Trauma, candy, and game shows - Thoughts on Indiepocalpyse 10
Indiepocalypse is a monthly zine and collection of indie games featuring weird, quirky, and creative explorations of the medium. Here are some thoughts on issue #10 from November 2020.
The Zine
I’m not as immediately in love with this month’s cover by Emmanuel Edeko as some of the prior issues, but sitting with it a bit I’ve started to come around. I like how relaxed it is, soft outlines in a 90s game-mag color scheme. In writing this I noticed the gamer is wearing pizza Vans and my opinion shot way up. Plump Pikachu is another highlight if not outright meme-able. The logo handling breaks up the design a bit too harshly and opting for a script font or losing the outline might have helped it feel more cohesive with the sketched texture of the artwork.
A couple standouts from the covers include Teeth Simulator - looking not unlike an early 00s punk album - and Broke Brodie, which expertly captures the sinister tone of rubber house cartoons while also quickly introducing the game. Spare Parts looks the part of a movie poster and shows off the great character designs, though feels a bit incongruous with the game (appearing to me more ominous than is warranted).
In the comics zone we again find PHD’s Todd Tucker Realtor - the realtor gnome - who I have come to greatly enjoy. The apathy of this gnome trying to pedal properties feels in line with a modern detest many feel towards their jobs and the parasitic nature of landlords. The other comic, F-Off by KC Green, could be a New Yorker caption contest, which is to say I chuckled while failing to understand why or what at.
The last bit is the continuation of Andrew’s 69 One Shots which further explore relationships and larping as farm animals. The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side plays like a dating sim wherein players try to gain the affection of, well, the Object of Affection. It’s an explicitly gamified model of romance but with the right group, I could see it being very humorous. Frustratingly, the same hard to parse font as before is still being used and makes it unpleasant to read through these games. As I proposed last issue, making these pages copy/paste-able would be a good compromise in place of changing the font outright.
Of the three issues I have reviewed thus far, 10’s zine is probably the most underwhelming. That’s not to say it’s a disaster - rather that the quality of past issues is very high - but there were fewer pages that stood out as particularly compelling. An interesting collection as always, but of more mixed quality.
Teeth Simulator (Bodro)
You know that nightmare where your teeth are falling out? How about the one where teeth are growing from places they shouldn’t? Teeth Simulator is something like that, and it’s disgusting. But also, I can’t imagine anything but disgust as the goal, so in that sense, it’s a major success.
Swing your mouse around and let your unhinged jaw gobble up trash falling endlessly from the top of the screen. A ghoulish voice growls surreal insults as you munch; “you sound like bloated organs.” Eating trash lets you grow more teeth of random size and position, but they break on larger trash so at any given time you are without a working mouth. Teeth Simulator is answering the call of “what if Death Grips made a WarioWare micro-game?”
The trash keeps coming so the only goal is your stamina against unpleasant images of teeth poking through foreheads or cracking against large chunks. The crude crayon sketches lesson a bit of the impact, but few things creep me out like loose teeth and Teeth Simulator takes every measure to ensure maximum discomfort. Bravo, I guess?
Remember Mary (Edward Atkin, Mark Mauer)
I really like Remember Mary’s duck. They’re bright yellow and drawn in squiggly lines with odd proportions. They eat Mary after she gives them breakfast, and it is discovered a blue duck is living inside of them. I find this sad and charming.
Games like Remember Mary work best as mood pieces. The world is drawn in broad strokes that overlap and contradict, but everything seems normal to the characters so the best that can be done is to go along with them. I feel very floaty playing this, pressing up against furniture and watching it start to jiggle. Not like jelly, but not unlike it either - like how people pretend jelly jiggles.
I am at odds with the picture above Mary’s bed. It is a level of blurry crudeness that stands out against the flat colors and off angles. But we don’t spend much time in the bedroom so it is a small concern. Mostly, I want to hang out with the duck. I think it’s fine to play this game just for the duck. The creatures in the sewer are nice as well but none of them have ducks living inside them. Or at least, I didn’t get to see them. I suppose it’s possible.
Budget Rate Stigmata (Hero Robb)
What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? – Robert Hayden
Budget Rate Stigmata’s opening apartment complex belies the noxious industrialism lurking in the basement. Checkered floors, uniformed brown doors, a dull plant in the stairwell. Beneath the apartment are pools of blood and machines of unknown purpose. It is so dark, only a dim light outlines a hall within the austere blackness. The narrator’s voice cuts through the clinking music and chugging environment, describing what brought them here, and what they are hoping to leave behind.
Stigmata could be so much more macabre than it is, but despite the river of blood and stigmata itself, it is more lonely than grotesque. The real tragedies happened in the past – passing relatives, distant parents, a failed relationship. What comes after is mostly empty, and though Stigmata embellishes these pasts it does not try to transform them into some Cronenberg monstrosity.
It is surprising how defined a space Stigmata draws given the intense pixelation effect applied to the player’s vision. Objects move in and out of focus, sometimes extremely vivid other times discernable as only different colored blobs. I felt compelled to squint, as if not trusting my own vision. It is hard to know what to trust here. I do not think it is less significant if these scenes are imagined, but it certainly shifts what it means to return to them at the end. Am I choosing to live among eldritch abominations, or is this just how I make sense of life’s smaller struggles? I am alone either way.
Broke Brodie (Julie "Nhung" Le)
Broke Brodie has a great vibe, some sort of fireside ghost story trapped in an NES cart. Brodie and his family have been kidnapped and the ghosts don’t want to give up the keys! But, actually, they’re not so stubborn. Everyone’s just holding on to what little they have (being ghosts and all).
I wish there had been more than the one quick-time unlock puzzle. The platforming is underwhelming but there is a nice physicality to the code inputs, it’s a shame it isn’t used more. It’s a shame there’s not much here of any sort, the save and item systems implying a larger scope than the five or so minutes it takes to bust Brodie out. The lack of resolution hits harder than most jam games, an abrupt conclusion contrasting the vividly drawn prelude. Hopefully, the project will be revisited someday, with a few more codes to punch and fewer blocks to hop upon.
The Last Quest (SamberoDev)
CW: mention of suicide
Video game discourse cycles through the same three topics so often, dismissing them comes reflexively. “Are games art? What’s the deal with reviews? Are games just murder simulators?” I love this nonsense, this surface-level critique with no conclusion, because it’s so tangible. These are obvious critical inroads so we keep revisiting them, each time as if newly revelatory.
The Last Quest is a dare. A game of puerile violence against meme-spouting NPCs, it begs to be overly interpreted, for you to skim the hot take fat from its eager surface and fill a notepad with deep readings on the nature of digital murder. To finish the game the player commits suicide. How daring, what a shock!
I feel mild nausea at the choice, thematically consistent as it may be. The Last Quest is both self-aware and self-destructive, seeing the trope and running with it, performing a memetic reclamation that falls apart under so many UwU-s. But I can’t deny the game’s loneliness. One NPC tells me “it’s dangerous to be alone” and it hits as more than a joke.
So I am torn between my critical pretensions and the seemingly accidental resonance of this sparse world of static characters and wanton destruction. The Last Quest is a recursive joke, but at moments it stumbles into something more profound, again highlighting the limitations of violence as a mechanic, the desire for connection, and how quickly a meme transitions in and out of irony.
Spare Parts Episode 1 (Sophie Rose)
It’s refreshing to see a visual novel taking artistic inspiration from shows like Steven Universe and Gravity Falls. Spare Parts has a great chunky art style with thick outlines and pastel shades, cute characters with energetic expressions. It goes a long way in establishing a unique identity for the game from other more traditionally anime VNs. The interface is mechanically identical to most VNs but I love the blocky minimalism, red highlights emphasizing each choice to feel more impactful than a simple button.
Spare Parts follows Lucy, a twenty-something who is struggling to find a job, as she happens upon a strange hardware store and is hired on the spot. Quickly, the store reveals itself to be more advanced and mysterious than its plain appearance, and Lucy is caught up helping the residents make ends meet. It’s a classic Fruit Baskets’ “shy girl moves in with eccentric non-humans” but the sci-fi shift feels at least a bit novel.
As much as the art style impresses the writing drags on through so many ellipses and internal conflicts. There are great character moments here and when the events are allowed to move they are earnest enough to make up for the tropes employed. But it takes so incredibly long to get there, each scene dragging out as Lucy stammers through her insecurities and the not-humans attempt to get through to her with their own emotionally stunted replies.
If Spare Parts condensed itself and leaned on its characters more it could be a fun, if nonsensical VN with cute art and a loveably awkward cast. This is only the first episode so it’s entirely possible the writing finds its stride later on, but it’s the equivalent of watching the first third of a show waiting for it to start moving. Sometimes it’s worth the investment, but there’s not much here that justifies the lengthy introduction.
SWEETDOZER (t.k. dreck)
SWEETDOZER starts off simple enough. You are a tractor rolling up loose candy into Katamari balls. Deliver the candy to the red checkered box (a candy store perhaps?) and you get points and a bit of extra time to scoop up more candy. Clear the lawn and more candy materializes. Endless dozer-ing; endless candy.
The stressful opening moments of SWEETDOZER evolve into something more methodical as time stacks on the clock and I’m able to more carefully craft my balls. Row by row, column by column. I adopt the same tactics as when I’d mow lawns for kid money, and pretty soon am clearing screens with a dangerous efficiency.
But the candy keeps coming and the game starts to burst. The timer runs off into the black border of the screen, digits lost to the void. My score reaches a point where it flips into the negative, counting down rather than up. When I make it to zero the system finally collapses. The timer stops, my score remains at zero, and the checkered box doesn’t even beep when I shovel candy into its maw. Have I won, or did nobody expect I’d play this far?
SWEETDOZER is a fine, if somewhat limited arcade game whose strangely uncomfortable tone and glitches transform it into capitalist dread. I’d have enjoyed different level designs to shovel through, some form of progression beyond the busted score system, but I was also taken by the strangeness of it all. I don’t know why I’m asking so much of candy, but maybe that’s the trap. Who’d expect the candy store? Why has the timer stopped?
Building Relationships (Tanat Boozayaangool)
I roll my body down a hill, all sharp edges and flat surfaces. I talk to the chest, to the windmill. We’re on a date, supposedly, but nobody told me. I wade among the fishes. I am as dense as I am waterproof.
Building Relationships is a pun wrapping around to sincerity. The buildings are sentient, they have feelings, they’re looking for love. It’s sweet if suitably surreal. There’s an ironic detachment, buildings passing around weird socks and surviving random accidents. But never does Building Relationships transition into being itself a joke. Playing as a sentient building is almost secondary to the island’s tone, a place at once alive to the characters within it but unmoving and cut off from the rest of the world.
As if anticipating that navigating a mountain as a rectangle would get frustrating, Building Relationships gives you an infinite jump that relieves the movement difficulty but further distorts the island’s nature. It’s goofy, but the soundtrack drips on with somber if not outright sad piano tunes. Whatever is happening here is far from permanent.
I can’t connect as much as I wish I could to Building Relationships – the game is too brief and clumsy to permit it – but I have a great affection for its unusual choices. I love how every building bounces like a floppy cartoon. I love the blocky fish swimming with their corners protruding from the surface. I love the sappy but warm conclusion, stating that even if things change we will always have our memories. I’d like to keep my memory of this game, small as it is.
Asobi (Team SolEtude)
Between NeoCab (Chance Agency, 2019), Night Call (Monkey Moon, 2019), Wheels of Aurelia (Santa Ragione, 2016), and now Asobi, the stable of introspective taxi games is growing quite strong. Asobi follows just a single journey of a sex worker to a hotel but attempts to wrap it into a larger framework of the nature of transience and relationships.
In a few key scenes, Asobi is surprisingly powerful. Listening to your passenger, Remu, describe her failed relationship (“people want you to themselves”) is heartbreaking, as are your clumsy attempts to navigate some perceived etiquette when asking about her work. It’s awkward, but she is gracious despite your bluntness.
When the game tries to roll in more elevated topics – particularly in justifying why passengers are being so explicit and open with their driver – it reads more forced. Remu and the driver talk as if presenting on the morality of their existence, wielding grandiose monologues whose findings do not justify their delivery. I am far more moved by Remu’s attempts out of poverty and struggles with disassociating than I am contemplating my mortality. There is little balance, Asobi swings hard with every line.
Perhaps with more time Asobi could properly unpack all the themes it’s bundling, but at 10-15 minutes, it doesn’t make the impression it aspires to. The stories here are still intimate and at times impactful, but I was left wishing this was a more ordinary taxi with more human passengers.
Traitor Nightly (Seth Alter)
I don’t play Catan much anymore. It’s a fine game – popular among friends, fairly balanced, not too dense as to take an hour just to explain – but I find the colonial mechanics unpleasant. There are so many games about expansion, harvesting, depletion of resources, and increasingly I find it prudent to contextualize these experiences as contributing to a broader mindset of global capitalist consumption. When I try to explain this to my brother he simply looks at me, confounded and bored.
Games, even abstract ones, convey elements of the people that birthed them. They reflect the concerns and interests of a period and can be as enlightening about a culture’s values as any text or document. Play disarms us. We do not perceive ourselves as documenting histories and lacking those pretensions end up doing so more honestly. Traitor Nightly is about those moments where the veil slips, too much is said, and the political balance shifts on a hasty move.
The board game is openly unbalanced. The empire has four pieces to the rebellion’s three, a path to victory in only three moves, and quite often the dice seem to favor them (but of course, the loser always doubts the winner’s honesty). With each turn the player asks questions of the grandmaster, pulling forth abstract and incomplete allusions to the current political climate. With each successive game, the world is drawn more into focus, but the grandmaster has kept distant by design. This is a game show, after all. Everyone is being watched.
Traitor Nightly is immediately confounding. Its rules tell only the mechanics of the pieces but actually doing well is equal parts luck and patience. I lost many matches on the first turn and many more through a failed roll that tilted things entirely to my opponent. But games are quick and the framing captivating. I was not playing against an NPC but a grandmaster, the host of a popular program who has never lost on the air. How could I stop without at least once knocking them off their throne?
Even after running through every line of dialogue – dispersed so, so slowly, like treats to a difficult dog – I couldn’t give it up. But victory didn’t bring with it new revelations or satisfaction. It was just another end, the box closing up as firmly as before, the grandmaster growing silent. Suddenly, I am led to question what and who I was playing for. What has been achieved with the grandmaster’s defeat? Was I playing the rebels after all?
It is a fascinating lack of clarity, a world drawn only through the tangents muttered between rounds. I feel close to these players despite knowing nothing about them. But I know their tensions, the quiet moments of rebellion, the recanting of heretical opinions, and the apprehension to reveal anything that might be used against them. The board is the occasion, but the drama is the draw. A game recognizing the imbalance of power, daring players to try anyway.
You can find this issue of Indiepocalpyse, as well as all past issues, on itch.io.
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