Trabia Garden

Q: Riona, do you really have time to write mini-reviews of every game you've ever played?
A: I absolutely don't.
Q: And yet.
A: And yet!

Some of these are more just reminiscences than reviews, but I've said at least a line or two about every game. Possibly. I've almost certainly forgotten about some.

For the most part these are listed alphabetically, so you can easily track down any games you're interested in, but games in a series are listed together, so, for example, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma are all under Z for Zero Escape, and World of Final Fantasy comes under F. I've put a (LP) next to games I've only experienced through Let's Plays. Flash games, text adventures and electronic versions of card, tile or board games are not included.

Games I first played after originally posting this entry are marked with an asterisk.


( Thoughts on every game I've ever played, or close enough. )


I'm glad I've put this very important and necessary entry into the waiting world.

Just over a week ago, culf posted an entry speculating on how some of her favourite characters would fare in the Hunger Games. I found this idea interesting, and so I used a random number generator and a numbered list of characters from various fandoms to generate a set of tributes. The results:


Madeleine Hightower (The Mentalist)
Rin Tezuka (Katawa Shoujo)
Candace Flynn (Phineas and Ferb)
Teresa Lisbon (The Mentalist)
Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
Grace Van Pelt (The Mentalist)
Oerba Yun Fang (Final Fantasy XIII)
Applejack (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
Donna Noble (Doctor Who)
Mulan (Disney's Mulan)
Samantha Carter (Stargate SG-1)
Allison Cameron (House)

Tidus (Final Fantasy X)
Jeremy Usborne (Peep Show)
Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy VIII)
Sam Tyler (Life on Mars)
Professor Layton (Professor Layton)
Finn Sharkey (Waterloo Road)
The Master (Doctor Who, John Simm incarnation)
Brett Aspinall (Waterloo Road)
Dr Perry Cox (Scrubs)
Bobby Singer (Supernatural)
Iroh (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Josh Stevenson (Waterloo Road)


(One of the characters the random number generator fell on was actually the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube from Portal. I didn't include it. Those things are hardy; nobody else would have stood a chance!)

I'm going to envision the arena here as the actual arena in The Hunger Games. Characters are stripped of any special abilities they might have (the Final Fantasy characters can't use magic, for example, and Iroh can't Firebend). Below the cut are some thoughts on what might transpire. culf detailed how and in what order everyone would die. I haven't done that here; there are some vague thoughts on who would kill whom, but these are really just scattered ideas about how each character would cope.


( The 74th Fandom Hunger Games. )


I've just realised that I haven't mentioned Applejack or Rainbow Dash at all. I JUST CAN'T PUT THE BRIGHTLY-COLOURED TALKING PONIES INTO THE HUNGER GAMES ARENA. I CAN'T DO IT. I don't want them to be killed. I thought at first that perhaps they could kick the Master to death, but I don't want that either. It's just wrong. They do not belong in the Hunger Games world.

I would like to talk about something potentially controversial: Katawa Shoujo.

Katawa Shoujo is a free dating-sim type visual novel, in which all the potential love interests have some sort of physical disability: deafness, blindness, heavy burn scarring, prosthetic legs, no arms. I heard the concept and thought 'well, this sounds like the most horrendously creepy and fetishistic game ever made'.

And then I played the demo.

And it wasn't.

I've only played the first act, as that's all that has been released so far, but my overall impression is that it's a really charming, well-made, well-written game. The main character, Hisao, discovers that he has a congenital heart condition and is transferred to a school with specialist facilities for disabled students; there, he has to come to terms with his attitude towards his own disability and towards those of others. The people he meets are thought-out, interesting characters, rather than simply being reduced to their physical qualities. Rin, for example, is blunt, sarcastic, scatterbrained, creative, an artist and a daydreamer; the fact that she has no arms isn't ignored, but it's not what defines her.

I think Hanako and Lilly are my favourites so far. Hanako's extreme timidity reminds me of myself when I was at school; her path was the first I went down, because I wanted to try to help her increase her confidence in the way in which my friends helped me. Lilly is just so friendly and calm and caring, and she somehow manages it without being cloying. I'm really intrigued by the friendship they have with each other, too. (That's another way in which Katawa Shoujo surprised me; I've never played a dating sim before, so I thought all the potential love interest characters might be depicted as RIVALS FOR YOUR LOVE or at best never meet each other, but, whilst they don't all get along with each other, there are actually strong and sometimes touching friendships between them.)

The game so far is essentially Hisao meeting and developing friendships with the potential love interests, depending on the choices you make (if you haven't played a visual novel before (this is my first), it's essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure story with images). The developers have confirmed that there will be sex scenes in the final product, but they have also said that there will be an option not to see them. The fact that they believe it will stand without the sex scenes seems to me to be clear evidence that they're setting out to tell a story, not just to create masturbatory material, and I'd say the fact that I didn't set out in search of masturbatory material and still found myself engrossed is clear evidence that they succeeded. I'm very much enjoying the story they're telling so far.

I suppose what I am saying is 'I misjudged you, Katawa Shoujo team', and also that I highly recommend the first act. You can download it (for Windows, Mac or Linux) here.