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raptorhearted rated No More Future

A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.

I really, really wanted to like this story. But I couldn't. Please do not read this review as a personal attack; this is a genuine critique of the work and an explanation for my rating. 

  1. The visuals do not accurately convey what is going on, nor do they positively contribute to the tone of the work. The impressionist style is nice, and the comic-panel style artwork, which are a really unique and effective way to portray scenes in a visual novel medium, have some really nice composition. Overall, though, I don't think the style is particularly well-suited to the overall very literal events of NMF. Impressionism thrives alongside abstraction, and can be used to communicate abstract concepts very effectively. In NMF, this impressionistic style is used to illustrate very literal, physical characters and locations. The way the characters and locations are stylized did not read well to me. Example: Mary's sprite in the introduction sequence. Textually, she is said to be a cat, and a couple of her sprites look like a cat, but... many of them, particularly the downward-looking smile she does often in that scene, are difficult to parse. The traits that make it so--namely, the snout appearing to be tilted upward at an angle while the head itself appears to be directly from the front--do not positively contribute to the game's atmosphere or convey an abstract subject. They just make me wish the artist had looked at more photo references. Additionally, the comic scenes make use of a lot of sudden perspective changes which are often very confusing. In comics, much like in motion pictures, shots changing angles can be very, very confusing without additional visual information to aid the viewer in understanding where they are looking now, like establishing shots. This type of confusion can be used to good effect, but NMF does not seem to engage with it in this way.
  2.  The handling of subject matter strikes me as immature and lacking in confidence. The introduction scene in the hospital is a particularly egregious example of this for several reasons. I barely see any knowledge of brain-related illness in Isaac's writing. We are told by the narration that being in the hospital sucks, that Isaac is in agony with his brain tumor... but it is never explored beyond that. The conversation with Mary is so focused on explainations and exposition in a quirky, "funny" way that it genuinely made me angry. A story which has to explain what is happening, why it is happening, and what to feel about it strikes me as immature and condescending. Why are these being explained to me instead of demonstrated through the characters or the world? Or even with impressionistic visuals? Additionally, very little weight is given to the reality of terminal illness, or the reality of being an object which belongs to the world's largest corporations. The exploration of corporate technology and AIs, to me, read as though they are written by an author who does not fully understand AI or corporations. Or the reality of hospital stays, brain damage, and terminal illness. The questions of mortality, personhood, and meaning in existence are explored in a surface-level way which does not endear any further thought or consideration in a reader. NMF avoids discomfort and ambiguity in a way that reminds me of a corporate, sanitized Disney movie; which really does not bode well for a story in which corporatism appears to be a central theme. The story is more tolerable to me when I view it through a lens of gender transition, but even then, the reading really seems surface-level at best...
  3. The characters do not endear me. Every character is annoying. Isaac is annoying. Mary is annoying. The AIs are annoying. None of these characters feel like natural inhabitants of the world, nor do they feel like individuals with compelling depth that I want to explore.
  4. Why is there copyright? This is a free game in an open-source engine. What harm am I doing by sharing a free game with my friends? Remember, you are not a corporation. Copyright is anathema to art. Digital art spaces have a petty, precious idea of art ownership akin to temporarily embarrassed Walt Disneys.  That sort of protectiveness over one's work, that idea that an unsanctioned copy of a medium which can be copied infinitely is a potential loss, is one rooted in anti-art, anti-consumer corporate practices. In the Free Open-Source Software world, in which Ren'Py exists, this attitude is unwelcome and detrimental. One of the incredible advantages of digital art as a medium is how it can be shared and replicated losslessly, infinitely. Free, open-source software takes advantage of this; copyright is a corporate tool which artificially stifles this in the name of profiteering. This regressive understanding of digital and FOSS mediums continues to reinforce my point that the authors of this work do not know enough about the digital world to tell this story well. If you don't want others profiting off of your work, consider a Copyleft license.

Overall, No More Future has a lot of love and personality in it. Isaac's synthetic design is cool, and I like the UI. The visuals are unique, and the story it wants to tell has interesting ideas--but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and every play session leaves me filled with frustration.