#56 - MiSide

On the surface, MiSide looks like a dating simulation game. And I very nearly passed right over it in the Steam store. But then I caught the "psychological horror" tag and thought, 'That's an odd tag to put on a dating sim.' At worst, maybe it's commentary on dating sims as a whole; letting you experience a loving relationship with the perfect partner that you may never find in the real world. But at best...

This game just released on December 10th, just over a month ago, and it was currently for sale on Steam, so I figured, why not? I'll give it a shot and see what it's all about. And it's even better than I imagined.

By the way, I want to apologize in advance for the subtitles in these screenshots. They moved so fast, they were already swiping away at the beginning of the line as the end of the line appeared. So some of these subtitles might not be very legible. Hopefully you'll still understand the context.

MiSide starts out a little meta; you're hanging out in your bedroom when you get a text from a friend, suggesting you download this cool new game. As a former IT guy, I was internally screaming at the fact your character just installs a random file someone texted him, especially with a vague clickbait message like "check this new version!" But... there wouldn't be a game if you didn't. So you install the game and check it out.

You boot up the game on your phone and are greeted by Mita, the protagonist, who asks for your name. You can type any name you want and she'll use it to address you throughout the game.

She asks for help tidying up her home a bit, and you assist her in a mini game.

You play more mini games with Mita, helping her cook, find lost items, and even earning money in-game to buy her nice things.  Time passes in the "real world," and after about a month of playing this phone game, Mita suddenly shows a desire to meet in person. After a dramatic pause, she just announces that now you're together! Huh?!

You look up from your phone and you're no longer in your bedroom, but in a familiar apartment...

You can explore the empty apartment if you like. I especially enjoyed the "Love Note" notebook; a cutesy version of the Death Note. Also, some of the books on the bookshelves were a bit concerning...

In Mita's bedroom, you find a machine hooked up to a platform. The whiteboard on the wall gives you directions to get it updated and functioning.

You get it running and it opens a portal on the platform. Having nothing else to do, you step into it...

You find yourself in a creepy, dark bedroom. The machine tells you to go hit the breaker in the living room, then track down four batteries to get the portal back online.

Things start to get a little weird. The rooms have a nasty habit of changing when you go through doorways, and creepy scribblings start appearing on the walls.

When you get the machine working again, you jump on the portal pad and find yourself in a normal bedroom. When you step away from the pad, you might find yourself jump-scared by Mita suddenly being right behind you.

She's so grateful to see you! She explains she built the machine to bring you into the game world with her, but you accidentally ended up in another version of the game. But none of that matters now, because you're finally here!

At this point, you start getting some different paths you can follow. I tried my best to explore every option, but some choices required you pick one of two options and forced you down that path. So my gameplay may not be exactly the same as yours, but the overall game probably went down the same path. Probably.

I helped Mita cook some food, got drugged by some "love sauce" which made me sick, and Mita forced me to take some pills to help me recover.

She also wanted to play games with me. I picked a card game, but I kept hearing an unsettling banging noise coming from her wardrobe.

I wouldn't drop it, and when I went to investigate, she threw herself in front of the closet door, desperate to change my mind.

Finally, Mita grows tired of everything and her personality shifts. She decides, with an evil grin, to let me check out the wardrobe... if I dare.  She snaps her fingers and the room goes dark.

Suddenly, I found myself in a horror game, terrified of what's lurking in the dark. The wardrobe had a door inside it, but it was locked, so I grabbed a flashlight and explored the dark apartment, looking for a key. All while terrified of being jump-scared by Mita.

I found the key and unlocked the door in the wardrobe, to find stairs leading down into a basement.  In one small room, there's a studio with a camera, where it looks like Mita was broadcasting herself on an overlay of the apartment for the mini games. You can see yourself on the screen when you step in front of the camera.

And in a locked cage under the stairs is... Mita. Except not the same Mita.

You help this Mita escape (dubbed "Kind Mita") and she sends you on a journey through multiple versions of the game and its backdoors, trying to find a way to stop "Crazy Mita" and get yourself home. You even run into many other versions of Mita, some that are exceptionally fun...

And some that are quite terrifying...

...As well as a variety of different looks and personalities. Cool Mita, a.k.a. "Cappie" (because of her cool cap) is by far my favorite Mita. She's funny, playful, and a bit flirty.

This was a unique twist on the horror genre. I haven't beaten it yet, but I've been enjoying it thus far. I'm still not sure where the plot is heading, but I've heard that there are at least three endings that have been discovered, so it will be interesting to see where my initial run lands me. Here's hoping I can survive and escape the game world!

#54 - Get To Work

Get To Work is a tongue-in-cheek game about climbing the corporate ladder.  But it's more metaphorical than literal, as you spend the game on your hands and knees, rollerblading your way up difficult obstacles (and falling back to the ground level) just for the slightest recognition in the workforce.

It's one of those climbing games, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, or Only UP!, or A Difficult Game About Climbing, except you're on rollerblades instead of climbing with your own two hands.  This game just released two days ago, so it's very new.

I like the title screen of this game.  It's designed to look like a business magazine, while showing off the main character and your game options.  Your character reminds me of the political activist Charlie Kirk, with his tiny face on a large head.

I also love the article call-out for Sam Bankman-Fried.  In case you're not familiar, he was considered the poster boy for all things crypto, having founded FTX cryptocurrency exchange.  That is, until FTX went bankrupt and he was arrested and charged for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. As of this year, he's serving 25 years in prison and was forced to pay back $11 billion.

Get To Work opens in your bedroom, with you staring at a poster encouraging you to climb that corporate ladder.  So you set off, with rollerblades on your hands, feet, knees, and elbows.  There is no walking or standing in this game; you rollerblade everywhere.

You reach your first room of obstacles, with the goal being to show up for your first interview.  You may notice that there's a clock in the top left corner, giving you a subtle tracker for how long you struggle throughout this game.

A narrator explains the jist of this game for you, essentially claiming that NFTs were more far-fetched than a game about rollerblading up the corporate ladder.  If you can't read the narration subtitles at the bottom of this screenshot, click the image to see its full 4K resolution.

Hidden around each room are these spinning logos for The Grindset, a podcast about business.  They have short (usually funny) discussions about corporate life and what you need to know to succeed in today's work climate.  As if the climb wasn't hard enough, most of them are in hard-to-reach areas.  But there are three achievements for collecting these, so grab every one you can find!

Here's an excerpt of unprompted narration.  It sounds silly and preposterous, but is also real in America and kind of sad.  Two of my close friends are in this exact situation right now, having spent the past year job-hunting and still not having any luck being seriously considered.  And one of them has a Harvard degree!

I'm almost to the interview...

You finally get to your first interview, only to find that it's not going to be that easy.  We've gone so far metaphorical now, it's wrapping back around to literal!

You finally get an offer letter!

...Only to be rejected and fall all the way back to the start.

Thankfully, you have a family member who can hook you up with a warehouse job in the meantime.  So you set out again to climb a new corporate ladder.

The game starts to get really sassy at this point.  I got stuck in this room for about an hour, and the more I fell to the ground, the more the narrator had to say about it.

Eventually, the game gave me a GIVE UP button to press, for when I'm "feeling like this game is too much and it's time to give up."  They also started mentioning shoes a lot, claiming it would probably be in my best interest to buy a pair and just walk my way to the top instead.

I finally made it to my first pay raise! ...Only to learn it wasn't feasible at this time and instead I received a pizza party.  Goddamn, that's too real.  But at least there's a manager role that I can promote to, so I'm not done yet, right?  RIGHT?

I finally made it to the promotion to manager!  Woo!

Only to have a brick wall literally pop up in my face, proclaiming that a college degree is required.  Which I apparently don't have.

This was the first time my character seemed to be in real despair.  Normally if he fell, he'd immediately pop back up and be ready to go.  But after this one, he just lied there, unmoving.  I had to jiggle the controls to get him back up.

There was a hallway off to one side that led to an unpaid internship, the only option left for a warehouse worker with no degree.  Sigh.

After climbing this next room of obstacles and getting accepted for the unpaid internship, I finally had to call it a night.  This humor in this game was starting to get too real and painful.  And I spent an hour and a half just to get this far!  You will eventually work your way up to CEO before the game ends, so I still have a long way to go.

By the way, I couldn't resist making this:

Get Stick Bugged lol

#39 - Control (Happy Halloween!🎃)

Happy Halloween!  I had planned to play one of my favorite games this month, Alan Wake, but another screenshot poster in my online communities has already made several posts about that game recently.  So in order to generate new content, I'm posting a tangentially-related game, and another absolute favorite of mine, Control.

This game is loosely based on the SCP Foundation, a fictional secretive organization that contains anomalous or supernatural items and entities away from the eyes of the public.  They Secure, Contain, and Protect (SCP).

Their wiki linked above is a creative writing project, where anyone can sign up and submit their own creative writings on supposed anomalies that the SCP has encountered in the world.  And they have a Creative Commons ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA) for all work posted to the wiki, so anyone is able to use it for their own creative projects.  As such, a lot of SCP-related video games have been popping up lately.  If you search on Steam alone, there are about 75 games with SCP in the title, and that's not counting derivative works like Control.

Control starts out simple enough. You play a 28-yr old woman by the name of Jesse Faden.  She's been looking for the Federal Bureau of Control for 17 years, ever since they kidnapped her brother, Dylan, in their childhood.  The shady secret government organization has eluded her all this time, but Jesse just happens to find them in New York City and enters to an empty lobby.

The place seems deserted, except for an odd janitor with a heavily-Scandinavian accent, named Ahti.  He asks Jesse if she's here for the job interview, because he's in need of an assistant.  He points Jesse toward the Director's office.

The first thing you might notice is that you're trapped in the building now.  When you turn around, you realize that the hallway you came down just dead-ends, as if there was never a hallway there in the first place.  Also, some of the offices and meeting rooms in the hallway don't seem to have any doors leading into them, just windows. Welcome to "The Oldest House," the office building which is an ever-shifting anomaly in itself.

You enter the Director's office and find the Director dead on the floor; an apparent suicide.  Jesse is compelled to pick up the handgun lying next to him, where she suddenly finds herself pressing it to her own temple.  You hear distorted voices who refer to themselves as "The Board," and they test whether you're capable of wielding it.

Jesse is transported to the "astral plane," a bright white space with disjointed black and gold marbled cubes to walk on.  A giant inverted pyramid looms ever-present in the background.

You fight some faceless humanoid enemies, learning to harness a limited psychic ability to attack them.  When you find the gun in the astral plane, you learn how to take down the faceless enemies with it.  You have a limited clip of ammo, but it regenerates infinitely, without the need to manually reload or resupply.

When you've completed the training, Jesse is appointed the new Director by The Board.  All of a sudden, you're in charge of the Federal Bureau of Control!  Portraits can be found already updated with professional photos or paintings of Jesse all around the building.

You also start to find official documentation scattered around the offices concerning various Objects of Power (OoP), including your own service weapon.  Just like SCP documentation on their wiki.

Almost immediately, Jesse finds herself exposed to an invasive hissing noise that feels like it's trying to invade her soul (See first screenshot).  She's able to withstand it, but it takes over other Control agents and forces them to attack her.  Fighting your way to the Central Executive room, you find a marked circle under an inverted pyramid and realize you can use your psychic energy to dispel the "Hiss" from the area and restore the distorted space to its normal state.

Survivors call out from a nearby shelter and Jesse gives them the all-clear.  The assistant to the Head of Research, Emily Pope, comes out and immediately recognizes Jesse as the new Director.  She's stoked that Jesse's able to withstand the Hiss without specialized equipment and she's excited to perform some experiments to test Jesse's abilities.

Pope quickly becomes your go-to for any information you need about this strange place.  She explains that the building has come under attack by a deadly and invasive anomaly that Jesse helped dub the "Hiss," and since Jesse is the only one who seems able to resist and fight back, she's needed to help clear sections of the building and rescue other survivors.

Jesse is also desperate to find her brother, but Pope doesn't have access to that level of information.  She suggests Jesse rescue the rest of the former Director's team scattered throughout the building and they should be able to fill her in on what happened to Dylan.

From there, the game is spent running back and forth across the various floors of the building, rescuing people, fighting the Hiss and liberating areas, and learning more about Control and what they do.  You can find various sources of media scattered throughout, including documents, tape recordings, and video recordings.

Not to mention, some more OoPs that bind to Jesse and enhance her abilities.  You can telekinetically lift and throw objects, rapidly dash through the air to evade enemies or reach far-away platforms, construct a shield out of psychic energy and physical objects, and even fly!  Keep progressing through the game to find these OoPs and bind them, then enhance their powers through missions and side quests.  Eventually, you'll be practically invincible!

Amongst the video recordings, there's a cheaply made kid's puppet show called the "Threshold Kids" that has episodes randomly distributed all over the building.  It goes over various anomalies and supernatural situations, as if it was meant to explain complex topics for young children.  It seems simple enough at first, but there's something creepy and off about it, and it gets very dark and existential in later episodes.  I love the world-building it brings to the game!

I mentioned Alan Wake was tangentially-related to this game.  That's because the development studio of both franchises, Remedy Entertainment, included documentation you can find in Control that explains Alan Wake as an Altered World Event (AWE), with Alan's typewriter being a suspected OoP!  And if you play Control's AWE expansion after the main campaign, it sets up Alan Wake II.

I love SCP-related content, and the Federal Bureau of Control is a whole SCP-like organization, with rich and detailed lore dealing with supernatural and otherworldly objects and powers.  And then adding lore to tie two separate game franchises together in the same universe?  I absolutely love it!  This has been one of my all-time favorite games since it released and I'm really excited to play Control 2 whenever it finally comes out.

By the way, the Alan Wake Franchise bundle is 80% off, so you can play the first game and its spinoff game for only $5, then save a few bucks off Control by buying the Alan Wake/Control Franchise bundle.  Or wait for a better deal; Control was only $8 for a couple weeks last month, so keep an eye out for their next sale and get it super cheap.

My one gripe is that Alan Wake II was published by Epic Games, which means it will probably never come to Steam.  I'm adamantly against using Epic Games, as they have very anti-competitive practices with the gaming community.  So unless someone else gets PC publishing rights, I may never get to play Alan Wake II. (Note: I don't own any current-gen consoles, so playing it on console is out)  The rest of the franchise is published by 505 Games or Remedy Entertainment themselves, including the upcoming Control 2, so I can enjoy everything else in the meantime.