Suffer Like D Did?
0Originally recorded: September 28, 2023
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October is almost upon us, and you know what that means. It's time to go on hiatus with my bonus streams, so I can focus on my yearly Hallow-streams! This year, I decided to split the games by length, rather than focusing on guaranteeing that I'd be playing a Castlevania game. That being said, I did offer one CV in particular that I'm really surprised didn't end up winning its poll -- just given how in demand it was. Oh well, there's always next year.
I decided to start with the shortest game of the three -- the 1995 cult classic known simply as "D". I've had the game sitting in my GOG library for awhile now and I've been interested in the works of Kenji Eno, ever since I heard that story about how he managed to circumvent the censorship for this very game during its initial release. I was expecting the game to be short, but it's short by design. There's a two-hour time limit in place and no ability to save. That being said, the game itself is fairly short, so long as you don't get stuck on some of the more finnicky puzzles, and given the game's built-in hint mechanic, it seems like you'd almost have to get a game over on purpose. That or you got stuck on one of a handful of annoying puzzles.
Since Dari was confused about the game's "highly cerebral storyline" -- having missed the first 20 minutes of the stream -- and I managed to finish the game relatively quickly, I decided to do two playthroughs in this game. The first time, I got the good ending. The second one, I went for the bad ending... and I sort of sped through the game by seeing if I could solve puzzles without unlocking the in-game explanations. Turns out, you can! That alone gave the game an extra point, particularly during an era where adventure games of this ilk would literally lock you out of finishing a puzzle should you miss out on one particular interaction that has absolutely nothing to do with the solution.
All in all, I'd say that the game is better than I was expecting... but it's not really anything special. If anything, it feels like more of a time capsule of "cutting edge" game design from the mid '90s. It's fascinating, but I wouldn't say it's a great game, based solely on its mechanics. That being said, I definitely would be willing to stream the sequel at some point.