Do AIs give you feelings? Do you like women? How about making straight people uncomfortable? All these things and more are available in Analogue: A Hate Story.

I bought Analogue: A Hate Story on a lark. It was on sale, and I was bored, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm a big fan of the science-fiction and transhuman genres, and Analogue seemed to offer a bit of both.

I was not prepared for what this game had to offer.

Perhaps calling it a "game" is a bit generous. It's an interactive novel, with almost no action sequences to speak of. The closest you'll come to any sort of twitch-reflex or quick-time events is typing into a terminal while an angry countdown clock stares you down. But still, there are choices to make and consequences to pay, with five potential endings - four of which can be carried right into the second game, Hate Plus.

Don't go into this game expecting action and excitement. If you're looking for that, then you're in the wrong place. But if you enjoy a gripping tale of political intrigue, psychological horror, and surprisingly dark themes - then this is absolutely worth the price of admission. Don't let the cute, anime-inspired artwork fool you. This game is absolutely for adults, and not because of any sexual themes or nudity (although there IS a bit of the former).

If there's anything to complain about, it's perhaps the usual drawback of an interactive novel. It's relatively linear, fairly short, and light on replay value. Oh, sure, it's worth trying for the different endings (most of which require their own distinct play-through), but you'll still be forced to read a lot of the same letters and dialogue. And, while the writing is absolutely fantastic, it still gets repetitive the second or third time through - especially once you've learned all of the twists and turns that the story has to offer.

But still - if you're into mature, psychological tales of intrigue and murder, then this game is absolutely worth at least ONE play-through. You won't regret it.

Analogue is truly a piece of art, it's so simple and yet so brilliant. I don't even normally like anime, but as a game and a story it triumphs in so many ways it's difficult to describe. You're all alone in a spaceship, your only friend is AI *Hyun-ae, together you start reading letters and some sort of memoirs about old noble families and all the terrible things that happened to them. It's a tragic story, but it also showed a great sense of humor on few occasions. It has more than one ending and many different choices to make so I'm sure I will replay it again sometime. If you're a fan of visual novels, I believe it's worth of buying for a full price + soundtrack which is AMAZING.

If you enjoy visual novels, sci-fi, transhumanism subplots, cutey androids and slick user interfaces then you will love this. You are guided through this tale of mystery, tragedy and societal gender roles with the help of two loveable AI that can be dressed up to look just like real girls~ At the root of the tale: why did the spaceship Mugunghwa lose contact with earth and why has it mysteriously shown up thousands of years later? Become a space detective with your sidekick Hyun-ae to discover and revelations of the history onboard the Mugunghwa, and answer the real question: where the heck is MY schoolgirl outfit?

I can just see your eyes tearing up for more just by reading this review* so please, look forward to your Hate Story~


*there is a lot of reading in this game

Analogue: a Hate Story certainly isn't billed as a feminist game. It's creator, Christine Love, cheekily describes it as being more about transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay. Maybe that's true. All I can say is that as a man, the game struck me as unflinchingly feminist. Now, I don't mean that in a confrontational, all-men-are-♥♥♥♥♥♥-pigs straw feminist sort of way. Hell, maybe feminism is not even the right word for it, maybe it's just a game about female experiences presented matter-of-factly. Ladies, this may seem obvious to you. But to us males, this is a wholly unsettling and unexpected revelation.

The story as outlined is simple and humble enough. You, a private detective (in space!), travel to a recently discovered wreck of a space ship, which had been previously lost for thousands of years. This ship once held an entire nation of people as it traveled to a distant planet. Somewhere along the way, the ship's inhabitants died out completely. It's up to you to sift through the ship's computer data (with the help of artificial intelligence friends) to discover the fate of the lost nation.

If you're like me, that story sounds fairly pedestrian so far, right? But the ship's recovered computer logs tell a much different, much more personal story.

Over thousands of years, this isolated society has regressed in both education and culture to the whereabouts of 15th century Korea. Despite living on an impressive space-faring vessel, and being assisted by futuristic artificial intelligences, its inhabitants are mostly simple farm folk who know little of the ship, or the universe, around them. And just like in 15th century Korea, conditions for women are horrifyingly bad.

The AIs ask you personal questions throughout the game, such as who you are, where you're from, and whether or not you've visited Pyonyang. You know, getting-to-know-you stuff. The first time I played through, I was asked if I was a male or female, and I answered honestly. I played through the game, and that normally would have been the end of it. However, there's a Steam achievement for playing through a particular ending as both a male and a female, so I played the same ending again. As a female, the writing changes. In this new scene, it was all I could do to not reach through the computer monitor and slap that AI around until the smug falls out.

This AI's dialogue is fairly standard and neutral as a male, while as a female, the AI's dialogue is condescending and dismissive of everything you say. As a male, this concept that I could be disregarded so easily was a bit shocking.

Is Analogue a FUN game? By no means. In fact, there's a race-against-the-clock mission (in a visual novel!) that really should have been heavily altered. But its story is solid, and compelling enough to make you overlook its flaws. Even weeks later, the story stuck with me, haunting me, making me question every interaction I've ever had with women over the course of my life.

TL;DR - Do you like reading? Play this game. It's important.

This is ancient history now, but for a while, back around 2005 or so, there was a perception, largely created by a single translation group, that the "visual novel," a format of linear text adventure that grew out of the Japanese PC games scene, might actually have something to offer beyond cheap titillation. They chose short, indie works like narcissu, Planetarian or OMGWTFBBQ, melodramatic stories of finding that last emotional connection in the moments before your early and miserable death. And then they pretty much stopped doing it (at least for free), because, hell, translating this stuff is a pain, and that was the end of that.

Analogue feels much like the promise of those earlier works. Written in English by a native speaker and skilled writer, with a great sense for how to use the interactive features of the format to really draw you in, in a way that "an ordinary book" can't. It's smart, somber, and complicated; it's a well-told story, and not just "for video games." And really, I just have a thing for simulated terminal interfaces.