Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery

I learned a few days ago that the Latin American Games Showcase is happening this week. This is very relevant to my interests, so I downloaded some demos. Too many demos, really, so I'm going to break my thoughts into two posts.

⭐ I want to play this.
❓ Maybe someday if it's on sale or if issues are fixed by release.
🚫 Not for me.

⚒️ Unreleased/early access.


⭐⚒️ ( Oscuro: Blossom's Glow (puzzle platformer - Hongoneon, Costa Rica )

⭐⚒️ ( PancitoMerge (Suika-like puzzle - Fáyer, Mexico )

⭐ ( I Did Not Buy This Ticket (surreal horror visual novel - Tiago Rech, Brazil )

❓ ( Adore (creature-collecting ARPG - Cadabra Games, Brazil )

❓⚒️ ( Beacon of Neyda - Ghost Creative Studio, Uruguay )

🚫 ( The End is Nahual (variety puzzles - Third World Productions, Mexico )

🚫 ( Alexandria IV (sci-fi visual novel - J.M. Beraldo, Brazil )

🚫 ( Dreamcore ('liminal space' walking sim - Montraluz, Argentina )

Note: Stronach came out as trans after this book was published, so earlier reviews may misgender her, as does the cover bio.

In this first book of a planned fantasy trilogy (of which two books have so far been released), we're introduced to the city of Hainak, a seaport that's just been through a political revolution, as well as an alchemical-biological magitech revolution. Our main character is Yat, a naive cop who wants to be a hero, but instead she's just been demoted for being queer. As her life crumbles into a haze of drugs and disillusionment, she stumbles into the doings of a secret faction, gets murdered, and finds herself resurrected with new powers that allow her to manipulate life force with her mind, all of which gives her a very different perspective on what a hero is and what she actually wants to fight for.

So... I really wanted to like this. I did enjoy the Māori-inspired worldbuilding and the author's vivid visual imagination, filling the city with a profusion of bizarre wonders as well as a strong sense of place. I also liked a lot of the characters and cared what happened to them. But ultimately I found the book didn't have enough structure to hold together.

It's being marketed as akin to Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, and I think that comparison pinpoints the problem. Many aspects of the book do seem similar—there's magic with body horror, fantasy with sci-fi, loads of queerness... as well as byzantine political intrigue, misdirections about characters' identities, conversations that don't specify what's being discussed, and long monologues from unidentified speakers. But the reason all the confusing stuff works when Muir does it is that she does eventually provide enough information for you to fit all the pieces together, and on re-reading you discover that all the things that initially confused you actually make complete sense and Muir had a plan all along. And maybe Stronach also has a plan in her head, but if so it didn't make it onto the page. The book ends in a muddle of events that seem superficially dramatic but don't actually explain that much or draw the needed connections between the disparate plot elements.

The part of the book that's presented the most clearly is Yat's journey of realizing that the police only protect the powerful and serve the status quo, so if she wants to be a hero to the downtrodden then being a cop isn't the way to do it. Which would be a perfectly reasonable character arc, except that Yat's backstory is that she was an orphan living on the streets and she saw firsthand on a daily basis what cops are like, so why is her story about her "realizing" something she already knows? I guess she's supposed to be in deep denial, but it just didn't make any sense to me.

Some reviews I read had also led me to believe that the book has a lot more pirate content than it actually does. I mean, it does have pirates! But I felt cheated that we didn't spend more time with them, both because pirates are awesome and because the backstory of these specific pirates was super intriguing but criminally underexplained. I often felt like the book was barely intersecting the outskirts of a way more interesting story centered on the pirate captain and her crew, and wondered why they weren't the main characters.

Anyway, I think there was a lot of potential here but it didn't cohere enough for me to want to continue with the series. Too bad.

Next up for Pride Month media, I read Made in Korea, a graphic novel about an android called Jesse who is purchased by a childless couple to be their daughter. Both the author Jeremy Holt and the illustrator George Schall are nonbinary (they/them).



I had mixed feelings about this one. On the positive side, I really liked how the themes of identity and coming to know oneself were explored. Jesse's story is at least partly a metaphor for transnational adoption (Holt is an adoptee) and also resonates with more general feelings about not being the child your parents expected and needing to grow out of their narrative about you. Gender identity is directly addressed, which I love to see in an android story! It bugs me when androids uncritically accept a binary gender role based on the anatomy they're built with, even when the story digs into their personhood and free will in other ways. This book does not assume that an android built to look anatomically female is a girl, nor does it assume that if androids existed they would all be built with binary anatomy!

The major aspect that did not work for me was the plot element of ( a school shooting. (cut for content) )

So there was a lot that I liked, but also a pretty big section of the narrative that seemed totally out of place and mishandled. I don't regret reading the book and I think some aspects will stick with me in a good way, I just wish it had kept the focus on its strengths.

Happy Pride! This month I'm going to be reviewing games and books by trans and nonbinary creators.

First up is In Other Waters, a sci-fi exploration game by Gareth Damien Martin (they/them). You play as an AI who's been abandoned on an ocean planet and doesn't remember why. You're reactivated by Dr. Ellery Vas, an exobiologist who came here searching for her missing partner and colleague Minae. The planet is teeming with alien life, but all the human research bases are deserted. Together you explore the sea, collecting data on the alien ecosystem and piecing together what really happened here.



I would recommend this game if you like:

- Ocean exploration
- Detailed speculative xenobiology
- Queer characters
- Thoughtful interactive fiction

( It's kind of like if Subnautica were a text adventure. )

In Other Waters is available for PC and Mac on Steam and GOG for $14.99 USD. There's also a Switch port, but I'd be hesitant about that; I found navigating the UI very awkward with a controller and switched to the mouse right away when playing on PC.