malvasia bianca

I kind of waffled about whether I should write about Erica, but it’s on the list, so it gets a post.

And I do think it’s a good game. You’re watching filmed interactions most of the time, but the bits where you have to interact with the environment (even if they don’t involve a choice, as they usually don’t), or where you have to choose between responses, make a difference. It’s kind of a limiting case: how far can a game go with cut scenes, with only limited interaction and with no skill component (other than the fact that responses can time out), while still feeling meaningfully different from a movie? And the answer is: pretty far!

I guess it would be even farther in that direction if there weren’t choices that affect what you see. The existence of those choices is one aspect of the game that I didn’t probe so clearly: it’s a horror game, and that meant that Liesl didn’t feel like watching it while I was playing, or even being in the next room over. (And, honestly, it creeped me out some, too!) So I felt a little guilty about replaying it, since it would basically mean exiling her; I certainly wouldn’t have gone completionist, and the fact that I was shoehorning it into the middle of other games so I could talk about it with VGHVI folks also meant that I was playing it more provisionally than normal. But I probably would have played it a second time if it weren’t for that, and quite possibly a third. I’ll be interested to see what other folks have to report about the game.

Anyways, because of that: not much to say, about either the mechanics or the plot. Though I do recommend it (and who knows, maybe I’ll replay it at some point if Liesl is out of the house), what I saw did actually rather impress me.