The Red Strings Club: the strings of your soul in the best bar of the remaining

Most of us would like to have our favorite bar, where the bartender, your best friend for the evening, will prepare you “the cocktail” that will make you “feel better.” And for the pianist to play the blues softly in the background.. Am I asking too much?! Although, to tell the truth, a lot. Such gatherings are more suitable for the characters of works of fiction. Such an interactive piece is under review today. With neon and cyberimplants!

My previous article referred to the automotive section of our magazine, and this one will refer to the alcohol section. Because making cocktails here is the second most important game mechanic. The first is the dialog system, but first things first.

Chamber cyberpunk or Technonoire

With the acquisition of polarity and commercialization, many genres and settings are reborn, losing their depth, original spirit and idea. In the end, little remains of the original source, and by its name is meant something completely different, often reduced to a stereotype. When you hear the word “Cyberpunk”, you will have a lot of associations with neon megacities, cyborgs and syntwave. All these associations are not exactly wrong. Rather, they are more recent.

Initially, cyberpunk is a literary subgenre where tortured people try to pull off their little affairs. The megacities there are really dirty and disgusting, like the real outskirts of modern cities, cyborgs are unfortunate abandoned amputee veterans with average-grade prosthetics, and the music is the primordial blues about the endless torment of an ordinary person to whom no technology of the future has brought happiness, just as smartphones and the ubiquitous Internet have not brought it to us. All of this is much closer to the stereotypical noir, and it might be more correct to call it “technoire,” but I don’t want to start a category war.

The story in the Red Thread Club unfolds precisely in this kind of literary cyberpunk, similar to the short works by William Gibson “Burning Chrome” and “Johnny Mnemonic” (a story, not its film adaptation). Just like Gibson’s, the action is very intimate, everything global has happened or is happening behind the scenes of the story. And most of the time we will have our bar, the characters, their conversations and drinks.

Happiness for everyone!

The plot tells about the project “Public Mental Well-being”, developed by Supercontinent Corporation. Through implants, the corporation wants to rid all mankind of negative emotions. The protagonists, bar owner Donovan and hacktivist Brandeis, don’t really like the concept of forced happiness, and they begin their struggle using soft power. Power is information. Therefore, Donovan will question the bar’s patrons – to the extent possible, high-ranking employees of the corporation and his part-time regulars. It is encouraging to see how the ideological confrontation on different sides of the barricades makes them almost friends on different sides of the bar.

In addition to the basic question “Freedom or happiness?” the game raises many questions of related ethical and philosophical categories. There is no hackneyed trope among them about self-aware AI, and the struggle for the rights of oppressed androids. In general, there is some evolution of the plot about an omnipotent Artificial Intelligence that surpasses its creator. Now we are talking about Emotional Intelligence, both artificial and quite human, since feelings are more complex and more important than knowledge. The third protagonist, the empathic android Akara, is responsible for artificial emotions. We are used to androids, servants, soldiers and rebels. It’s a different story here. Akara was created to love people and cares about their happiness not as a servant or as an overbearing master, but as a medical researcher. Her dialogues with Donovan are a separate gem.

Watch your speech and pour!

The best way to avoid ludonarrative dissonance is to reduce the amount of one of these two components (the game itself and the narrative), so most often narrative games are not about gameplay. That is, the gameplay is specific, in many ways very simple and devoid of dynamics: you need to walk and talk. There’s no walking around here, which is even somehow plot-based: Donovan can’t leave the bar, and the cocktails won’t make themselves.

The mechanics of making cocktails are a confusing button for choosing from two or more options. You can’t make a bad cocktail or not make it at all by spilling everything on the bar. No matter how crookedly and for a long time you mess around, in the end you will definitely be able to make a unique cocktail “worthy of The Red Strigs Club bar”. But the immersion effect is amazing. Cocktails do not disrupt the narrative, but complement it. Everything is very tactile, just like in the “Amnesia” series. To achieve such an effect in 2D pixel art is an indicator of the enormous talent of the developers.

Akara’s bio-pottery, which already resembles a biopunk art house, as in Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, and Brandeis’ phone pranks work in a similar way: you personally dial a phone number on the keyboard, and literally create new organs with your own hands. The rest of the time in the game you will be talking. And how to speak!

Moreover, the dialogues are beautifully written and have artistic value at the level of the best literary representatives of such fiction, not to mention games. Their system makes the text even better. The question you ask a bar visitor can be asked once. You can’t just endlessly twist the footcloth of questions and answers, as in the same Disco Elysium. To do this, you will need to add (with your own hands, remember the mechanics) an amnesiac pill to the visitor’s cocktail. These amnesiacs will be given out by Akara, as a reward for her game, correctly answer most of the questions she asks about each of the visitors and the pill is yours.

There’s only one end.

The concept of local variation is very interesting. The structure of the narrative is linear, and our choices and investigations do not change the global story, but our reactions, our attitudes, our thoughts and conclusions, both of the characters and the player. Our actions matter to ourselves. At the same time, each fork feels like a choice. There is no effect that I noticed in “The Sea” (Pathalogic 2) – when some lines do not change anything so much that they are not even strongly consistent with the answer. It was as if the character had muttered something unintelligible to himself. There is no such thing here. All the dialogues feel alive.

We know from the very beginning how it will end. The pattern of red threads leads to one point, but this is your personal pattern. This approach seems to me much stronger than the “good/bad ending” pair. We will not get out of life alive, but this fact does not devalue life.

The most complete game

There is an opinion that limitations make it possible to reveal a real talent that will sprout like grass through asphalt, and a masterpiece can be made using any materials and techniques. The Red Thread Club may well confirm this thesis. Pixel art is a reference here: lively and meaningfully mobile. He is so good that it is impossible to imagine this story in any other technical embodiment. I am truly surprised that the Internet is not filled with cozy GIFs from this game, which are so characteristic of this particular style. The sound design also does not lower the bar.
The music and sound effects are amazing. The sound makes this game at 60%, acting as glue for pixel images, making them come to life and allowing you to believe in them. The opening melody, the one that Brandeis plays on the piano in the bar, mixed with the effect of rain, will remain in your memory for a long time with an obscure hint of something bright and sad. It’s such a little catharsis.

This is probably the most complete game I’ve seen in a long time. There are no superfluous, crooked and protruding elements that would break the suspension of disbelief. It turned out to be difficult and somehow blasphemous to dissect her.

A fan film based on the game

While preparing this article, I decided to watch a video on this game for the first time. While searching for information, I came across another hidden treasure.: A Russian fan film that is a sequel to the game’s plot! In my memory, this is the second case, because on “Papers, Please!” there was a wonderful Russian short film starring the amazing Igor Savochkin, who also appeared in the wonderful film “Execution” in 2021. But according to “Your documents,” the timing was only 10 minutes, and here it’s almost 40! And this is clearly with less experience and resources.

Of course, the degree of “amateurishness” is significant, but still it’s more than worth watching. There is some rethinking of the setting, as when transferring this pixel world to living people in a completely recognizable environment, it brings the impossible dream of an ideal bar as close to the reality of Russian-speaking people as possible.Since you’ve read all the way here, you should check it out. It’s better after completing the game, because there are spoilers for the game in the movie.

Pros, cons, pitfalls

Advantages:
+ The best immersion in history in a long time;
+ A complete and original piece;
+ The personal cyberpunk you deserve.

Cons:
– The system of saving at the checkpoints of the history is not always obvious;
– If you don’t like to read a lot, this game is definitely not for you.;
– Many people consider the game to be short.

Pitfalls: try to play by drinking a small amount of alcohol, and compare your emotions with the game on a sober head.

Conclusion: Red strings are a reference hiding gem. She is unknown and therefore surprisingly good. Instead of the status of the millennium game that turned the universe upside down, the tone of memes and mentions in the tops, it has something more valuable, ephemeral and intangible. What exactly? Find out for yourself. The bar is still open!