Three Cheers for the Strawman

Three Cheers for the Strawman is a game that follows the depressed Juno as she battles against her own selfishness in order to get over her own feelings of worthlessness and jealousy. She knows that her feelings are stupid, but hell, sometimes you just can't stop feeling what you know is a dumb feeling - no matter how much you want to or know it's not helping or healthy or right.

I ended the game wanting to punch Juno in the face, but also sympathising with her as her struggles to get over her depression and jealousy (well, less the jealousy) mirror some of my own. I think I can safely say that most everyone has felt those petty feelings before in their lives and struggled to move past them - some more successfully than others.

And that's one of the great things about this game - the story is told in such a way that, yes, you see how stupid and childish Juno is being over something that is not Vincent's fault, but you still feel reluctant to press that button at the end, demanding that you Abandon Her.




Or at least I did. That whole end scene of Juno in the rain, thinking that she'd been abandoned (when really, we couldn't reach out to her at all, despite wanting to - because she'd isolated herself, not the other way around) and the consequent phone call, the reaching out and working towards making things right, finally, was really well presented.

In fact, the story-telling in the game is done very well, building up your image of Juno and Vincent, then showing the changes in their lives and how they affected Juno's perceptions... they really hit home. The battle against Juno's own blindness to those who wanted to help her, and how she was the reason behind her own problems, not the other way around - that was the main meat of the game and the part that made me want to continue even when the battles got a bit annoying.





Oh, right, did I mention the battles? No? There were battles.

For the most part they were quite well-balanced, especially when you got all the weapons for use. Taking a note out of Cope Island's book, you used weapons in battle in place of skills, which worked out quite well. Different weapons had different effects and you needed to utilise them in order to get past certain enemies. In fact, battles were more like mini-puzzles than normal battles.

There were certain battles you could breeze through easily enough, but others required that you understand the skills you had on hand, as well as the abilities of the enemies, in order to defeat them. Battles didn't end when life was depleted from the enemies - you had to strike them down with a specific weapon. You could drain life, remove the ability to use double-attacks, boost your own power and defence or deplete theirs - each skill was useful and necessary in beating the monsters.

Granted, it would have been nice if only the battles that needed to be there existed - duplicate mobs were a little filler-ish and it would have been neat to see more of a mix of enemies instead of the same groups (say, dogs with masks or birds with water woman). It would have made each battle feel different at the very least.

Thankfully, while some battles were pretty hard and caused you to die, you were brought back to life straight after and given the chance to try again. Each time you died, Juno would complain and eventually beg you not to continue. It was a nice touch.

Another important component of the battles was the gain and loss of your stats through the progression of the story. Story parts were told in scenes, but more often by interacting with crystals and chests. The crystals either raised or lowered your stats, depending on the piece of story (and the feeling Juno had towards it.) Chests gave you the skills you needed to proceed and also gave you insight into Juno's true nature and feelings. Quite a bit of it is dark, but it makes sense since we are talking weapons here.



The graphical portions of the game were pretty good, and I believe fully custom (bar the sprite which I believe is an edit of a generated sprite?) It all fits well enough together (bar the slight clash of the sprites) and though it's a bit dark, it helps build the atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere, the sound design does a very, very good job of building it up. From the start where the screeching static first enters your ears, the sound is very effectively used. It's one of the things I really appreciated in the game (even as I was wincing after dying yet again).

Lastly, it needs to be said that right at the end comes a part where the game accesses the name of the User on your PC. Now, this was quite effective to me, since my PC is named Liberty, so I legit thought for a second that the game was calling me out, however I couldn't help but think about how just last week I'd changed it from 'This Asshole Computer' and just how that would have sounded the first time I'd played this game and the confusion it would have caused.



At about 25 minutes of gameplay, this is a decent game. There's a lot of battles you can skip, if you want to cut down that amount, too. Overall, the game is quite well done, setting a great atmosphere to tell a well-presented story of a woman who is trying to sort herself out despite her selfishness, jealousy and petty attitudes. She grows over the course of the game, finally getting to a point where she can reach out as she needs to so she can move on with her life. (I will admit that I humoured the thought that she was going to meet with Vincent to straight-up shank his ass, though).

All in all, it's a neat little piece from Red Nova and well worth checking out. Just be warned that you'll want to slap a ho afterwards, though. Well, that or be depressed. Or both.