Jessika

I can't condemn the game wholesale, but it does have some serious flaws. Jessika is an FMV style, "crack the phone code" style game where you are given access to a dead young woman's postings and diary entries which are encoded and you must crack them by inputting key words and phrases gleaned from previous entries that you have decoded. *[u]Positives[/u]* The acting may be a little overwrought, but it's not awful, and the gameplay (finding words of importance from the subjects files to discover more video clips and then use those to decode even more, etc etc.) is strangely addictive. I really did have fun for most of the game, even if some of the content was on the disturbing side [spoiler] as Jessika falls under the sway of a neo-nazi style, anti-immigrant gang and gleefully goes on a series of violent assaults against shop-keepers, etc[/spoiler]. *[u]Negatives[/u]* Since you may find words that unlock diary/journal/social media posts from later in Jessika's story arc, it is very likely that you will uncover information from towards the end of her arc before you have decoded and read/observed some of the events from the past that lead her to her fate. This results in a disjointed story which lacks a proper dramatic arc because you already know how some things are going to turn out. Now, the worst part of the game, and the part which ultimately leads me to giving it a negative review, is that the character motivations are somewhat facile, the transformations are too abrupt, and some of the "plot twists" are damned near nonsensical, resulting in a complete bleeding away of any dramatic tension and/or suspension of disbelief. So, a lot of the game is decent, and even "fun" to play (if you can get past the grim nature of Jessika's character arc), but it is ham-strung by the implosion of dramatic tension and story-telling brought about by the piecemeal nature of the information reveals, and the somewhat unbelievable nature of some of the events/twists. Too bad, because at first it was a really good game that just kinda fell apart as it tried to cross the finish line... Not recommended, but YMMV!

'Jessika' is an attempt at anti-racism propaganda that goes all the way around the dial and ends up being one long phone call to the based department. They try to make the titular character seem "crazy" and "broken" for adopting the views she eventually does, but the problem for this narrative is that some of her points (such as that migrants are being imported and coddled by the state) are simply true on their face and might accidentally entice exactly the kind of further investigation into the topic that this game is meant to wave people away from. Typical anti-racist narratives generally rely on cartoonish melodrama, bad faith, and blind acceptance because they don't really stand up to scrutiny so the goal for engineering compliance becomes less about presenting what is true and more about applying social pressure, and while there are plenty of those things to be found in 'Jessika', it is peppered with enough salient points about race, nationalism, and immigration in its attempt to be "realistic" that it might very well backfire on the audience it's meant to convince.

Jessika is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. Calling this a mobile app is a bit of a stretch, although it is most certainly prominent on the app stores it was designed for. This is really more of an interactive multimedia webpage pretending to be a game. So, you click around on the web page pretending to look like a laptop, and you can trigger various VMV sequences that go to the core of this mobile app, it's an interactive video detective game where you resolve the mystery behind a suicide. I won't get into the plot much, and it's not worth it either given the FMV sequences feature bad acting and worse writing. There's a reason these guys are making bad mobile apps instead of TV shows, let's put it that way. The handling of the social issues in this mobile app, especially with regards to suicide, are problematic at best. Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware mobile apps attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here. From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The mobile app interface is mostly just text boxes/dialogs and features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/HTML games from the 1990s. While that might be fine for the 1990s, gaming has evolved a lot since then, the ATI Rage became mainstream in 1996... it's 2023, and that kind of thing just won't fly anymore, it's just not visually up to scratch. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone. These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $12.50 USD, on app stores, it's $6. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay a MORE THAN TWICE AS MUCH for an interactive web page, just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this is a mobile app, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend. Just who do they think we are?

find random tags to unpause the movie. and it's not even an interesting movie.

如果你英文不好玩这个的话 如同就是，让蚊子喝饮料，尝不出味道 但是本身的创意还行

Me: Poor Jessika Me, later: F*ck Jessika

Hunting for tags is cumbersome and the story is subpar - like other reviewers said, I closed the game with the feeling that i was supposed to sympathize for Jessika (which is absurd). I assume the devs tried to criticize the rising extremism across the world and youths, but it did a poor job at that.

another "search keywords" but i didnt like that one

Pros: + anti-extremism and anti-racism work + somewhat of charachter development going on (though it seems to be more superficial than actually really deep) Cons: - gameplay not innovative, just type in random search terms and hope ur lucky for the FMV movie clips to continue - Steamoverlay öffnen führt zu lauter Leerzeichen / Tab in System Sucheingabe welche dann erneut ausgeführt werden muss - ersten Buchstaben in Suche meist abgehackt, wenn man nur ein bisschen zu schnell ist, nochmal neu eingeben... - keine Sortierung der Favoriten Files alphabetisch / numerisch - wenn man bei der Suche etwas eintippt, so geht das Datei-Fenster wieder verloren, dank mangelnder Sortierfunktion, wieder von vorne Datei suchen... - weird ending, no real ending, story also not that good - glitches / hacks etc. to work laptop not rly explained - chat with job / coworkers just a weird side gimmick, same with E-Mails, nothing rly there of substance

Hum... It's OK. This is an FMV/interactive fiction/detective & hacking game. The graphics are fine. The music consists of a few tracks—none particularly memorable. The story is the main attraction. No bugs or crashes. Overall, entertaining. The game is similar to Her Story. You need to figure out what happened to the protagonist by hacking and uncovering video clips that gradually reveal the truth. That’s it. I won’t spoil anything. You can finish it in one sitting. It includes achievements and is cheap when on sale. It’s a good gaming experience, but it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. Actually, it’s kind of a niche title. If you enjoy story-driven games and like playing detective, you might fancy it... or not. But there’s only one way to find out, won’t there?