Still Joking, and deadly serious about the future of games
This week we dive into the world of visual novels and wade through the current cesspool of major league gaming
Review: Still Joking
Developed and published by Purple Brick Games
Rating: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
Visual novels are as fascinating a medium as they are a tricky proposition to pull off successfully. It’s in this format that the writers are left brutally exposed because there’s precious little that gameplay, graphics, audio or style that can do to salvage writing that isn’t great. And that’s because, quite obviously, it’s a novel — traditionally a work of writing. Going into Still Joking, this was at the front of my mind. Rather fortunately though and setting things up nicely, the game seemed to have a very catchy hook in the form of its premise: “What if our mirror reflections have a life of their own?”. This is going to be great, I told myself.
Still Joking is the debut project by Purple Brick Games, described on their Kickstarter page as “a small international team with almost a joke of a background: a lawyer, a teacher, a translator, a chemist, an economist, a journalist, a musician, a college dropout, and (you’re gonna love this!) a game designer. ;-)”. With an eclectic a bunch like this contributing to the game, I was even more optimistic.
Now, I’d first heard about Still Joking via an email from the good people over at Evolve PR (not a peep before that), and was quite curious to check it out. As is usually the case when my previous experiences with the genre have been positive, I was hungry for more. The previous experience included such titles as The House in Fata Morgana, Doki Doki Literature Club! and the marvellous Neo Cab. Each of these had their own unique styles and quirks, but what they had in common was a solid narrative and tight writing.
Still Joking tells the story of Iris — the mirror image of famous actress Serena, who is trying to find out why her ‘prototype’ (the term for the person who casts the mirror image) was killed. As a setup, this is brilliant, particularly given the way the game lobs you right into the deep end without very much in the form of explanation or background. You watch Serena looking into the mirror (at Iris, as you later discover) before she is stabbed with an ornate knife. Seconds later, you turn into Iris standing by and looking at the crime scene.
I found the opening minutes interesting enough to push through what I hoped would be a rare bit of exposition and re-exposition. That said, the couple or so characters I encountered during this period (all of whom were reflections) were rather engaging. Over the course of the next dozen or so hours (as per the promotional materials), you meet a whole host of reflections. The game’s branching narrative allows you to interact with them through a variety of missions, romantic entanglements and general story beats.
All along, you’re working on helping Iris get to the bottom of the reason and the person/s behind her prototype’s cold-blooded murder. You learn about the fascinating world occupied by these mirror images of prototypes, how they relate to each other and how they keep themselves busy.
Unfortunately, it’s here that we run I ran into something of a formidable wall in the form of the writing. Specifically, it’s the issue to which I had alluded at the top that comes into stark relief: In the absence of gameplay mechanics or shiny graphics, the writing is left extremely exposed in visual novels. And without meaning to be overly harsh, Still Joking features some extremely poor writing.
Derivative, repetitive and droning are just a few ways I’d describe it. What’s worse though is the writers’ (personified, in my view, by the protagonist Iris) apparent belief that they and the words that emerge from their quills are hilarious. It’s fine to be unfunny, but when you continue to bombard your audience with unfunny wisecracks and follow them up with what seem like elbow nudges to the ribs in a vain effort to get them to crack a smile, it all becomes rather depressing.
Considering also how the game and its promotional materials go to great pains to reassure you that Iris is sarcastic and funny, that most of her comedy material falls flat is regrettable. But very swiftly dawns the realisation that the rest of the writing is as bad, even when it’s not trying to be funny. The line delivered in the screen grab above is a perfect example of this. I struggled through a shade upward of four-and-a-half hours of Still Joking, before deciding to call time on my endeavour.
I should probably supplement this remark by adding that I very rarely give up on a game for any reason other than very high levels of difficulty. Sadly, I found it impossible to trudge any deeper into this game, such was the clunky and unwieldy nature of the writing. Also, during tedious sections of dialogue or monologue in a visual novel or the extremely infrequent RPG, I’m unashamed to say I find myself skim reading the text and clicking the ‘next’ or ‘skip’ or ‘ahead’ button. Never before have I done this through half the conversation, never mind 80 to 90 per cent of it — until Still Joking came along.
Moving over to the bright side, there are clearly some great ideas here — in the form of the premise, the world-building, a few gameplay mechanics, the variety of choices at your disposal (even in the first four-and-a-half hours, I got a fair look at those) and so on. I also enjoyed the fact that I was able to give my 2020 MacBook Air (M1) a chance to get involved in gaming, something it — for one reason or another — hasn’t done since Frostpunk around three years ago (next stop, Baldur’s Gate 3).
However, for the most part, Still Joking is a drag made worse, ironically, by the fact that it takes itself and its attempts at humour so seriously. It should be borne in mind that this is only Purple Brick Games’ first outing, and so expecting brilliance right off the bat would be a tad unrealistic. However, I do look forward to the studio’s sophomore and future outings.
Game reviewed on MacBook Air (M1). Review code provided by publisher
The death of gaming’s ‘middle class’?
On May 7, terrible news filtered in that Microsoft was embarking on a round of downing shutters on a handful of studios; these include Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks and Alpha Dog. This, the latest of studio closures across the industry, came as one of the strangest since Microsoft only acquired these entities as part of ZeniMax Media a little over three years ago.
Even more bizarre is a look at the back catalogues of at least two of these studios: Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. The former was responsible for 2017’s seminal Prey and the considerably less successful (but no less ambitious) Redfall, while the latter has such titles as The Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo and the incredible Hi-Fi Rush to its name. That these closures come a little over a year after the launch of the multi-award-nominated Hi-Fi Rush seems less like bad business decisions than downright incompetent management. But we’re not inside those boardrooms, so it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on for certain.
As confirmed by Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty, these shutdowns came amid huge cuts and layoffs at Bethesda. Out of context and in isolation, this is bad enough, but cast your mind back a few months. It was at around the start of the year that 1,900 Microsoft employees (including a large chunk from newly-acquired Activision Blizzard) were laid off. And if I’m giving the impression that it’s only Microsoft indulging in less-than-ideal practices, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Take-Two, the Embracer Group, EA and numerous others have over the past 24-odd months been indulging in cost-cutting (that’s the party line in any case) measures that have seen scores of studios being shut and thousands of jobs being cut. Further, there are other shady practices afoot like delisting games rendering them unplayable for people who’ve paid their hard-earned money for the right to play them. We’ve also got studio head honchos glibly telling gamers that not only do you not own games anymore, but that you need to be ‘comfortable’ with that. Then there are studios with a proven pedigree (and a massive fanbase) for their single-player titles that decide in the wake of a poorly-received live-service title that live-service is the way to go. And then there are the subscription services (Game Pass and PS Plus), the benefits of which are not entirely clear for developers or publishers.
What has emerged overall is a couple of clear signposts for the future. The first is that gaming is no longer run by gamers. In other words, the Romeros, Carmacks, Molyneuxes and Cages are an increasingly rare commodity. In their stead, you have a growing number of suits calling the shots. And the second, as the title of this piece teases, is the death of what I call the ‘middle class’ of games at the hands of these corpos. On one end of the spectrum, you have the upper class, the AAA (and AAAAs, sure, why not?) games — those that are lubricated by budgets in the tens of millions, made by massive teams over several years, and feature state-of-the-art motion capture and the most jaw-dropping graphics this side of Alan Wake II.
On the other end of the spectrum are the indies, currently leading the charge when it comes to gameplay innovations, exciting storytelling (unencumbered by the universally growing need to appease all and please none), thrilling new IPs, crowdsourced development and likely shoestring budgets. This isn’t the domain of stale sequels or iterative annual releases. And in between is that amorphous blob occupied by indie titles with (relatively) large budgets, AA games and those made by major studios on a (relatively) small budget. That right there is the middle class of gaming that is gradually being hammered out of existence and the biggest casualty of these studio shutdowns and employee layoffs.
This augurs very poorly for gamers because while there’s a great deal of polish and quality to be found in AAA and innovation to be found in the indies, it’s in the ‘middle class’ that you find innovation going hand-in-hand with polish and finesse. It’s where the likes of Hi-Fi Rush, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper and TimeSplitters are born. And if the current trend continues, games will fall into one of the two aforementioned categories with nothing in between. Sure, you could yawn and scoff at the idea claiming that this is just another “Microsoft evil, Nintendo good” or “AAA bad, indie good” or “West bad, East good” rant. And I certainly hope that my assessment ends up being off the mark, because currently the future looks quite dystopian.
The indies, resilient as they are, aren’t going away anytime soon. Beyond grants, admission to grandiosely-named projects or the odd acquisition, they’ve never really needed the AAA execs or their decision-making. And so they’re likely to stay the course. The world of AAA (except for a small bunch like Capcom) is on a path of repetition (with sequels, iterative titles and a seemingly neverending stream of samurai games), microtransactions and the shiniest, slickest and sonically magnificent interactive films.
From sustainability and management to innovation and staying abreast of technology, the ‘middle class’ is in need of a new approach to game development. As it stands, those currently occupying this section will either be acquired, chewed up and spat out in a shower of pink slips, or they will gradually have to move to smaller projects or different platforms (mobile gaming, for instance). The current era doesn’t seem to be overly accommodating for those unwilling to move down in scale or be consumed. A renaissance is inevitable. To sum it all up, I’d like to quote someone wise from not too long ago, “The old gods are dead; we need new gods now” — a new batch of Romeros, Molyneuxes and other such disruptors.
Until such time as these gods make themselves known, you’d be advised to go to your backlog and play out Prey, Hi-Fi Rush and some other gems before they get inexplicably delisted (presuming you ‘own’ them digitally).
PS: Yes, I’ve been playing Hi-Fi Rush a lot this week and it’s left such a profound impact on me that I can’t seem to stop talking about it or screenshotting it.
In closing…
After all that doom and gloom, let’s move to something far more encouraging and for me this week, that is 1000xRESIST. Expect a review real soon, but for now, here’s a trailer:
And I’ll also be diving back into the latest chapter of Senua’s battle with demons (personal and otherwise) with Senua's Saga: Hellblade II. Until I return with my impressions of the game, check out the trailer: