Cue the G note

Image credit: Studio Wife

I’m not sure I’ve ever been so quickly transported back in time than I have in I Write Games Not Tragedies. It’s not that I completely relate to what takes place in the game, but its sense of place, of atmosphere and feeling, is one I understand in my soul. The emo amongst you have probably already caught on to the vibe with its title, and for those of you that haven’t, the game’s aesthetics, writing, and soundscape certainly will.

Set in some nowhere British town in the distant past of 2009, you play as Ash, a babby goth who thinks everything in his life is unbearably terrible, and that everyone around him is insufferable and deserving of his (internally narrated) belittlement. The popular kids are much too popular, his parents won’t let him hang out on the roof in the rain, and of course there’s school, yuck! No one understands him, but when he puts on his red Skullcandy headphones (what a throwback), he can escape into the world of music… which is where this visual novel game morphs into a rhythm game, uh, game.

Now, this isn’t a revolution of rhythm game mechanics. There are three buttons to tap, and you must time your taps to certain words in the lyrics of whatever song is playing. You can jam out at certain moments, but in the demo I couldn’t get that to work, a point I’m sure could be solved with some updated tutorialisation.

I’m not particularly bothered by the fairly lackluster rhythm mechanics because of the ways it commits to itself in so many other ways. The soundtrack, for one, is composed of tracks from indie punk artists from the UK, Japan, and Hong Kong, which itself is a thematically appropriate commitment to make. The backgrounds look like they were made on Paint circa 2009 (complementary), but there are also cringey anime drawings of Ash’s classmates, as well as some of his himself where he looks much too cool. This pencilly, sketchy, crayony vibe translates to certain bits of character art too, albeit a bit more refined, and very much in the vein of something like Scott Pilgrim.

That feeling of cringe permeates a lot of the demo, and presumably the rest of the game. Ash kind of sucks, specifically in the way that teenagers sucked in the late 2000s. He drinks WKD at some canal with a boy he clearly has a crush on, a drink so notoriously unable to get you drunk unless you are literally 14, and one anyone would be mocked for drinking as an adult. I was not Ash, but I’ve known Ash, and I have cringed at Ash.

In the years since knowing my own Ash, or Ashes I supposed, I’ve since acquired some rose tinted goggles thick enough that at least allow me to look back on such a time and chuckle a little bit, even if it’s also a bit embarrassing to think about. That same feeling comes through in I Write Games Not Tragedies, and that might not be for everyone. If you’ve ever listened to My Chemical Romance and you grew up in some nowhere British town, however, you probably owe it to yourself to give it a go.

I Write Games Not Tragedies is available on Steam now.