So we finished Void Stranger last week, after playing it nonstop for several weeks straight, and we're pleased to report that it's very, very good! Almost unbelievably so, in fact. It embodies so much of we value in art – things seldom seen in commercial games, nevermind ones as big as this one – it's like it was made for us.
It's strange, then, that when I sat down to write about it... I couldn't do it.
That doesn't mean I have nothing to say, of course. Saori and I have thought a lot about the game's obvious influences, its puzzle design, the novelty of seeing this kind of yuri outside of manga, and so on... but none of that felt substantial enough, at least not for the standards I hold myself to. These are little more than scattered observations on isolated aspects of the game; they don't cohere into a whole, much less represent how good we think the game is. How could this be? The most "us" game that has likely ever been made, and I can't write anything interesting about it?
Well, it's not like I have to write about every game we play, so I could've simply gone "oh well" and moved on — in fact, that's what I should have done, since we're currently supposed to be taking a break from our work. But... no! The fact I couldn't write about the game at all bothered me, regardless of whether I actually ended up doing it or not.
So I decided to write about not being able to write about it instead. Naturally.
Why couldn't I write about Void Stranger? To answer that, I'll need to analyze my critical process itself, including how I think and write about things, as well as why I decided to become a critic in the first place... which, as you can imagine, means this post is quite personal and introspective. Probably a little incomprehensible to anyone not literary theory-brained, too. Above all else, though, it's without doubt the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written.
But hey, last week was also our 31st birthday, so I think I deserve a treat. Think of this as an anniversary thing.
Anyway!
Hey everyone. Before we begin, a few things to keep in mind:
- You'll notice my writing here is quite a bit different from usual. Uh... don't worry about it! I'll explain why it turned out like this at a later point in time.
- I generally tried giving brief overviews of what happens in the scenes I talk about here, but by and large, the post still assumes you've seen the episode.
- This is not going to be the norm for my writing from now on lol
- There are some 5.3k words below the cut, so I suggest opening this in a new tab.
- I'll be discussing some highly suggestive/sexual themes, as well as posting screencaps that you might not want to be looking at in public, so keep that in mind.
Hmm, yeah I think that's it. Enjoy the fruits of my excruciating labor!
Princess Wing is a TTRPG where you play as heavily mecha inspired magical girls who attend a magical girl academy and fight alien robots, and it just got a complete fan translation that you can get here.
Does it really have pile bunkers? Yes. Do you get to customize your frilly magical girl outfit? There's a base and accessories you can pick, several of which are described as looking like skirts or tiaras, and while that's all you pick from mechanically, the book makes it clear that magical girls often heavily customize their outfits to their taste, to the point where they basically say you could go for a Super Sentai look instead of something frilly if you really want. Does the the magical girl school have regular fighting tournaments? Of course it does, it's anime. It also has an annual fashion show. And that fashion show is also partially a fighting tournament.
I've read through all the player stuff now, and it's a blast of over the top anime silliness. System wise, it's very rules light outside of combat, and combat is tactical, but looks to be on the lighter end of such systems. And it uses a playing card based resolution system for combat that I really want to try out. Basically, I thought this game looked ridiculous and interesting in all the right ways, and I feel like a lot of you would agree with me, so I wanted to share.
Edit: since this post is making the rounds again, I should note that you can get the most up to date version of the translation here.