abstract one of a single truth versus infinite possibilities. Kind of a novel idea for a game that's been going through multiple variations of the same murder mystery but, again, the lengths the game goes to withhold its secrets is deeply annoying as a narrative conceit, dangling the same carrot on a string for multiple episodes now long after exhausting the original premise of a mystery fan and a fantasy fan clashing over their contradictory beliefs.

I won't argue that the final episode isn't rewarding on some level—you actually have to do some work this time with a few interactive sections—but at the same time the sheer size of the game and the way it kept expanding the cast and its reach turned it into something like Lost where there couldn't be a single, neat explanation that could not only satisfy all the foreshadowing and clues but the fanbase that had been along for the ride. Maybe I'm alone in that disappointment and everyone else adored the way this game ended, throwing out its raison d'être as being ultimately immaterial to its actual story of a young girl coping with the shocking loss of her whole extended family and the added anguish that came from everyone's mean-spirited theorycrafting about what might've happened to them, and really we as an audience should be on the side of telling that girl to face the future with hope in her heart rather than obsess to the point of self-destruction about how everything shook out given those family members won't be springing back to life whether she has that knowledge or not.

You ever play a video game that ends up losing interest in its own genre trappings? Stop taking murder mysteries so seriously, gah.

The boat captain is my favorite character because no-one bothered to make new sprites for the guy. Look at him. He's like Mario when he goes to New Donk City and everyone around him is an actual human, which makes him look way less so.

Overall, I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed Umineko When They Cry given the huge time investment and the comparatively damp payoff. In its favor, there's plenty of interesting threads and theories on the mystery genre, the power of belief and fantasy, an unusual and unpredictable array of storytelling and framing devices, and for as goofy as the sound effects and the original art could be there's a distinct charm to them in the same way as other Indies and doujins that have always had to do a lot with a little, especially when it's evident the creators' talents lie in producing the core narrative substance more than a showy presentation (or lack of one, in such cases).

I am tempted to seek out the other adaptations (there's a manga and an anime) of Umineko in part because I think having all that content pared down into something more digestible will also make it easier to process in full, and partly because I wouldn't mind seeing half the bizarre shit they do in this game translated into another medium—especially in how its many action scenes are handled pretty abstractly in this limited low-budget VN form. Either way, I'm glad to have another staple of the Japanese visual novel medium in my mental rolodex, as I'm sure I'll encounter many more VNs in the future that were directly influenced by the adventures of Battler and Beatrice and company. Heck, I might even get around to Higurashi (or Ciconia if it ever gets finished) one day.

Darling Indies and Other Gaming Tomfoolery

The Kobashotty Mario is a little thing I threw together to demonstrate the creativity of RetroAchievements sets and how they can elevate already entertaining material like "Super Mario 64 but you have a shotgun now". I've outlined each achievement and how you might go about earning it, highlighting the unique challenges involved with each one, and I've hopefully left just enough of an impression that folks might want to pursue the set themselves. I'll say that it's relatively approachable unlike some of these speedrun-tech-masters-only sets on there and a good way to get indoctrinated into the world of SM64 hacks and the concomitant achievement hunting. Or maybe it works better as a cautionary tale to push people away from that self-destructive spiral of Shine Gets and flip-jumps: take from it what you must.

I'm not sure what offends me more in this image: the idea that Greek God Wario would be surrounded by doting female attendants, or seeing Wario's feet.

Speaking of continuing to fall into a bottomless pit, I embarked on yet another Super Mario 64 hack with RetroAchievements support to keep myself busy while listening to Game Mess Mornings and the Bombcast; my ideal podcast game being one that does not demand too much higher brain function that can be played windowed so I can keep an eye on chat (I suppose I could get a second monitor, though I've no idea where I'd put it). Super Mario 64: Through the Ages is that hack for October and it's a real intriguing one, creating its level design around famous periods of history (as well as Planet Namek from DBZ, for some reason, though they let you fly anywhere you want which was cool). The other gimmick is that you could spend Stars to purchase Pokémon partners, each of whom could help out with the platforming using one of their special moves. This system didn't work as well as I'd hoped—most just give you some variant of a vertical boost, and Weezing is so much more effective at that than any of the others—but there were a few unique benefits to this system, like how Magnemite could draw in coins from a distance to make all those 100-Coin and Red Coin Stars so much easier or how Hypno sends you to sleep as a means to recover health. The achievements were on the right side of challenging also, giving you the usual completion milestones as well as stage-specific goals that could often be a handful, including a few no-damage boss runs and some "don't press A" types. The Pokémon each had a single Star bonus course that doubled as a tutorial on how to use them and all of them had an additional achievement challenge that, ironically given their purpose, usually involved finishing those courses without using the Pokémon at all. Demanding, interesting, and inventive: the marks of a good hack.

Next hack? Well, I'm eyeing up this semi-unofficial Mario 64 Randomizer and curious about some of its associated achievements. I didn't think you could do a randomizer with achievements, given one person's experience might be very different (and way easier) than another's, but I guess I'm curious enough to find out how that all works. It'll require a few playthroughs too since there's achievements for different randomizer settings, but fortunately only one full 120 Star run is required. After this, I gotta stop with the Mario 64 for a while and switch things up; there is such a situation as having too much of a good thing.

Pictlogica check! New recruits from the most recent region include Relm (FFVI), Steiner (FFIX), Rosa (FFIV), Penelo (FFXII), and Firion (FFII). Kind of progressively less compelling, that cast of characters. I don't think I'll be changing my current team of Garland, Auron, Selphie, Celes, and Amarant but I always have an eye open for new talent just in case. Very tempted to toss T.G. Cid into the mix, just on the basis that if he was able to carry me through Tactics he could do so again here.

WonderSwanning, Mega Driving, and Sixty-Forging Ahead

Nothing but totally normal games on the WonderSwan this month.

Part Nine of Anyway, Here's WonderSwan saw me drop the whole random pick process and focus on whatever highlights were left that I still wanted to check out. I'm not sure I'll revisit the WonderSwan at any point after the tenth and final part of this series in November, so I wanted to spend the last couple of these ensuring I'd left nothing noteworthy behind. There'll still be a few remainders regardless, though, so maybe I'll come back for one last round-up at some point in 2025 or beyond. Going from worst to best of this group, at least according to my final ranking list: Wild Card is a curious if inscrutable card-based RPG from Kawazu's (SaGa guy) team at Square that has you creating a world piece by piece in a semi-random fashion; Mr. Driller is an absolutely fine port of Namco's frantic Dig Dug successor except I don't really care for the game itself too much; Raku Jongg is a neat idea for a block-stacking puzzler that incorporates the rules of mahjong as a means to hand out little bonuses for strong "hands"; Final Fantasy IV is a game I'd normally be happy to revisit in full via this slightly graphically improved form were there a more comprehensive fan translation (since it helps to know what you're doing and where you're going); and Puzzle Bobble is as delightful as ever even in monochrome.

Part XLIV of the Mega Archive (that would be Part 44; not sure why I stuck with Roman numerals this long) sees the last of the games released in December 1993 and, indeed, the year 1993 as a whole. A larger entry this time, fifteen games in total, I managed to cap a wiki project that's been a long while in the making. Since 1994 promises to be even more work I'm going to have to either figure out a way to truncate the process or just bail on it entirely; it's not like the future of the GB Wiki is all that certain right now. Still, though, this process is never not enjoyable for me even with the wave of licensed crap that most Mega Archives devolve into these days. Highlight this time was almost certainly the big swansong first-party RPG that was Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium, considered the best in the series, while the worst game is either the super generic (and very late, given where RPGs were at then) turn-based RPG Maten no Soumetsu or the doubly-boring EA Sports Double Header compilation.

64 in 64: Episode 47, the penultimate episode in its season, covered Killer Instinct Gold as the pre-selection and Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside as the random pick. The former was out of a sense of obligation due to having already covered every other Rare game for the platform; I don't have anything against Killer Instinct in particular but as a fighter on a system with a controller not ideally suited for fighters it was never going to rank too highly even with its great Robin Beanland soundtrack. The basketball game was entirely fine due to being more accessible than a dry sports simulation like the NBA Live series, but obviously a little less polished in turn. I managed to fit in two pre-season games before discovering that the pre-season mode is permanently stuck in easy mode, so that took the wind out of my sails a little after two surprising victories as the Sacramento Kings.

The "Indie Game of the Week" of the Month: Shantae and the Seven Sirens (WayForward, 2019/2020)

Hell yes! Keys! I'm so damn excited for keys!

Kind of a so-so gathering of Indies for this month, mostly abandoning the October horror theme almost immediately, but otherwise very much the sort of selection folks have come to expect from me by this point: an RPG, an explormer, an adventure game (the more point-and-clicky the better), and a Zeldersatz. I'm going to give the top spot to previous Apple Arcade exclusive Shantae and the Seven Sirens (#393) because WayForward really knows how to polish a game to a fine sheen even if there's not a whole lot to distinguish it from all the other Shantaes. Sometimes, something familiar and well-made is all you want out of a game: after all, that's how Ubisoft is managed to hang on this long (though I suspect this statement will age badly by next year).

As for the rest of this month, we have Light Fairytale Episode 1 (#390) as the inaugural chapter of a multi-episode turn-based RPG very much looking to invoke the PlayStation 1 golden era of JRPGs, at a time where the huge mainstream success of Final Fantasy VII (Light Fairytale's clear main inspiration) helped lift the tide for a great many other RPG franchises both new and extant like Suikoden, Chrono, Mana, Breath of Fire, and others. The game itself is extremely sparse in tactical substance and narrative content alike but there's an ambition here that I hope future entries can help realize as the developer grows in experience and confidence. Strangeland (#391) sees the welcome return of Wormwood Studios, who previously worked with Wadjet Eye to produce the gloomy but intriguing world of Primordia a decade or so back. Strangeland has a similar atmosphere but much more overtly horror-themed its subconscious world of regrets and sorrow, creating a story that's rarely cheerful but very appropriate for this month of creeps and bad times. Speaking of death, Arietta of Spirits (#392) presents a tale of a young girl accepting the death of a grandparent by taking on the responsibilities of a "Bound": a human who joins forces with a spirit to access the land of the dead and help trapped souls move on, while also keeping at bay a large destructive force of "roamers". Despite the Zelda affectations the game is very direct and combat-focused with little other variation in the way of gameplay, but I will say that it has a very attractive pixel look and a big ol' beating heart that might make it a good pick for someone younger, perhaps one that's also been struggling with the concept of death.

We'll have five more Indies for November and then I'll be just about done for the year, so be sure to check in next month to see what I pulled out my backlog (phrasing?) then. No spoilers but, well... looks like I might have another turn-based RPG, explormer, Zeldersatz, and graphic adventure game combo. Really wouldn't hurt to expand my horizons a little, huh? I'm old and set in my ways, give me a break.

The Bonus Indie: A Triple Bill of Terror!

'Tis the season and all, so for the October Bonus Indie I've reviewed three smaller-sized psychological horror games that I've presented here from least to most scary (to me personally, anyway). They're all legit Indies as far as I can tell but given they're all about the length of a movie they might've been challenging to spin into 1,000-word IGotW reviews. Bite-sized horror is usually the best kind of horror though: it's not a thematic genre that is best served by sticking around too long doing menial tasks, given how quickly that can deflate any tension.

Lydia (Platonic Partnership, 2017)

Lydia's a point-and-click adventure game about an eponymous little girl and the concerns she has about a monster in her closet. However, and I realize certain members of this site don't care for games that do this, Lydia is also deeply metaphorical: the monster is less a snarling creature but abstractly the parental neglect Lydia suffers as the game fast-forwards through her childhood and reviews pivotal interactions with her family and friends. Her dad, initially the more supportive parent who regales Lydia with bedtime stories until he gets distracted by his social life, ends up walking out on the family while she's still in elementary school. Her mother continues to blame all her problems on Lydia while shacking up with an unpleasant fellow named Frank and getting addicted to pills, and even Lydia's childhood friends Sheila and Steve prove to be as equally dysfunctional after growing up to become bickering teenage lovers with substance abuse problems.

Another recurring thread is the exacerbating effect of alcohol—everyone in the story save Lydia liberally partakes in libations, and it ends up taking several lives—which is why the game's mobile port actually got itself a sponsorship by a major national alcohol retailer who I'm guessing gets regularly guilted into supporting media with anti-alcoholism messages condemning the deleterious effects of tying one (or several) on. While visually a little on the rudimentary side the game's artstyle often works in its favor as an exaggerated perspective of this unfortunate world of misery and heavy drinking from the eyes of an innocent child, with adults often appearing as looming, stumbling shadows and unknown dangers lurking in the darkness just out of view, and that heightened effect is juxtaposed with the more grim and down-to-earth slices of domestic drama when the game flits forward in time to a teenage Lydia trying to escape the house for a spell. While there are a handful of classic adventure game puzzles, they're entirely dialogue-based (no walking around with a bunch of inventory items) and largely unobtrusive to the main narrative thread, which seems to be the focus.

Sure is fun to go camping with your dad, especially after he calls his friend after you hit the sack so he can dump all his life regrets on him with you in earshot. Sure beats going to therapy, I guess.

Don't worry about finding the bathroom this late, Lydia! When everyone's this drunk the entire house becomes a bathroom!

Overall, Lydia isn't so much scary as it is hopelessly bleak (you'd never guess it was from Finland) with Lydia surrounded by barely functioning adults who drink to escape the tedium of their lives while dealing with the loneliness and rejection that will probably cause her herself to fall down a similar abyss before too long. Still, if games can't occasionally tell stories like this they're not going to grow as a narrative medium so I'm all for a little video game seasonal depression from time to time. (Dang, should've saved it for Christmas instead. Way more fitting.) (Rating: 3 out of 5.)

Now You See (Screaming Void, 2019)

Here we go, something a little more traditional in the horror space: being trapped inside the home of a murderous, deranged redneck as you figure out a way to escape. Now You See is a point-and-click adventure game that has entirely hand-painted artwork, at least according to the game itself several times over, which does give its gory environs that little extra touch of class. After all, if I'm going to see a pile of viscera, I'd want to know that someone spent hours carefully using a paintbrush to create it rather than copy-paste a bunch of anatomical art assets and then used the MS Paint spray tool for the blood. Wait, I'm revealing too much about how I'd go about things. Anyway, the game's a fairly standard adventure game beyond that: you have an inventory, a means of examining notes and other important info, and some deeply annoying puzzles including a part where you crawl through some vents for an hour.

Given escape is the goal here, there's a touch of Escape Room logic to the game's progression. You first have to figure out a way to get out of the basement, which helpfully only consists of the room you wake up in and a corridor where a sightless fellow keeps watch while the master of the house, the gap-toothed Elijah, goes about his corpse dismemberment business you interrupted in the prologue. After that, you have the run of the place for a while, and then the game gets a little railroaded and frantic as Elijah gives chase as the game builds to its climax. Whole lot of eye stuff too, if you're curious about the name, though I'd also like to think it's the game commending you for finally solving a tough puzzle ("Yes! Now you get it!"). The puzzles weren't bad overall, though some of the hint-driven ones could get a bit too abstract, but the game did have this very old-fashioned adventure game habit of never removing anything from your inventory regardless of whether or not it still had a purpose. That's not an issue early on, but once you have several screens full of crap after a hour it gets a bit much to juggle. It's one of those game design dilemmas I can sympathize with though: if you're routinely throwing out trash on the player's behalf it kinda makes things a little too easy for them, and if you factor in verisimilitude your character would probably want to hold onto all these screwdrivers and scissors just in case they're ever needed again. For as much as I didn't care for it dropping me into a Wizardry dungeon for a while, I'll admit the game does you a solid by giving you chalk—with that you can make frequent marks on the environment so you won't keep turning around on yourself.

Ah, you're busy, I'll... come back later. Oh hey, Bath Guy.

Oh shit, I've been kidnapped by Olive Garden.

It's a pretty basic horror game with a few grisly scenes but not a whole lot of tension, but then as an adventure game fan I much prefer solving puzzles to getting chased around by Leatherface so I guess I can applaud its direction. Horror games are a dime a dozen so I can appreciate needing something to stand out that won't be catastrophic to a small Indie outfit's budget, and the hand-painted direction was a good means of setting yourself apart from the low-effort asset flip jumpscare crowd. I might not necessarily rate this as a lost classic of the horror genre but it was charming for what it was, if charming's the word I want to use for a game where I had to fish around a blood-filled toilet for a vital item. What is it with horror games and fishing around in toilets? Is plumbing the true terror? (Rating: 3 out of 5.)

One Night Stand (Kinmoku, 2016)

All right, here we go, the scariest game of the night. Deep breaths. In One Night Stand you, as you might expect, wake up to find yourself deeply hung over and in someone else's bed. Someone who is currently still in the bed with you. At this point your mind, as it would mine, is probably going a mile a minute: Who is this? Why are you here? What happened? How drunk were you? How drunk was she? How much of a gentleman can you honestly believe you were last night, or is someone about to call the cops? What should I ask her without revealing that I don't even recall her name? How would anyone carefully extricate themselves from this situation in a way that was sufficiently polite, respectful, and empathetic in order to not leave any hard feelings behind? Where the hell did my boxers fly off to?

It's the type of short narrative game built for replays: that is, you wake up again the same morning and try a different approach for a hopefully better outcome. Maybe she throws your inconsiderate ass out onto the street, maybe the two of you take inventory in the cold light of day and end up having a proper conversation and become better acquainted without any major faux pas on your part, or maybe you even end up kindling something a little more meaningful from this encounter than a relationship that begins and ends after a single eventful night.

Bring back the serial killer. At least I don't worry about being courteous and tactful to him.

Fuck it, I'll take it. That I didn't throw up all over her on the way out is a minor coup.

I just know that in a blind panic I had to get the fudge out of there as quickly as possible without coming off as a complete asshole in the process, which I almost managed to accomplish, and I've no intent at all of seeing the other endings. Seriously, with my social anxiety a situation like that would give me the dry heaves and nightmares for weeks afterwards, which is why I'm once again thankful that I gave up on socializing around the same time as I quit carbonated drinks and snacking between meals: sometimes your health has to come first. (Rating: 3 out of 5.)

Well, if I've learned anything from this Halloween it's to never touch another drop of alcohol again (and also maybe avoid weird farmhouses in the middle of nowhere). Let's get as far away as we possibly can from the topic of sleeping with women by talking about anime instead:

The Weeb Weeview

It was long past time to scale this segment back a bit, otherwise people will start suspecting that I enjoy watching anime recreationally. So to that effect, I'm only going to gab about three shows that have stood out so far in this season and then do some single-sentence impressions of that list of "might check this out"s I put out into a cold, unfeeling internet last month. Can't stop, won't stop weeviewing though, you have my word.

Dandadan

Dandadan occasionally becomes a case of style over substance, since nothing much has actually happened in these first four episodes, but man is there is a whole lot of style. Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura (not that one) have been thoroughly and unceremoniously introduced into the world of banana-hunting aliens and curse-wielding ghosts by the end of the pilot and by this point have dealt with the immediate aftermath of that veil-lifting process by thwarting the all-powerful Turbo Granny ghost. Even so, they're not out of the woods just yet as this bizarre world to which they've become newly cognizant continues to hide all manner of spectral and astral antagonists, and once you've seen what's out there, well, what's out there tends to look back at you in turn. Staring at abysses, etc. and so on.

I'm probably not saying anything original by stating this but the show reminds me a lot of FLCL so far, at least its original season (I never saw the sequels/reboots). That there's a whole lot of crazy opponents and bizarre shit going down, all conveyed beautifully with a very fluid and vivid animation style, but when you dig right down to the core it's a highschool slice-of-life about awkward crushes and drawing strength from supportive friendships. Kinda. FLCL wasn't always that wholesome if I recall but it did have that similar balance of insane alien shit and quiet moments killing time in a normal suburban home.

I do like Dandadan so far but I'm curious about where it might be heading in the long-term, since it's been running its wheels with this Turbo Granny plotline while slowly introducing its ancillary characters and I figured the plot would be moving a lot faster than this given the hyperactive presentation. It does seem like a show I'll want to stick with for the rest of this season though, since you really can't predict what will happen next (unless you've read the manga, of course).

Shangri-La Frontier (Season 2)

Shangri-La Frontier is still exploring the mythology of its setting, specifically the MMO-game-within-a-show one, as the defeat of a unique monster has caused a massive server-wide shift in the game's progression. Avian-masked protagonist Sunraku doesn't care too much about the lore—he has united with the main lore-gathering guild, but mostly because they asked and he seems like the accommodating sort (if the price is right)—and is more enthused instead about all this mysterious technology he found as loot after said special boss encounter. That's what the start of this season has been about so far: digging into parts of this MMO no-one has ever seen, encountering distinctive dangers (mostly of a self-destructing golem kind; some great explosions so far), and getting hassled and hassling in turn both the gaggle of animal NPCs that have joined him as well as his antagonistic PVP buddies and fellow kusoge enthusiasts Pencilgon and Oikatzo.

Season 2 is definitely not interested in acclimating those who skipped ahead (why would it, I suppose) and has hit the ground running with the meta-gaming hooks and fun action sequences that made the first season such a treat, frequently pausing both for the sake of some levity here and there mostly at the expense of the overconfident (but perhaps deservedly so) protagonist, and I think if you were binging this show from the start you wouldn't even notice the break from this season and the last. As long as it continues to pace itself the way it has, occasionally dipping into what the extended cast is doing (including the imposing Attack Master, played by a young woman absolutely down bad for our hero yet too shy of a wallflower to make a move), it'll probably be one of my favorite shows for this autumn period. And winter too, I guess, since they made this a double-cour season also.

Re:Zero Season 1

Re:Zero first aired back when I'd stopped watching anime regularly but was semi-responsible for heralding this current trend of "nothin' but isekai". Since its third season just started I figured it was due time to get all caught up, given this autumn season's overall pretty light. Dang, but this anime is definitely not light though. I figured it was going for a funtimes KonoSuba vibe with its goofy-ass NEET protag who goes around a fantasy world wearing a tracksuit while making licentious comments towards comely half-elves, but they put some Steins;Gate into this thing when I wasn't looking and I'm not talking the happy first half of Steins;Gate where everyone's nerding around and having fun but the real "shit hits the fan" second half of Steins;Gate with the constant death 'n' trauma time-loops of a slowly unraveling protagonist.

That's the general theme of Re:Zero if you're not familiar: typical Japanese teen deadbeat Natsuki Subaru is dropped into the fantasy world of Lugunica quite suddenly, with no money to his name and no special cheat skills (that he knows of), and in the process of finding his bearings and meeting some friendly people he ends up getting butchered by an unseen killer and wakes up earlier that same day, repeating his own apparently unavoidable death a few times before he finally figures out a solution. The show does not hesitate in the slightest about putting its chirpy everyman goofball hero through the wringer, trapped in a world and a predicament he lacks the tools and knowledge to understand let alone navigate, but it also does some solid character work as Subaru hunts for routes that spares not only him from a grisly fate but the allies that he painstakingly wins over with his confidence and compassion. Like with Groundhog Day, it's only when he finds an "optimal" path through the day that he's allowed to move past the current loop and enter a new one. Neat twists so far and the animation and performances have been great, if unsparing in the amount of suffering depicted.

Definitely a cut above most isekai in dramatic terms, so I understand how it's been able to get a third season going. Curiously, I think both this and KonoSuba work best as deconstructions of the genre, each creating something very tonally different (comedy in KonoSuba's case, psychological horror in this) to the usual superhero "at least people appreciate me here" power/validation fantasies most isekai end up being. That the popularity of those two shows in Japan was certainly in some part due to this subversive element makes it all the funnier that they were two of the first isekai shows to really catch on internationally too, where the tropes aren't quite so worn down to merit this refreshing change. Will probably spend the rest of autumn getting caught up here since both seasons 1 and 2 are a beefy two cours each in length. (Also, I've heard that creepy "ooWEEEuuu" sting in all sorts of memes and it's illuminating to finally have a source for it.)

And the rest:

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill (Season 2): At last, we're getting some fantasy warfare with some thinking-outside-the-box strategizing and the return on investment of seeing Lord Ars and his team get some recognition for their prowess; it's good shit so far, if nothing spectacular.
Loner Life in Another World: This show's been matching the manga's tone, which is all over the place early on here given the subplots about delinquents planning SA and a serial killer classmate, but it'll even out soon enough and be back to what I liked most about the material: efficient problem-solving purely for the sake of getting to skip out on doing any work for a while.
The Most Notorious "Talker" Runs the World's Greatest Clan: Been fun reading the comments for this one, since the protag is far from the idealistic hero that generally runs the show in these things, and him assembling his overpowered team was a great early hook for the manga that the show will take its time with (the fourth member isn't even in the opening yet, so either they're keeping him secret or the first season won't even get that far).
Arifureta (Season 3): For as skeptical as I was about this before the season started, I think Arifureta's figured out its strengths as a trashy edgelord wish-fulfilment isekai and so it's been having some fun with this rabbit beastperson arc as the once gentle and skittish race go full assassin commando squad against their oppressors thanks to broody anti-hero protag-kun's training and guidance.
Ranma ½: Pretty much how I remember the original show, swapping some of the classic animation's hyperactive elasticity for a more grounded style that incorporates some cute manga-like elements in the backgrounds instead; seems like a worthy retelling of the manga so far, though fans of the original series have been a little divided I hear.
Uzumaki: Haven't started watching this horror manga adaptation yet but I heard its quality fell off a cliff (or a downward spiral, would be the more apt wordplay) in between the first and second episodes, making it something I'm even more curious about than I was before.

Next month, I'll talk about some shows I discovered since October started. Nothing that stands out too much but there's a few minor delights in the fantasy and romance genres including a fake marriage sitcom, a humorous ode to imposter syndrome, and a slapstick comedy about a school for yokai. See you again in November.

Always refreshing to find an anime that speaks to who and what I am as a person.