Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Distortion Nation’ and ‘The Missing Locksmith’
Sorry for the delay, we back
Distortion Nation is a visual novel by TangledVirus, the indie dev that brought us the unique visual novel Enc and the Flying Machine just last page. This time, however, players will be following Reverie in her attempts to open up about her life as a vampire and find that happiness and fulfillment that she craves.
Oh and she’s a vampire with necromancer girlfriends. That bit’s important. See, Reverie became a vampire at the beginning of the story, hoping to escape her life and find happiness. Unfortunately for her, a simple transformation does not guarantee happiness, no matter what the silky voice of a famous vampire might suggest.
We then move forward a decade to her dealing with the fact that her parents hate her and her self-confidence is at an abysmal point. From here, players will make decisions on how they will act for Reverie at critical moments, such as calling Wenke (seen above) while Reverie is in the hospital.
The visual novel aspects are standard, but just like with Enc and the Flying Machine it is the subject matter that drives Distortion Nation the farthest. It deals with dozens of social issues, primarily the schism created by the economic differences of ‘degree-having individuals’ and those without. Reverie did not do well in school, and is berated by the doctor that saving her eye is not worth it because she is unemployed — while also deadnaming her the entire time (nice little static effect every time that happens). This branches out in to how it affects her views of her own self worth to her girlfriends, how it affects her relationship with her parents (NOT GOOD), and much, much more.
I won’t lie, it’s a tough pill to swallow at the sheer volume of events that occur to Reverie, but — and I do mean it — that does not mean that she is the perfect character either. Many of the decisions revolve around her inability to open up to people and her quick-to-anger state-followed-by-self-blame, and her mental state always suggests that she would rather do the opposite of asking for help, no matter what. The first decision made is to call Wenke because she just got attacked with a hammer, and even then she worries she is taking away time from Wenke. From her girlfriend.
Like I said, there are tons of themes and motifs to sift through, and a lot of it is out of my element. And that’s OK, I can at least appreciate what it wants to do even if it doesn’t gel with me all that well.
If you can see yourself in Reverie’s shoes, and dig the crossing themes of transgender-relations-to-socioeconomics and vampirism, then you might enjoy this little tale.
In a twist I never thought I’d see coming, The Missing Locksmith is an ARG created by Elle Osili-Wood, a game presenter and developer. Players have been given some tidbits of information about a legendary heist pulled off in 2020, where three thieves hold the keys to the lock that houses the treasure.
As some may know, ARG stands for Augmented Reality Game, which is a fancy way of saying that the ‘game’ is in fact not contained within one application but is a puzzle involving many different areas.
Players will be given five clues and a set of instructions about cracking the code of the Locksmith in the hopes of uncovering the secrets of the heist and its treasure. These clues will then take players across the internet to different websites (many of them custom made for this game) where the information gained will be used to crack more codes. Sometimes pen and paper will be needed. Other times players can use notepads or just their brilliant memories. No matter what, however, the only way to progress is to find that small secret buried.
I struggled a lot with this one in terms of its ‘position’ in my blog — after all, ARGs are a mixture of digital game and physical entity. There is no specific ‘environment’ per say that the game is played in, as ARGs use the world around us to stage its design. However, after a bit of deliberation, I decided to include it here mainly due to how ARGs function. The game is played in the digital space, where the engine is the internet and the design is in the puzzles hidden throughout. Sure there are lines that are straddled, such as how there is not a necessary ‘loop’ to interact with, but at the same time the entire puzzle is its own loop of searching for each solution.
We can argue up and down on if it should be in my software or games portion, but that doesn’t change the fact that The Missing Locksmith is a joy of an ARG that can help introduce the idea of the genre to others. It doesn’t rely on extremely difficult aspects to understand, while still giving some clever solutions to find that will take some time. It threads the line between obscure and simple quite well, even if I wasn’t able to finish it. I got stuck, but I already delayed this blog for too long.
If you are a fan of ARGs or want to help introduce them to others with one that gives you just enough complexity to reveal the joy of the hunt, then this might be the perfect game for you.
