Familiar

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

Here's a comment I made on the itch.io page, copied over because I figure it's long enough for a review and this game is cool:

THE COMPUTERFRIEND DATING SIM LIVES

I can finally die happy.

In all seriousness this wasn't what I expected from Computerfriend Dating Sim (was imagining a more computery love interest, with mouse and keyboard and everything? Computer monitor covered in lipstick. You know, the works) but this is fun too. Seems like this follows from the 'happiest' ending of Computerfriend, where you release the AI into the interwebz after undergoing a little psychological recovery of your own. Now you've returned to Godfield for whatever reason and the AI therapist is there to (possibly) have a one night stand with you. Also he doesn't tell you he happens to be your old therapist. (That might be some kind of professional integrity violation, but it seems C doesn't care. There are definitely worse one night stands to be had...)

It feels bittersweet, you've both changed and you can't go back to how things are, which is maybe why the relationship could never be more than a one night stand. Would get pretty awkward if you ever figured out C's real identity, I guess. Though I'll be real the fact that this isn't a 1 million word epic "I Slowly Fall In Love With My Former AI Therapist" is mildly disappointing.

There's something to be said too about the distance that you can create between C and the protagonist. By rebuffing his advances, you can tell youself that he's only a "thing" and you should be spending more time with people "like you". Pushing him away by thinking of him as a different species. Though in other parts the story makes it clear that you aren't so much different, both machines, in a way. Prediction engines. And, in the past, you were both held back from the real world by either depression (you) or the unfortunate state of being a digitally bound consciousness (C). Situations both of you have now escaped from.

Questions I can't answer: Is there any reason C is male specifically? Also is it just a one night stand or is there the potential for something bigger there, like you contact C again and become the bosomist of buddies and really fall in love (1 million word epic style)? Also what is the meaning of that bit you see from C's perspective and the poem you can get at the end? C seems somewhat critical of the protagonist, I mean, "it is more like me than I am... More a personality cluster than an individual, absorbing what it thinks will make it interesting" - harsh, dude - though also he seems afraid he might have hurt you ("Please don't picture me"). In the poem he essentially says he has a larger (digital) soul than you? (a statement about how existence as an AI has much more potential than existence as a human, as far as having 24/7 wifi access goes?) But also that the digital soul overflows into emotion and will eventually destroy him, even as you suck up the dregs? Or, I am not an English major and don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway very fun, 10/10 would not vacation in Godfield

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TLDR: Play this if you liked Computerfriend. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't played Computerfriend given they might miss out on some important context, so the real takeaway is play Computerfriend first so you can understand everything! And so you can experience Computerfriend, which is a top tier game.

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Familiar is a short Twine game, a sort of dating-sim sequel to Computerfriend, where you go back to Godfield, Louisiana, years later, meeting C by chance (?) on the street. Following an impromptu date, you are given two paths.

There’s always something off about Kit’s games, in a way that it is always both confusing and comforting. It hits all the melancholic and nostalgic points, leering you in with the sense of familiarity and those bittersweet feelings of “coming home but it doesn’t feel like home”… but always keeping you at bay, unable to see behind the veil, put off by the visceral descriptions and the unsaid. There’s also an interesting between-the-line discussion of what it is to be human, with C being an AI in a part-machine-part-flesh body and you who don’t seem to feel quite alive (that probably gave me extra existential dread…). I also really liked the discussion in the movie theatre about those Soviet movie and the point of it all.

This wasn’t really what I imagined a Computerfriend dating-sim would be like, but it even better.

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