Christine Love Games

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/christinelovegames/digital.htm

This week we'll be featuring all of Christine Love's games, which mostly fall into the "visual novel" category. First up is Digital: A Love Story, which is freeware.

This is also the only one of her games that I played. And it's REALLY good. I was too young to get into too much BBS stuff (though I did muck around with the local BBS via Telnet since it was free where Prodigy wasn't), so I'm amazing that Love is younger than I am and still had a grasp on what this era was like.

I never beat it though - it has that kind of problem where the plot gets stuck and you need to mess around until you find the trigger to advance the story. Otherwise, the only issue I had with it was that you could respond to messages, but you never actually saw what you responded with, you have to determine that from the response. I know it was intentional, and it's kind of a necessary evil in these kind of plot-guided games where the main character is supposed to be "you".

[JDarkside]

I had to look up a play through both times I played this because of that point. And seriously, take my advice on only downloading important messages to heart, you will just create a headache for yourself otherwise.

[drpepperfan]

[dskzero]

Love's games are definitely a creative effort worth noting, and it's cool to see them get recgnized here.

[JDarkside]

Nov 25, 2014 9:02:09 GMT -5 dskzero said:

Love's games are definitely a creative effort worth noting, and it's cool to see them get recgnized here.

I'm hoping to cover her next game, Ladykiller in a Bind, but that may end up being a more ...*cough* adult game than her other stuff.

[Gendo Ikari]

"The game was not originally supposed to be a game" --> should be reformulated
"fax-Amiga" --> did you mean "faux"?

The biggest problem with Digital is the lack of characterization and therefore of connection with Emilia; you just know you've known her online for a while, and you are supposed to be doing all because you care for her. Fact is, little to no time is spent presenting her, so I didn't care at all. The rest is well done and original however, and still worth the time. Love's following games are also deserving for their originality, but they trip on her attempts to manage heavy and delicate themes, and not succeeding fully. There'll be time to discuss it, however.

[JDarkside]

That's a fair point. Emilia is a bit bland my first time through, but I felt I had a better connection when I replayed for this article. I think it's partly because I'm starting to become a more introspective person, so I'm clicking with the stuff she talks about more. I wish there was a bit more time developing her, but for a game made in such a short amount of time, what was managed is impressive.

I'll be interested in your thoughts on the Hate games, because I think she nails the darker elements perfectly in Plus. I love how there were so many little details you could pick up from on later logs that wrapped up stories you thought ended earlier.

SPOILER: Click to show

I mean the lesbian couple, mostly. There's a bit where they mention the actress has a little sister living with her, which doesn't add up on what's known about her, until you realize she and her lover made up at some point and the two are on the down low.

*Mute's route is also incredibly powerful.

As for the two writing derps, sorry. I am a bad self-editor at times. I'll make note that it's always "faux" in the future (I get mixed up with that) and look out for my more wordy sentences. I should have said Digital instead of "The game," that would have flowed better.

[JDarkside]

Next part is up. It's over "don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story."

www.hardcoregaming101.net/christinelovegames/donttake.htm

[JDarkside]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/christinelovegames/analogue.htm

And that's the last part over the Hate games.

[jjc14]

Although I have read random entries on her blog before, I had no idea she was involved with making games. Digital sounds right up my alley, so thank you HG101 for bringing these to my attention!


Minor corrections:

Jonathan Kaharl said:

all with a dash of manic joy and crushing , grim sincerity.

(Unnecessary space?)

Jonathan Kaharl said:

ｷShe wants to make games that explore emotions beyond triumph,

(Is that symbol supposed to be there?)

HG101 said:

(Digital Additional Screenshots 1 and 3 are the same.)

HG101 said:

(Digital Additional Screenshots 8 also shown in the article above.)

Jonathan Kaharl said:

That's certainly something you don? see from many games, more something you? expect from an art film.

(Apostrophe errors, or just my browser?)

Jonathan Kaharl said:

exploring technology as the overwhelming a force it has become, and then finds a bright side to it.

Jonathan Kaharl said:

Unlike the past few games, Analogue has different endings you can earn from meeting the proper requirements.

HG101 said:

(Analogue: A Hate Story title is repeated for Hate Plus.)

[Gendo Ikari]

Everything interesting DTIPB has (especially the sensation of knowing the students only partially), collapses in the last chapter. First there's Rook's excessively calm reaction to the big reveal - it was foreshadowed by the narration but, in Rook's place, I'd have quit the school because of the students' gigantic assholery. [It didn't help that I found most of the cast pretty insufferable.] Then comes Ichigo and her soapboxing. Never understood if the rant of that probable avatar of Christine Love was to show a near future we should avoid, or to illustrate developments she hopes for - if the case is the latter, I think Love would be dangerously naive. Ah, the writing of the scene where Rook spends an evening with Arianna is terrible.

Since I already Analog from a bundle, I've got Hate Plus from the current Steam sales.

[JDarkside]

I kind of like how lax the whole thing was, mainly because I believe Rook was still trying to take in everything that just happened. Plus, I doubt he'd be too mad, since he's already been through far worse things (backstory with the failed marriage) and genuinely seems to like the kids. Frustration with grades is more an issue with the professional parts of the relationship, it wasn't how he completely felt about the class.

I don't think the game was meant to be a cautionary tale or a dream for the future either. Judging from the interviews I read, Love was trying to capture the most likely outcome she saw from social media trends and not the larger issues of privacy invasion. That was more of a red herring to lead to the big joke at the end.

As for the typos and mistakes, I noticed on reading as well. The strange marks weren't me, but I forgot to point them out when I was reviewing the preview version. I also needed to punch up some of the vocabulary and stop reusing words so often. I'll make sure my second article will be better looked over.

[Discoalucard]

Some of those text issues are encoding problems because HTML makes me want to shoot stuff. They're hard to track down because they don't always appear in the HTML editor and sometimes even browsers display them differently.

[Chronis]

I really like Christine's writing. She's really good at crafting characters and worlds. However, I gotta say, and I'll preface this with the fact that I only beat Analogue and Hate+ so it might only apply to those, since I haven't gotten to far in either Digital or DTIPB: There seems a strong homosexual agenda in those games. Now, this could be a chicken or the egg thing, where she just wanted to be very close to resembling the Joseon era, or she could have picked it because it would fit closely with that she wanted to portray. Looking at the relationships in the game, it seems like almost all of the traditional man and woman relationships are due to political means or cultural reasons, and generally loveless. Off the top of my head, the only notable loving hetero couple is between the scientist girl and the cook in H+, and he isn't very important. In fact, he is pretty much used solely to further the characterization of his wife, with arguably his most important role being to to highly suggest a prior event that happened to her. Meanwhile, the homosexual couples have a lot more time to flesh out their relationships, making them seem more caring and loving to each other. The stories between the guard and the "maid", the actress and the flower girl, and even The Pale Bride and the other wife have many logs dedicated almost entirely just to their interpersonal relationship, with at times little regard to the setting. And, while neither here nor there, the modern day setting has you likely getting into a relationship with an AI. Ultimately, I just find it so odd that a writer who wants to do so much with relationships would seemingly downplay the most common of all. Maybe I'm just looking too much into it, but as I read the article, the line "she is openly lesbian" starting the second paragraph just seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. As I got further and further, and started remembering playing the Hate games, I slowly started noticing that. 

Again, this was just something I noticed. I do like her work, especially considering that I played through both games to get all the different endings. Just figured it was something to talk about, especially since the articles are brand new.

[JDarkside]

Love actually wrote a heterosexual dating game for Winter Wolves ...but she also hates the thing. I was wondering about including it in this series (I decided not to when I realized this was something she did to fund other projects for another company), and she actually tweeted at me that I avoid the thing entirely. Considering the quality of some of Winter Wolves other VNs, that is probably a good warning.

I hope Ladykiller in a Bind isn't too mature when it releases, because I really want to cover that game as well. It's supposed to be a game that loses the technology angle a little and focuses more on human relationships, with a main character who ends up in a mistaken identity situation and things get complicated. Love is really critical of other dating sims, where you make the right choice for "relationship points," so I'm interested in what her take on a proper dating focused game is.

But she's also said the game is going to be more ...*couch* adult. The question is how much. I'll play it either way, regardless.