I’ve learned from fairy tales and Drew Barrymore movies that a girl with butterflies in her stomach can easily be molested by an oddball (either a literal beast or an everyman acting like one), but the flutter is one Product of purity, clear as a raindrop. Without a sword or a great career, a girl can become noble only by the powerful heartbeat. This story started to bore me until I realized that it was reused almost everywhere except in the horror genre.
Horror – aka horror video games – perverts the lovesick girl cliché to create another in which a girl in love is actually the Grim Reaper. Yandere simulator And Doki Doki Literature Club Pass around the suffocating love established for centuries Wuthering Heights melodrama and International erotic thrillersand indie horror adventures Miside is the youngest to take it over. I played the 35 minute demo Miside (Windows users can download it for free from developer Aihasto’s website itch.io pageand others can check out Alpha Beta Gamer’s full walkthrough on Youtube) and was impressed with the game’s graphical design, but felt its story could be another round of uninspired tropes.
Because of this, the horror elements presented in the demo rarely appear, although they are creatively presented at first.
I start the game with a vague idea of what it’s about – I’m a guy who gets into a mobile game “for mystical reasons”, according to Aihasto’s description – so I’m not surprised if I get a point right away there-and-click tasks. Mita, the blue-haired, diamond-eyed protagonist of the mobile game I’m playing, asks me to put away her dirty clothes, cook her chicken soup, and earn money playing mini-games on several fast-track days.
The point-and-click intro is a little clunky, like when it cuts to a “Day 5” title card before I get a chance to make soup, but its design and art style are lipstick-smooth and cohesive. I appreciate the attention to detail, like Mita’s happiness meter in the top left corner and her hilarious request, “Remember!” You’re free to play [mini-games] Get money.” It feels like I’m about to play a clever parody of stalker woman style Fateful attraction Spurred on by G-Fuel, but then it starts to fall apart.
Mita tells me to put my phone down and when I do I seem to have been transported into her game and find myself in an explorable 3D version of the house depicted in the 2D intro. I walk through it in first-person view to discover more amusing details – a book on the shelf entitled “How to Tease Him”, a small red-eyed doll following me through Mita’s peachy pink room – which in turn are pleasant artistic quality prove sensitivity. I also like the soundtrack; It’s a sad new-age synthesizer loop that goes haywire when something particularly sinister happens, like a sudden power outage.
It is around this point that the logic of the game begins to break down as well. After Mita appears anime-style, the dialogue prompts me to learn more about how I got into her game and why, which only confuses me even more. Asking directly what happened triggers a black screen while Mita presumably explains, and when the game returns to her, she declares “And here you are!” as if I had any idea what she was saying . Other dialogues that should give me goosebumps end up being similarly frustrating, like when I ask her why she asked me to give her scissors at dinner.
“Of course I can also open the sauce with a knife,” says Mita, “But I wanted to have everything ready for your return so that the long preparations don’t show.” I love making surprises! Yeeep.” Well, no one promised me she would be the most cohesive virtual girlfriend.
The demo ends shortly thereafter. While we’re playing a card game, my protagonist hears a pounding noise coming from Mita’s closet. Mita stops him from breaking down the door by invoking her private stash of underwear, then voices his concern with something that saddens me: “This world… it’s just these four rooms. Wouldn’t that be enough for you? Will you just try to stay with me?”
Confusingly, when it’s time for me to respond, “stay” is a locked dialogue option. The game seems reluctant to think too hard about the implications of its own story – how lonely a girl must get when she’s stuck in a phone, always needing more but can never get it on her own terms – and instead hopes that players are thinking about. A devoted woman is scary enough on its own.
Even, Miside does not touch his isolated wife either single white womanis drunk or heather‘ Acid empathy in his demo. It also no longer views its male protagonist as a naïve anime boy who wants the fuck out. It’s only beginning to retell a story from the inside out, pretty but thin, authoritative.
I feel like I’ve heard this story before bed enough times. Ideally, the rest of the game will bring me something new.
