Review: Queer Village

Today is another very special review day! Because, y'know, the nice Datacom dudes haven't exactly given me much to do other than "HERE IS SOME DATA, FILTER IT OUT AND THROW IT INTO A SPREADSHEET" which takes like two hours anyway.

Anyway, today I review Queer Village, an indie freeware (is that term redundant yet?) game that I first played about a month or so back but forgot about. Out of the list of games I was considering writing a review for, this was the only one I could remember well enough. For reasons that will become apparent shortly.

Quick note: If I come across as being homophobic at all (although most readers know me well enough to realise that I am extremely supportive of gays and lesbians; besides, I pretty much posted a link to gay porn like, two entries ago), I'm just going to say: It's not hate if you enjoy it.

So you're probably thinking: "Queer Village, eh? That sounds like a game where you wake up in a town and you have to escape it but the only way to do so is to sleep with all the dwarves. Or strip poker or something." So it may disappoint (or relieve) you that there is very little actual homosexuality in it, other than the loading image, which is all rainbow-coloured and pretty, the village name and the bizarre ending which I will reveal later, assuming you are still reading.

The basic premise of Queer Village is as follows:

Your brother left the peaceful queer village and went to the forest in search of mehrehem. He is lost and you must find him.

That's taken directly from the game's intro. What the hell is 'mehrehem'? A quick search says that 'meh' means 'more' in German. 'Rehem', I have no idea, but apparently it's a legit word. Maybe it means to 'hem again'? 'More hem again'. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, the game takes off. You control your persona, who is a glowing ball, with your mouse. No clicking, nothing required. Oh, one more thing that is possible homosexual is the background. It's a nice background. I would put it on my walls, but it doesn't exactly scream 'manly'. And those arrows. Follow dem arrows.

Even as you follow the arrows you'll think thoughts like 'Oh god, what am I supposed to be doing? What is with this music? Do I have to go around those blocks?' Turns out you can actually pass straight through the boxes. Convenience? Some kind of metaphor? At first I thought Queer Village was like, one of those steady hand games. Except when you touch the edges you get mauled by wolves and you never find your brother.

Anyway, you eventually come across this creepy looking guy who offers you mehrehem. How nice of you to offer to rehem my clothes more! As you can see by what he says, I actually have found my brother at this point. Ok, why wasn't I informed? Technically shouldn't I be able to just go on home to Queer Village? But no sir, because once you talk to Creepy Guy, he follows you around. You can't go back to Queer Village either because apparently it's not on the map. Ok. That's cause for concern, I'd say.

So two minutes later when you've stopped screaming at Creepy Guy to hurry the fuck up and helped him when he gets stuck around corners by shifting your mouse slightly, the game ends, and not in a nice 'You brought the man home successfully and made it back to your village' way.

Thanks for letting me know.

I swear I am not making this shit up. I should've seen it coming from a mile away, but I suppose I expected it to happen after an hour of guiding Creepy Guy around the most dangerous of blocks and fighting wild animals with nothing but my bare hands because I'm that much of a manly man. I also have to say that this ending freaked me out somewhat because that is what happens when you combine a late night, coffee, drone, Creepy Guy and then suddenly 'YOU AND YOUR BROTHER WERE RAPED AND KILLED'.

So what's the deal with this game? Pretentious Indie Gamer has some pretty deep musings on it. Me, I'm not too sure. I'm trying not to think too hard about it because, like, I'll do it tomorrow or something. I mean, on one hand I love it for being a pretentious indie mindfuck game that - dare I say it? - jumps into the box labelled 'GAMES THAT ARE ART OR IF CALLING GAMES ART IS NOT YOUR THING ARE AT LEAST DEEPER THAN HALF-LIFE OR GEARS OF WAR' but on the other hand I am puzzled and wonder what the hell the creator was trying to prove. Maybe I'll just steal Pretentious Indie Gamer's opinion.

If you do want to play Queer Village, knock yourself out and tell me what you think.