Preemptive Retaliation

So for a while I found myself a little addicted to Cultist Simulator. I picked it up on a whim after seeing it was written by the same guy who did Sunless Sea which was a game I loved for its writing but not much else. This game promised to be a lot of writing and not much more, and there was the added bonus that I could play it with one hand. Since Lily is getting bigger it’s harder to balance a sleeping baby and a controller, but a sleeping baby and a mouse is much easier.

First off, the writing is superb. The dark and mysterious world that the game creates with its words is intoxicating. With the simple interface there’s a lot of imagination needed to carry through the theme, and the writing does a great job of it. It was pleasing to plumb the depths of the terrifying world and dream deeper of enticing but dangerous knowledge. Finding new snippets of information and working through the puzzle was always worth it for another morsel of the world.

I eventually put about thirty hours into it – give or take, depending on how long it took to settle Lily – and I can’t say whether I enjoyed it.

The loop consisted of placing cards into verbs (bear with me), which sent them ticking away until they came out as something new in the other end. I’d put a book card into the study verb and it would be transferred into knowledge. I’d place a person card along with money and hire them to do something. This leads to an empty table slowly gathering more cards over time, where you build an empire of cards to play with. During this you also have to manage money and health and more existential things like dread, but the aim of the game is to turn one set of cards into another set of cards. That’s it. And, damn it, it’s super addictive.

At night I found myself thinking of optimum card combinations, of ways to maximise my dealings whilst keeping the failure states at bay. I plotted gambles in my head and wondered what secrets sat behind risky locations. This game had me staying up far later than I had any right to, suffering from the repeating loop of one more turn, one more card. Each time you started a new action there was a satisfying clunk. Pausing or fast forwarding time reminded me of the tactile feeling of manipulating a cassette tape. The game was filled with so much juice that it kept me hooked and addicted the way that some sinister cookie clickers do.

It was a relief then that, when I achieved the final goal – or one of the final goals – I had no urge to continue playing. It would’ve been easy to dive right back in, to create a new character and keep the dopamine hits coming, but I didn’t. I think that’s a blessing. I enjoyed the writing, and it’s an interesting mechanic, but it’s a game that I lost time to, and I’m not sure if it was time well spent.

Since then I’ve had a bit of a slump from videogames. I dallied with Max Payne again, reliving the nostalgia and intending to play through the whole trilogy, but that fell flat. I dipped my toe into some more narrative driven games, like VA-11 HALL-A but it didn’t quite hit what I was looking for. I gave Mafia III a shot but I think I was just in a bad mood and it didn’t fit. Now I’m flitting between a few indie games to see if there’s anything that works, but I’m actually pretty ok with taking a break from it all. I get to focus on other things, maybe more creative endeavors?

God, I just realised November is coming. How will I cope this year?

In the meantime I’ve been chipping away at The Book of Illusions. Auster is a strange author for me. I love everything I’ve read of his, but I never really want to read it. It’s like sitting down to watch a film that has subtitles. I know I’ll enjoy it, I know I’ll have a good time, but I need to get over that initial hump to put the thing on. There’s a mental cost to pay to start reading. Then I have to deal with the fact that I’m pretty sure that the subtitles aren’t actually reflecting what’s actually being said in the film, and why would the film lie to me? What did I miss?

Auster has a habit of doubling down on the unreliable narrator. Invisible and The New York Trilogy are thick with narrators who are the author but not quite, and who aren’t telling the truth – or maybe they are, but they’ve gone a little mad. This time I was prepared for it; it’s called The Book of Illusions, surely it itself will be filled with illusions? Lies and fictions within itself? I’m almost certain that it is. Yet, like all the other books of his that I’ve read, I feel like I’m just missing out on the joke. It’s gone a little over my head, and I can’t catch it although I see it’s there. It’s immeasurably frustrating.

But, at the same time, still fantastic reading. I’d been picking at it for a month or two – less so recently since I’ve been travelling less – and idly read a passage when I should’ve been in bed. It was a scene involving a girl and a gun, and by the end of it my heart was racing. This sounds arrogant, I know, but books don’t usually do that to me.

Sadly the rest of the book, so far, hasn’t surpassed that scene. That’s ok though. I’m still enjoying what I’m reading.