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I agree, that's definitely the prevailing perception!

(And yeah these paintings are often stuffed to the gills with references and code.)

I want to thank you for this game, I played your CYCLE by chance ages ago, and returned to see what's new. This game blew me away, the things you do with text, and the audiovisual direction! It's like I watched something between A Field in England and some old symbolist movie, only it's also a layered, enveloping book. Oo-wee that was a ride. 

...And a few trips to my search engine of choice, too. LOVE that you explored the Occitan setting, this adds such a powerful, timeless social dimension to the story, it all comes together without being on the nose. The horror of power!

Also as I understand you are the host of the Manifesto Jam? Thanks for that, too! What a productive and punk idea, and some really good stuff there

Before the author responds, I'll add that the story emphasizes the fact that the village is in Provençal, south of France, they speak Occitan, not French. That's why their names sound unusual for us (Duomenico, Ninoun, Mamet), and why Duomenico has to translate. For example, the character Guihèn would be named Guillaume in French (guessing both sound roughly like "Gii-YOM"), and Rogièr is the Occitan counterpart for the French Roger (ro-ZHEE).

Also very mild spoilers below:

So, the Historian/Devil just pointedly uses the French — metropolitan, "civilized" — version of the character's name: Dominique. (And btw that name is unisex).

That is also why villagers feel remote from the Crown and alienated from the people in the capital (and also why they are considered / consider themselves heretics, they're leftover Huguenots as the epilogue hints). Hence also the connection with Greeks (Phocaean Nymphs: Phocaea established a powerful colony in South France called Massalia, modern Marseille), and the Farandola they're dancing (the signature holiday dance in Provençal). 

Just a little note re: piss people off manifesto (which rocks): I disagree that looking at still life or portrait in the various academic styles is just looking at someone skillfully replicating reality. They didn't, it's still hella stylized, and it's pretty much as custom-made and as translated THROUGH the artist as a modern non-figurative work or a clearly non-realistic impressionist painting. All these paintings TRICK us into believing they're something like "imperfect photographs", slavish attempts to mimic reality; they're not, even if some teachers back then stated as much. These paiting are as individual and interpretational as any other handmade art (and, well, good photographs). There are heaps of deliberate, meaningful choices and lucky accidents all converging into an object that you can look at for like 15 minutes as if talking to it — photographs are not the same, you can't mine so much manual decisions even from a genius photograph. Granted, it's harder to get pissed off at one of those. And they were made with less focus on that. But that's actually an interesting topic because they COULD very well piss off some contemporaries, we just can't understand the details and hints and references, like we miss most small references in even 19th c lit.

I returned to this game a few times over the years, recently to show what small games can be. Had as much fun playing through as back then =)

спасибо!!!

I liked it! Love how it all makes the perfect amount of sense. I felt not revulsion but more like, recognition. Although I'm not experimental sexually. Just the psychological gears turning.

Cool! Unfortunately I was stuck at the blue level, the block disappeared into the wall. I'll try the offline version

I pressed it

Finally played and finished it after the tab lingering in my browser for months =) Loved the game, apart from the excellent and accomplished detective game design, the great production of music and radio segments was what really struck me. I would be crazy proud to have made such a thorough stylization.

Thanks!

That's the point, I think. The game is rigged, to make you see how the city disappears, becomes invisible to you. To your "character", the state representative, the city is an ordered grid, a map you oversee and control. At first, you feel like you can keep everything in check - after all, you see the big picture. The intel on protesters flows in, you order squads around, all as it should be. But when the protest gets out of hand, the city turns more and more opaque to your all-seeing eye. Your controlling, policing, map-centered "government" vision literally becomes blind. Blind spots - dark spots in the city - become sources of even more trouble, and you can't see anything in them (no intel, no control, chaos). It gets to the point when you don't even know where your own squads are (a realistic notion that's implemented spot on). You feel fury and helplessness, pointless orders fly around, some flee the building, others start burning paperwork.

Note that this game is a brilliant double-meaning take on the game jam theme: "Running out of power". You run out of light (which BTW isn't electric here, technically), but with it, you're running out of control, out of power.

It's a symbolic / atmosphere game, which unfortunately makes it kinda bad as an entertaining game. In fact, for me it felt like an extremely irritating and clunky game. But it definitely translated the feeling of losing control very well!

Well, just put it like this:

G. F. Handel - Sarabande from Suite in D Minor (arr. by L. Rosenman)

...and an optional smaller line that may say "XXXX orchestra, conducted by A. Briger" if you know which orchestra did the recording. HWV (opus number) and other stuff is optional, it's like correct bibliographic info in references list.

Hi! I played and liked your game very much, thanks for putting it together. It was nice. (Found it via RPS.)

I wanted to ask you one thing: could you please attribute the music to its author? It's Sarabande (a slow dance movement), from a suite by Handel - or rather an orchestral "remix" of a keyboard (harpsichord) piece, made by Leonard Rosenman for the Kubrick movie Barry Lyndon. This orchestral version is the most well-known.

So your credits screen actually says so (HWV is sort of a "Handel's legacy index", like BWV is for Bach), but for some reason it also says "by Alexander Briger" (Briger is the conductor of the specific recording you used).