How Doki Doki Literature Club Paints an (Almost) Authentic Picture of Depression

From one angle, Team Salvato's (free) visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club looks like an attempt to capture a bit of Undertale's signature metafictional magic. A game that begins as a piece in a well-defined genre ends up being anything but—picking apart both the mechanical and narrative tropes that a player might expect from, respectively, a visual … Continue reading How Doki Doki Literature Club Paints an (Almost) Authentic Picture of Depression

SOMA, Prey, and What it Means to Be Human

It was an fortunate coincidence that I ended up playing Prey and SOMA at virtually the same time. It wasn't even back to back—I played them more or less alongside each other, and finished each (the first a ~25 hour immersive sim in the mold of System Shock 2, the second a 9 hour, linear survival-horror venture at the … Continue reading SOMA, Prey, and What it Means to Be Human