Recordkeeping: Subserial Network COMPLETE
Jun. 2nd, 2018 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlThe various games that come out of Aether Interactive have a couple of common threads. They like to explore digital personhood and what it means to exist in a nostalgic space long after it goes defunct. They like to pretend to be a thing, a BBS or an old Mac or a strange OS. They offer dense wads of philosophy side by side with heavy fictional worldbuilding and further worldbuilding INSIDE that worldbuilding, so you may find yourself reading the history of a fictional TV show and then dip further into reading fanfiction of the episodes of that TV show.
In my opinion, they also all have very loose inconclusive endings, but I find I don't care so much.
So this came with the month's Humble Bundle offerings, and because it offered me dense texty wads of chewy future-fiction I dove into it first. It was... strong? Good. I love anything that gives me a mixed media feel, from websites to PDFs to mocked-up chat programs to a nice little MP3 player going in the background.
Storywise... you're playing as yourself playing as an agent seeking to hunt down the leader of a synthetic modification movement. Artificial humans are installing serial ports to modify themselves away from humanity and link in a more machinelike way. Naturally this must be stopped because it's unnatural.
I think it won't surprise anyone to know that I was firmly on the synth side here.
So it turned into a strong tangle of metafiction with -- surprise -- a loose inconclusive ending. I'm glad I played it anyway. I would normally drop to spoilerspace but I don't know HOW I would even discuss this, even when it's spoilerspaced. Uh... welp.
The music was good too.
In my opinion, they also all have very loose inconclusive endings, but I find I don't care so much.
So this came with the month's Humble Bundle offerings, and because it offered me dense texty wads of chewy future-fiction I dove into it first. It was... strong? Good. I love anything that gives me a mixed media feel, from websites to PDFs to mocked-up chat programs to a nice little MP3 player going in the background.
Storywise... you're playing as yourself playing as an agent seeking to hunt down the leader of a synthetic modification movement. Artificial humans are installing serial ports to modify themselves away from humanity and link in a more machinelike way. Naturally this must be stopped because it's unnatural.
I think it won't surprise anyone to know that I was firmly on the synth side here.
So it turned into a strong tangle of metafiction with -- surprise -- a loose inconclusive ending. I'm glad I played it anyway. I would normally drop to spoilerspace but I don't know HOW I would even discuss this, even when it's spoilerspaced. Uh... welp.
The music was good too.
