Interstate 35

damn, I was not expecting the religious trauma to rear up while playing this, but if it wasn't the most beautiful writing and art i've experienced recently. Maybe im attaching my own biases to it, but very much felt a tinge of the all too familiar queer experience of home being something different, whether that be nuclear fallout, or others unacceptance of who you are now. And the wordage of god being a moving form, I can't figure out if there's something comforting in that or something terribly eldritch.

I loved playing and creating Twine games in university. This one is a masterful approach to visual novels, and the metaphysical writing reminds me of 1000x Resist and how that wades through the topics of apocalypse and the violence rooted in choice.

Great!

this game will teach you about Texas in a spiritual way

This is a short visual novel set in post-nuclear-apocalypse Texas, with themes of queerness and religion, and an ambience that is both suffocating and exhilarating at the same time. It took me about an hour to play through, for some reason my playtime wasn't recorded accurately (I played in a location without wifi, so that's probably why). I really liked it - it had an amazing sense of place and feeling. The music, the art and the writing all came together for me. There is a little bit of narration at one point and I loved that too. I was really happy to see a game engaging both with queer and religious themes at the same time (specifically Christianity), I would probably have gotten it even sooner if I saw that mentioned somewhere. The way it approached the themes was great too, heartfelt, open-ended, resonant with pain. I had some technical issues on the Deck: the game did not want to run at all at first, I'm not even sure anymore what I did (it's been a while), but I think it was Proton Hotfix that helped. Then it did had trouble running docked to the TV, I ended up playing on the Deck screen - maybe even a better choice, it felt more personal that way. I would definitely recommend this game, but if you have a Steam Deck, you might need to tweak things a bit, so keep that in mind. I think it's worth it though! ___ Source of the game: Bought with my own money

Absolutely dripping with atmosphere and feeling.

One of the most profound experiences I’ve had in a game. I think about the final screens of this game regularly. Absolutely beautiful.

There's just something about imagining something so close to home being your own personal Chernobyl. Since my attention span is absolutely shot it took me a try or two to get started but all the sudden I find myself at the credits of this thing.

Just really really good

Texas