ANALOGUE: A HATE STORY

So a new game by Christine Love is out. It's called...



Excuse me?

Christine Love's the author of Digital: A Love Story, one of the best-written indie games of 2010. She then proceeded to write the oddly titled don't take it personally babe, it just ain't your story, which was a lot more divisive but was still pretty neat. The former was a mystery/romance set in an alternate 1988, and involved conspiracies, dial tones and hacking the Gibson. The latter delved into social networking, the illusion of privacy and high school drama.

Both those were made in Ren'py, so I guess you could say that she was a writer of visual novels, if those visual novels went into genuinely awkward places, were genuinely well-written and forced the player to make actual, painful choices. Not that regular visual novels don't do that, but hey, her stuff is written in English!

So what is this again?

Analogue: A Hate Story seems to be a spiritual sequel of sorts to Digital (note the title) except with an interface more akin to don't take it personally. You play as an unnamed guy going to investigate the logs of the last generation ship to leave Earth in search of other planets. It isn't so much a traditional visual novel as it is an investigation sim, where you dig through reams of logs with the ship's A.I. in order to uncover the mystery of what actually happened. Also there's probably romance involved, but I've only played through the trial so I dunno.

From what I've played, if you're looking for a traditional video game with explosions or numbers to crunch or other things, this might not be your cup of tea. But if you're looking for an interesting experience, this just might be worth keeping an eye on. The full version costs around $15 dollars, but there's a free trial that covers about 15% of the game and still manages to go into some pretty interesting territory. Also you could always play through Digital first, which is free and certainly worth playing.

Anyway, this certainly isn't what you would call a game with mainstream appeal, but if you liked stuff like RE: Allistair++ and The World is Made of Paper, you might want to check this out, if only for its pedigree. I'm not sure whether it's any better or worse than Digital from the bit I've played, but at best it could very well be amazing and at worst thought-provoking.

EDIT: Rock Paper Shotgun's review of Digital: A Love Story: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/17/wot-i-think-digital-a-love-story/

and their review of don't take it personally: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/06/dont-take-it-personally-review/

...just to provide some context.