Evelyn: A Gothic Tale

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Evelyn: A Gothic Tale
https://frankiesbugs.itch.io/evelyn-a-gothic-tale

Evelyn: A Gothic Tale is an atmospheric 2D puzzle platformer currently being created as a solo project by the Italian artist and game developer Frankiesbugs. The demo for Evelyn, which is free to download from Itch.io, features full Xbox controller support and takes about ten to fifteen minutes to finish, though you’ll likely want to spend more time exploring.

You play as the eponymous Evelyn, a small skeleton in a jaunty blue dress who’s become bored in her underworld crypt and wants to return to the world of the living. Getting there will be no easy task, however, as the way is obstructed by numerous gates and barriers. In addition, Evelyn will need to collect enough flames to light her way forward through the final stretch of darkness between worlds. If she manages to get her bony fingers on enough flames, she might even be able to secure an additional passage for her charmingly pathetic friend Rupert.

There’s no combat in Evelyn, but environmental hazards will hinder the player’s progress. In the demo, these hazards primarily consist of pits and spikes that Evelyn must jump over in classic 2D platformer style. The twist that Evelyn brings to this formula are its light-based puzzles, which involve obstructing or redirecting beams of light in order to trigger changes in the world and thereby grant Evelyn the keys she needs to pass through a series of grand stone gates.

The game mechanics involving light also carry over to the platforming. While most of the map is rendered in a vibrantly colorful style that still manages to convey the atmosphere of an underground crypt, a few of the side paths are shrouded in actual darkness broken only by strategically placed lamps. In order to navigate these dark sections, the player must rely on the instincts developed in previous sections while paying close attention to the lamp placement. The interplay between light and dark sections is perfectly balanced. I was always excited to venture into the darkness of a shadowy side path, but I always felt relieved to return to the well-lit areas. 

Evelyn features full controller support, and I played with an Xbox controller with no problem at all. Evelyn’s movement speed is perfect in relation to the size of the map, as is her jump height. Though I suspect this game might be classified as “casual” in terms of difficulty, its gameplay is enhanced by a nice balance between freedom of movement and the small areas of friction impeding progress. Evelyn’s health bar contributes an additional element of challenge, as you can only fall into so many pits or spike traps before you have to start over. I will admit that I died a few times while exploring, but experience and familiarity with the map compressed the time I needed to navigate back to the point I died, resulting in a pleasantly smooth learning curve.

When I think about what makes a good Metroidvania, it’s not just the level design and gameplay, but also the sense of exploration and discovery that (more than anything, I think) distinguishes the genre from an action platformer like the Super Mario games. The hand-drawn characters and environment of Evelyn inspire a sense of moving through an actual world, especially in the details of the background art that caused me to wonder how a particular creature might have come to be tucked away in a particular dark corner.

The icing on the cake of any standout Metroidvania is the writing. Balance is important in this aspect of game design, as the text needs to walk a fine line between being too sparse and too voluble while simultaneously offering intriguing information without indulging in exposition. The writing in Evelyn is fantastic, from the dialogue to the text on the collectible daguerreotypes, and each character has a distinct voice (and there’s one character in particular that really surprised me, bless his heart). Evelyn herself is a silent protagonist, but her in-game animations express a great deal of character, as does the narrative animation that opens the game in the style of a silent film from the 1920s.

I’m amazed by how well-polished this demo is, and I’m curious to uncover more about the story behind this crypt and its restless inhabitants, which seems just as disturbing as the character art is cute. Everything about this spooky little game works in concert to lure the player deeper into its underground world, and I’m looking forward to spending more time in the company of these strange skeleton children. For the time being, I’m cheering Evelyn on as she makes her way out into the world.

Review of Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce

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I recently had the honor of writing a short review of the anthology Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce for the online academic journal Studies on Asia.

Bold Breaks combines four substantial literary translations with a lovely set of introductory and contextual essays by the translators. It’s a very cool anthology on an important theme that’s gotten surprisingly little scholarly attention, and I’d love to see more books like this!

Here’s a short excerpt from my review:

With its equal emphasis on translation and analysis, Bold Breaks points toward a model that deserves to be more widely adopted, especially as there are relatively few books that pair substantial works of translated fiction with critical analysis that remains accessible without sacrificing depth. The generous endnotes and translator introductions contextualize the stories while illuminating the craft of translation itself, underscoring how interpretation and analysis are inseparable. It’s also worth noting that the collection is a pleasure to read, as the stories carry an emotional immediacy that complements their scholarly framing.

If you’re interested, you can read the full review here:
https://studiesonasia.scholasticahq.com/article/164797-book-review

Ladies of the Knight Review on Comics Beat

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Comics Beat recently gave the opportunity to write a review for the graphic novel Ladies of the Knight, which just came out earlier in July. This book is so much fun! If you’re into knights and ladies and lady knights and nonbinary knights of all shapes and sizes, this one is for you.

I’m not typically a fan of sports stories. A great deal of the culture surrounding sports in real life has always felt unwelcoming to me, especially as someone who has trouble navigating gender binaries. Thankfully, Ladies of the Knight is modeled on the colorful inclusivity of roller derby, and it brings the same joyful spirit of competition to a story about an older knight who has to learn how to deal with her squire’s youthful enthusiasm.

Here’s an excerpt from my review:

From the immense mainstream popularity of the dark fantasy game Elden Ring to the continued success of the crowdfunded series of knight-themed art books published by Dames Productions, medieval knights seem to be having a cultural moment.

Given the enthusiasm of young and queer art communities, I suspect this love for knights has less to do with a conservative interest in the history of Western Europe and more to do with a speculative imagination that has shifted away from science fiction as the technological dreams of the twentieth century have been tainted by recent associations with the dystopian realities of corporate enshittification. Fantasies celebrating difference and otherness were once projected onto robots free of human limitations, but perhaps it now makes more sense to tell stories about knights who aim for greatness while still being bound within the confines of their humanity and human relationships.

You can read the full review on Comics Beat here:
https://www.comicsbeat.com/ladies-of-the-knight-review/

Kuro

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Kuro
https://visualmemoryunit.itch.io/kuro

Kuro is a free-to-play homebrew PS1 gothic horror game that takes about twenty minutes to finish. There aren’t any jumpscares, but the story is as dark as the chunky retro polygons are cute.

You play as Kuro, a mysterious visitor to an abandoned Shinto shrine. The moonlit shrine is beautiful and peaceful on the outside, but its interior conceals an underground labyrinth haunted by the ghost of a brutally murdered young woman named Miu. As Kuro, your job is to find and reunite the parts of Miu’s corpse so that her spirit can move on.

Along with Miu’s head and body, Kuro must acquire the means to open three locked doors. Though the game’s map isn’t overly large, Kuro moves slowly (with tank controls) across spaces presented to the player from dramatic angles. It’s unlikely that you’ll become lost, but the game does an excellent job of conveying the disorientation of wandering through a dark basement.

For me, the standout scene is when Kuro enters a locked room that’s completely empty except for an old television whose screen is filled with static. When Kuro interacts with the television, she’s transported to an otherworldly landscape where she meets the man who killed Miu. He explains what happened, but this isn’t the end of the story. Once Kuro returns to the shrine and begins to dig deeper, the player learns that murder is probably the most wholesome thing that happened here. 

I genuinely appreciate the developer’s commitment to including every gothic trope they could think of. One might argue that the writing is somewhat clumsy, and that the game’s twenty-minute playtime isn’t sufficient to allow ample space for its horrors, but I’m of the opinion that the writing is just as integral to the retro aesthetic as the graphics. I feel like there’s a tendency to remember games like Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil 2 as “well-written,” but PS1-era games had a tendency to hit you with a cascade of revelations in the most basic and matter-of-fact prose. Kuro matches the tone of this style of video game writing perfectly.

I also love to see this kind of gothic story in a setting that isn’t European, and I’m fascinated by the idea that a Shinto shrine would have a basement. Perhaps a shrine constructed overseas (in British Columbia, for instance) might have an underground level, but this would be unthinkable in Japan, where shrine buildings are always elevated above the ground in the traditional Polynesian architectural style.

The reason for this is 100% practical in a wet and humid climate, where various types of unpleasant things (primarily mold, fungus, and insects) would quickly infest the ground level of a building. Also, the water table is generally so close to the surface that it would be difficult to prevent underground rooms from flooding. There’s also a spiritual component to the architecture, as Shinto belief systems tend to associate anything inside the earth with an otherworld of rot and impurity. This otherworld is a necessary space for the cycle of life, but it’s not a good place for humans to be under any circumstances. In terms of its spiritual utility, one of the purposes of a shrine is to demarcate the boundaries between worlds.

So a Shinto shrine would not have a basement. But if it did. The horrors of Kuro would definitely happen there.

I admire how Kuro explores the idea of transgressing an extremely powerful taboo. Between the lost-media stylization of the game’s retro graphics and the grotesque quality of its writing, the player definitely gets a sense of wandering through a place they’re not supposed to be. Kuro is a short and simple game, but it’s very well-observed and surprisingly effective.

And Roger

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

And Roger (on Steam here) is a high-interactivity visual novel that takes about an hour to finish. You play as Sofia, a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s who is being cared for at home by her husband Roger. Through simple (and occasionally not-so-simple) button-sliding minigames, the game models Sofia’s memory loss and cognitive impairment, as well as Roger’s kind and loving assistance.

Perhaps this might change in the near future, but we’re not yet at a point where the effects of Alzheimer’s can be reversed, and there’s really only one way that Sofia’s story can end. Appropriately enough for the narrative perspective, the game also features some tense and anxiety-inducing gameplay sequences. If you have a sense that this game isn’t for you, you should probably trust your gut instinct. Still, I’m happy that And Roger exists, and I’m grateful for the experience of playing it.

The first chapter of And Roger plays like a horror story. Sofia, who sees herself as a young girl, wakes up in a strange bed and finds herself trapped in an apartment by a man she doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t respond to her questions and instead attempts to convince her to take pills that he doesn’t bother to explain. As Sofia, the player must navigate a series of stealth sequences to leave the apartment without being noticed by the man, who is actually her husband Roger.

The second chapter is much warmer. Sofia’s memory has improved somewhat, and she can now remember herself as a younger woman. In Sofia’s memories, the game asks the player to trace the connections that form between her and her future husband Roger with interactive lines that run opposite to one another before finally running in parallel. In the present, Roger’s lines help to bridge the gaps between Sofia’s lines as they cook and eat together.

The third and final chapter is more bittersweet. Despite occasional moments of lucidity, Sofia still has trouble eating, brushing her teeth, and doing laundry, and the game’s brilliantly unintuitive interface communicates her confusion with painful accuracy. Roger reveals that he has moments of weakness as well, but he continues to guide Sofia through her daily life with love and kindness.

In the end, though, Roger is only human, as is the player. The simple touchscreen slider minigames necessary to progress the story become progressively more difficult, and you’re going to fail eventually.

Though I talk about its gameplay elements being “difficult,” And Roger is designed in such a way that you don’t need a walkthrough, just a certain degree of patience. Nevertheless, seemingly simple gameplay tasks like connecting pairs of dots and dragging puzzle pieces to their proper places can be surprisingly complicated given the limitations imposed. The gameplay and the story are so tightly bound together that these tasks never feel extraneous; rather, the gameplay conveys precisely what words would be unable to express. Even when And Roger’s story had me completely in its grip, a part of me still admired how well-designed this game is.

A somewhat discordant element, at least for me, is the characters’ Christianity. The game ends with a thematic epigraph from the Book of Corinthians, and Roger and Sofia frequently invite each other to pray. Given that And Roger is a Japanese indie game (albeit an indie game backed by a major publishing corporation), I suppose it makes sense for its creator, who goes by the pseudonym Yona, to express the centrality of his religious identity in the story he’s trying to tell.

At the same time, I didn’t really get a sense of what Sofia and Roger’s Christian faith means to them. I also have to admit that I found it upsetting that they’re so completely alone in their struggle. Where are the other members of their church? Where is their pastor? Why do none of their fellow Christians extend a helping hand? Since they’ve been (seemingly?) abandoned by their Christian community in their hour of greatest need, is their faith not tested?

As someone who doesn’t take Christian faith for granted, I found its inclusion in this game to be both shallow and uncomfortable. To be brutally honest, I understood Roger’s Protestant valorization of self-reliance and virtuous suffering to be profoundly toxic to himself, not to mention literally fatal to Sofia. I’m not sympathetically inclined toward religion to begin with, and I don’t personally think that And Roger casts a particularly flattering light on Protestant Christianity. 

I also question the wisdom of the game’s marketing, which treats its premise as a spoiler. End-of-life care is a heavy topic, and I think it’s a bit unfair not to give potential players a sense of what they’re getting into, especially given the cuteness of the graphics. Also, though it’s ultimately proven to be incorrect, the game’s opening implication that Sofia is a victim of child trafficking is something that could have been treated with more sensitivity at a metatextual level.

As I wrote at the beginning, though, I’m grateful for what I learned during the experience of playing this game, especially concerning what Sofia’s husband Roger is going through. I feel like I never had a good real-life model for what elder care is supposed to look like, but And Roger gifted me with a glimpse into the sort of life experience that I wish I could have gotten with my grandparents.

Even for people with more life experience, it’s always good to have another perspective, especially in the form of a such a thoughtfully scripted narrative. Despite its difficult subject matter and its slightly awkward handling of religious faith, And Roger tells a very sweet and lovely story, and the gameplay mechanics do a lot of heavy lifting in telling this story with as much sympathy as possible.

Essay about Barret Wallace on Unwinnable

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Just in time for the Final Fantasy VII Revelation announcement, my essay “Barret Wallace Was Not Wrong” was published on Unwinnable (here)! This essay is about the joy of blowing up data centers Mako reactors, and I had a lot of fun writing it.

The truth is that I’ve been thinking about the relationship between precarity and stochastic violence a lot these days, and I really can’t blame anyone for fantasizing about it. If I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that I’ve had some daydreams about it myself. My pet fantasy at the moment involves planting poison ivy all around the building that’s rumored to be the de facto [redacted] field office in Philadelphia, and I’ve also indulged in more than a few vivid daydreams about the Waymo cars and Uber Eats delivery robots I sometimes see around town.

As satisfying as setting community hazards on fire might feel in the moment, though, I’m not convinced that individual acts of violence ultimately serve any greater purpose. But then what? Are we supposed to just make angry posts online without actually doing anything?

We have plenty of stories about fictional teenagers and superheroes saving the world from archvillains to use as models of action, but they’re not obviously not grounded in reality. We also have stories about real-life wealthy philanthropists using their resources to make a difference, but that’s not really useful to the vast majority of us either. Then I started thinking about Barret Wallace in Final Fantasy VII, who is dead broke and disabled in his mid-thirties but decides to take on a giant corporation anyway. And you know what? That’s a model of heroism that resonates with me.

Here’s an excerpt from my essay:

At the end of the game, Barret Wallace does end up saving the world, but not through terrorism. Instead, he becomes a key figure in a loosely federated community of people committed to practical action that transcends individual acts of violence. This community includes Shinra’s victims as well as its former and current employees, from veterans of its space program to disgruntled middle managers. Barret wasn’t wrong when he took action against Shinra; he just didn’t yet see how powerful a global resistance movement could be.

You can read the full essay on Unwinnable here:
https://unwinnable.com/2026/06/08/barret-wallace-was-not-wrong

The Book of Murmurs Review on Comics Beat

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I recently had the opportunity to write a review of The Book of Murmurs, a new graphic novel from Fantagraphics about a young girl who goes on a magical journey through a fantasy world.

You probably think you know what you’re getting from that description, but this is an incredibly rich and dense story. I actually had to push back my review because, as I explained to my editor, I wasn’t expecting this book to be House of Leaves Junior. Formulating the basic outline of the plot was an intriguing challenge, and I had to do a fair bit of outside research, which included finding interviews with the artist while studying her social media posts. In case this sounds like a bad thing, please rest assured that The Book of Murmurs is well worth the time and effort.

Here’s an excerpt from my review:

In a launch day interview, Purwin describes her work as a reflection of her experience as a child growing up in the 1980s, when lush fantasy films like Labyrinth and The Secret of Nimh were suffused with sinister undertones and didn’t always make sense. Purwin says that she created The Book of Murmurs for her younger self, who would stay up late to watch movies like Stand by Me and then spend days dwelling on the unfamiliar imagery while processing a lingering sense of unease. The Book of Murmurs perfectly captures the sense of fascination with forms and meanings half-glimpsed through shadows, always asking compelling questions that don’t have straightforward answers.

I’d like to expand on my review here and say that I would have loved The Book of Murmurs as a kid. As an adult who appreciates the fragmented and nonlinear storytelling of The Magnus Archives and Bloodborne, I really enjoyed getting lost in this graphic novel. Based on the artist’s gorgeous and heartbreaking social media minicomics about Palestinian refugees, I also get the sense that there are strong political currents underlying the adventure story, and I hope this book receives the sympathetic scholarly attention it deserves. It’s so good.

You can read my full review on Comics Beat here:
https://www.comicsbeat.com/book-of-murmurs-review/

My New Hobby Craves Violence Review

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I’ve got a review of a minicomic zine appearing in Issue 4 of The Comics Courier, which is crowdfunding until July 1 on Kickstarter (here)!

I wrote about My New Hobby Craves Violence, a botanical horror story that’s also about becoming trapped in an addiction to receiving positive feedback online. Kristyna Baczynski is famous for her wholesome nature illustrations, so seeing her take on botanical horror mixed with toxic positivity is a lot of fun.

Here’s an excerpt from my review:

Pip’s situation is all too relatable as she ignores the warning signs of an unhealthy obsession while devoting her attention to the uncanny plant that serves as a consistent source of new content. Still, the analogy of “unhealthy growth” doesn’t work if the botanical horror doesn’t operate on a visceral level, and Baczynski’s horrible little houseplant is amazingly creepy. Its thickly veined leaves twist and squirm across the pages as the comic panels become increasingly crowded and claustrophobic. Text message bubbles pop up between scenes of Pip’s collapsing life, competing for the reader’s attention and engendering a palpable sense of urgency as Pip grabs a pair of pruning shears and struggles to disentangle herself from the clutching vines. 

The Kickstarter project has already met its funding goal, so the issue should be out soon. The Comics Courier is a fantastic publication – I really enjoyed the first three issues – and I’m very happy to see it loved and supported.

You can preorder a copy of The Comics Courier with my review here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiffanybabb/the-comics-courier-a-comics-criticism-journal-issue-4

Birds Watching

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Birds Watching (on Steam here) is a one-hour walking sim about a man who talks to birds while an apocalyptic disaster unfolds around him.

As an unending fire engulfs the world, a lone man takes refuge at the top of a mountain. For all he knows, he’s the only human left alive on earth, so he makes the best of a bad situation and does his best to survive in the company of the birds who have fled to the last unburned peak.

The man’s solitude is alleviated by an owl who not only befriends him but begins speaking with him. Birds can speak and understand human languages, the owl explains, and the man only needs to share a special password to initiate conversations. If he can observe and talk with the other birds on the mountain, something good will surely come of it.

The man realizes that he’ll need more concrete support when he receives a transmission on his portable radio. It turns out that other humans have survived the fire, violent and mutated though they may be. Their warlord has learned of the sanctuary on the mountain, and he’s on his way. The man can prepare to welcome him by surrendering his house and food, or he can expect to be swiftly killed.

The birds might indeed be able to help repel the warlord’s invasion, but they hate you. And they aren’t shy about telling you this. Though it’s not a challenge to discover new birds and observe them through your binoculars, it will be difficult to get them to trust you. Your companion owl helpfully suggests that you prove your sincerity by making yourself more like a bird. This process begins (relatively) innocuously when you eat a handful of the worms that you use to attract birds to the various feeders scattered across the mountain, but it escalates into genuine body horror if you follow it through to its conclusion.

Even without the humiliation rituals, there’s plenty of dread in the environment, which is filled with smoke and ash from the fire burning below. Though the forest scenery seems pleasant enough, the air is never clear, and it’s easy to imagine any number of things lurking at the edges of your visibility.

These vague fears are realized when the promised invasion of the mountain actually occurs. The appearance of the humans who have survived the fire is an unpleasant surprise, to say the least. It doesn’t help that these encounters occur in tense situations when your stamina meter is already depleted.

And then, on top of all that, you’ll eventually notice something else through the smoke haze: while you’ve been watching birds, something terrible has been watching you.

There are three possible endings to the game, and they’re all deeply upsetting. These endings follow naturally from your dialogue choices – whether you resist or capitulate to the warlord, and how far you’re willing to go to satisfy the birds.

Thankfully, nothing is dependent on being a completionist about filling in your bird watching notebook. You’ll probably want to find as many birds as possible, though, simply because your conversations with them are so unapologetically horrible and bitchy that they’re kind of funny. Once you figure out what the password you use to talk with the birds actually means, this knowledge adds a deeper level of psychological horror that’s fun to explore.

Since a leisurely run through the game only takes a little less than an hour, I went back and played it twice. Though the slightly murky lo-fi graphics caused a bit of trouble during my first playthrough, I appreciated the unique texture of the visual atmosphere more the second time around, when I was able to find significantly more birds to talk with. The alternate reading of the game suggested by a reveal toward the end casts all the conversations in an interesting new light that’s worth a second playthrough to appreciate.

Almost People

~ Kathryn ~ 1 Comment

Almost People
https://evan-megel.itch.io/almost-people

Almost People is a narrative dark fantasy Game Boy game that’s free to play and takes about 8-10 minutes to finish.

You play as an alchemist who has created several types of artificial beings. After setting them free and leaving them to their own devices for an unspecified amount of time, you must decide what to do with them. Should they be allowed to continue as they are, or do you end their lives?

Before each conversation, the alchemist walks across a 2D screen that shows the creature (or creatures) in the lair it’s constructed for itself. Despite the limitations of the Game Boy graphics, the art is bold, striking, and very creepy.

The conversations with the creatures are subtly disturbing as well. I don’t get the feeling that the artist who made this game is coming from a well-defined philosophical perspective, but the choices the player is asked to make are interesting. If you want to get the good ending, the alchemist is going to have to take responsibility for what they’ve created. Specifically, you’re going to have to kill at least one of the creatures.

Though the game works well as a Frankenstein story, I also understood it as an allegory for creativity. As upsetting as it is to consider killing an actual living creature, I tend to think that it’s healthy to end projects that have outlived their original purpose. This allegory isn’t immediately apparent, and I’m not entirely sure that it was intended. I suppose that the themes of “creation” and “death” are broad enough to accommodate any number of readings.

Almost People is a weird and unsettling little game, and I appreciate the experience of playing as a character with dubious morality. I’m getting a little tired of the “surprise! the heroes are bad actually” trope, so it’s cool to take on the role of a wizard who openly engages in dark deeds. A teenager with a magical sword should really put an end to this asshole, but I guess that’s another game entirely.