![]() ![]() It may come as no surprise to learn that most of the story revolves around the Nordic Aid, magical elements kind of take a background to the whole thing for most of the narrative, and that the black-and-white presentation continues pretty much throughout. When, before the bad things even happen, you find the reader yelling “I F*(!IN’ GET ITTTT!”, like Billy Connolly at an opera, it is a sign that you are handling things with all the subtlety of a Bagger trying to do microsurgery. A starting to revolve rapidly in his grave, but that’s purely by the by. ![]() And this so-called professor is quite obviously Bad, and the main character is so obviously Good, and I can almost hear the capital letters forming around this narrative. She’s “generic nice person”, so generic, in fact, that it wasn’t until I looked at the store page that I realised she was a she (The first person narrative doesn’t help there.) But while yes, this guy is an asshole who, I would lay money, will be at the right-wing rally that apparently happens later in the game (Because this is a game about Issues as well as the introduction to the world of Mage), these responses are… Bad. Julia, I largely didn’t feel one way or the other about until this segment. ![]() Yes, I get that we are constrained by our “nice person” character to only be mean passively or actively. Yes, I get that this so-called “Professor” hasn’t actually *read* any Clarke or Asimov, if they’re saying dumb shit like this. Our heroine is a loving wife for a techbro who’s helping the girls into Maker culture, and is obviously the “good”, and the introduction of the “bad”… Is where I ragequit. Done badly, you have something very much like Refuge. So… Minor digression here: Done well, games that discuss Issues (capital I, the big problems facing us today) are perfectly fine. Because, like We Eat Blood, it’s highly unsubtle, and reading it felt like a highly painful clout to the head. This would be a good time to mention this half of the duet I ragequit pretty early on. Her husband is a maker from San-Dieg- Oh. The name is, I’m assuming, a play on words on a couple of levels, as the main character is a woman called Julia, who lives in Malmo, Sweden, working for Nordic Aid with Syrian refugees. Now, I mentioned a racist bus driver, just off hand, and this is as good a segue as any into the Mage portion of the duo, Refuge. The main character is an artist surrounded by artist friends because it allows really purple prose about how sexual bloodsucking is for a vampire, oh my god it’s so good, it’s like having communion with God, only that communion is also fucking, and… I didn’t actually mind that so much, having experienced my fair share of it when I enjoyed White Wolf RPGs (I still do, to some extent.) But the story is trying to build a world that’s meant to entice you into the World of Darkness without actually referring to things, so as to keep the mystery going, so if I didn’t know WoD, old or new, I wouldn’t have realised (possibly until the end) that I’m a Nosferatu, my mother’s a Malkavian… I could go on, but there are supernatural things, and Hunters (yes, with a capital H) and Ghouls, without explanation or context, and, rather than entice, it somewhat turned me off with how it seemed a collection of incidents without any real focus. There’s a lot going on in We Eat Blood, and it’s about as subtle as a bag of bricks wrapped around a smaller bag of bricks. Hey, did you know that vampires were originally more zombie like, and sex had next to nothing to do with things? Well, now you do! Oh, and your dead mother is also a vampire, a creepy one speaking in imagery, and there’s a racist bus driver, a lab monkey turned ghoulish killer, and… You are an artistic type, a drug user, general fun-haver, and, after a party, everything went horribly wrong. Let’s begin with We Eat Blood, the stronger of the two. But both quickly run into their own problems. The general premise is that these are introductions, two people thrust into their respective supernatural worlds. But the core of an Interactive Fiction is the writing, and its here… Where it starts to fall down. Similarly, for the most part, the tunes and sounds are also well presented. Similarly, Refuge (The Mage portion of this twofer) has some cool visual stylings you’d associate with Mage (glitching, sigils, and the like.) So, visually, the stylings are pretty good. Not one we haven’t seen before, but it works in the context, and allows for multiple threads. The mobile phone conceit of We Eat Blood is a nice one. I’M SUBTLY SAYING THIS ISN’T SUBTLE, FOLKS!!!!įirst up, let’s get the nice out of the way, because it’s all too brief. ![]()
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