Recent reviews by Zandra

Everything I wanted from a Snake Farm sequel! More stuff, more places, way more mechanical depth (especially with the anchor), meta progression between runs... I'm hooked!

This game made me cry.

An erotic visual novel about social manipulation, Ladykiller in a Bind is a game about being stuck in a place filled with terrible people while pretending to be someone you’re not. It’s…very relatable.

(There are sex scenes, but the game is very upfront and clear about letting you skip them at any time if they’re not your thing. There’s also an option to cover up any nakedness with large colorful Christmas sweaters if you want to play on a train!)

As the full title suggests, the game puts you in the uncomfortable shoes of the Beast, who must pretend to be the Prince, her rich and powerful brother, on a week-long graduation cruise. He’s a horrible manipulator, his classmates are just as devious, and the Beast has to play the part without being found out--with the added stress of being caught up in a high-stakes popularity contest called the Game.

The concept of the game uses the classic amnesia trope in a refreshing way; the Beast is going in blind, just like you, and some social situations become minefields when everyone’s referring to something the Prince would obviously know about. Juggling the twin goals of not arousing suspicion and getting enough votes to win the Game is made easier by just how brilliantly the game handles dialogue. Instead of being a classic tree, multiple options will present themselves, and sometimes disappear as the conversation continues. Having been multiple times in the situation of helplessly watching the subject change away from something I wanted to comment on, it was novel to see it used so well as a game mechanic. Some options will make people suspicious; some will get you votes; some will do both, or neither. Sometimes you’ll be pressured into saying something, anything, to avoid tipping people off.

But the game can take a lot of that pressure off you if you need it. You always can scroll back a little bit; take back what you just said, and go down a different path if you’re having second thoughts. As someone with social anxiety, this made me feel so much better. This feature, like many others found in Ladykiller in a Bind, are now things I wish every game with conversation mechanics would use.

What made this game stand out to me so much were the nights, where after a day of saying and doing horrible things to keep up appearances, you finally get to let your defenses down and be genuine with someone you care about; either the Beauty or the Stalker. Both have their own mechanical raisons d’être, but both also give a glimpse into vastly different dynamics. With the Stalker, you take the lead. With the Beauty, you willingly put yourself into the hands of someone else with the promise that she’ll make everything better. Both relationships – all social interactions in the game, in fact--make it clear that there's consent from all parties.

My life is filled with things to be anxious about: I constantly feel that I’m running out of time, that I’m missing important things, that I should be doing so much better than I am at so many things. It’s so easy to beat myself up. But it’s not healthy, is it? Anxiety and depression make it simple to discredit ourselves and be rougher than we need to be when it comes to self-criticism. But there are people in our lives who care about us, who are in a better position to help us get better. We can trust them. It’s okay to put ourselves in their hands, to relinquish that control – to stop hurting ourselves because of all the flaws we see in the mirror.

Video games can teach us important things if we’ll lower our guard and let them in; I learned a very important lesson from an erotic game about frustrated young adults on a cruise ship.