Nightmare Temptation Academy

By far the greatest work of Lena NW thus far. Growing up in the first generation of internet oversaturation, Lena is the perfect artist to portray the moral ambivalence, debasement of identity, and complete corruption that can be found on the internet, as well as to show the lives of the people affected by it. She does this by giving us five characters going to high school in a surreal, post-apocalyptic space where every inch is brimming with human flesh, disco balls, used condoms, leopard print, fire, nooses, and just about everything else combined and contorted into something resembling a world. They mutilate animals, abuse their classmates, and live out their most perverted sexual fantasies, all in a public space where anyone who tries to stop you just signs you up for their own form of depravity. The only places you run into consistently every day are the abyss and the high school; the former allows the player to look into a hole where thousands have died and contemplate their own mortality, and the latter is run by a nameless, kafkaesque machine with no clear origin or motive, just fulfilling it’s program until the end of the world. It is likely this machine that made everything the way it is; retconning most aspects of their lives and altering what’s left, dissolving their existence down to the most basic signifiers. Dorian’s suicidal ideation, Stacy’s social justice, Riley’s artistic endeavors, and Chad’s ex-frat bro persona. They are literally written to be shallow and one-noted. Despite this, they are immensely compelling characters with genuine arcs, often related to, or caused by, the machine. Chad used to be an alcoholic frat bro and is trying to resist his temptations to return to that lifestyle. Dorian barely remembers his life before the machine maimed it and is trying his best to cling onto the few memories he has, but they all end up distorted. Stacey is a combination of the ‘mean/prep girl’ and ‘social justice warrior’ archetypes, brought to an absurd degree as she locks people in cages to bring awareness to the suffering of animals. Riley is talented but demented, both as a person and an artist. She’s great with technology to the point where she has the power to free everyone from the machine, yet she uses her power to traumatize them. Likewise, she has a very distinct and impressive artistic style yet uses it primarily as a means to draw pornography, often of her non-consenting classmates. As the game progresses, each of these characters, excluding Chad, show you their depraved activities on a golden pedestal. The player is encouraged to pick which character(s) to indulge in life’s most horrific pleasures with. Suicide, torture, homicide, rape, and everything else is allowed. This is presented with complete indifference. Each time they speak to a character, they are given the choice to reply with one of two text boxes. No preference is shown one way or another. A standard visual novel mechanic given a whole lot more weight when one option is to torture one’s peers and the other is to not do that. In the world of Nightmare Temptation Academy, morality is obscured to the point where any action can be justified as just as valid as any other. The choice of whether or not to electrocute one’s friends is of equal consequence to what one wants to eat for lunch that day. The world since the machine took over is so far away from what it once was that it seems pointless for one to limit themself to what is decent.

Aw bluh, why is this 8GB big?

Pretty short standard social sim/personal work by LenaNW and CostcoDreamgurl that I was convinced to try after spotting its bonkers trailer. Let it be known, this is a game created by someone who definitely browsed 4chan at a young age and has admittingly in their own interviews, been drawing hentai and whatnot since at least their high school years. Contemporary!

In the game, you are among the last of four people in a school setting where an apocalypse has happened and you are all the remains. You get indoctrinated by "the machine" in some humorous vignettes and stereotypical school characters. The game also doesn't give two craps about copyright, music from Pokemon and images that go beyond parody are included including the moon from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask [ゼルダの伝説ムジュラの仮面] and images I don't want to see again of Spongebob Squarepants.

The game gives you a huge list of warnings ahead of time of what you are getting involved in from the get-go and the most absolutely taboo parts are skippable or stoppable with a giant emergency skip or leave buttons on the side, but even after bracing myself, I felt way too much of the game was just shock humour or left me feeling like crap after. The emo-rap skunk character is far too much of a walking parody of himself with his school shooting and dark for the sake of shock background that it disengages instead of engaging .

A lot of effort was put into this game which goes out of its way to be "on purpose bad" occasionally. The mini-games within are purposely ugly and sloppy variations of Pac-Man that resemble NeoPets flash games, and that's certainly done on purpose.

100% not for everyone, it is the only game I deleted after playing it after being done with it for a day. Not because it's a gigantic file, I just kind of felt like something I didn't want to associate with anymore.