Money for Girls: Amortized

I'm typing out a proper review for this, and I basically never do those, so, okay. Money For Girls is a truly singular work, and so unlike anything I have ever played. It is visceral and it is disgusting, and it is openly horny in a way that very few games would be willing to, and it mixes these together to at times make you feel uncomfortable and at others simply to make the world feel alive. I cannot heap enough praise upon the prose of this game. It is evocative in the extreme, fiendishly clever, and enjoyable to read. Gaming, as a medium, is not known for having excellent prose writing, with even good visual novels relying more heavily on their character and dialogue writing to stand out- not so with Money For Girls. The emotions conveyed through description of the world and Cancer's inner thoughts are dazzling, and go beyond my ability to capture here- you'd simply have to play it for yourself. Additionally and related to he prose is a very strong thematic core- this is a game about love and capitalism, arrested development and child abuse, filth and pollution, and the ways that these things affect girls and women specifically. These themes and motifs are woven throughout the world and its characters, in a setting custom-designed to deliver them with maximum impact. And it is strong in its thesis and its convictions, with a core maxim being that labor under capitalism is fundamentally degrading or immoral if not both, and the game does not flinch on that maxim even once. This is a game that is *about something,* and that is a rare and wonderful thing indeed in the modern industry. The main five characters are also depicted with a great deal of care, intensity of detail, strength of personality, and well-plotted interconnectivity. Over the course of my playthroughs of this game I fell in particular love with Cancer's flawed but caring mother Maiolica, and the game's main love interest, the the cruel, yet beautiful Agnel. I will say this now: The romance in this game is one of the best I've seen in video games, *period.* Part of that might be my own lack of familiarity with the genre, but Cancer and Agnel's story is at times terrifying, heartwarming, and tragic in equal measure, much like this game in microcosm- it makes sense, as they are the heart of the game in the end. A lot of this comes down, I feel, to the specificity of the characters: Too often are video game romances generic, meant to appeal to a large denominator of players who may have wildly varying personalities and perspectives on what they want out of a relationship, who can choose from so many dialogue options that creating genuine chemistry with a love interest becomes basically impossible, and so one must settle for the shallow gratification of liking a character well enough, giving them a chaste smooch, perhaps getting a few custom scenes if the game is good and perhaps seeing a tit if the game is rated appropriately. Cancer and Agnel are not like that- getting to know Agnel, to dig into her mind and neuroses, her story, that's central here, and the way that she and Cancer both grow around each other over the course of a route where you pursue a romance with her, well- It's a beautiful thing. The romance, however, is rather an optional aspect, but what isn't is the *horror,* which is also *excellent.* All of the tricks of the prose are used to their fullest effect, creating a smorgasbord of horrible, uncomfortable, revolting scenes. A lot of truly, truly awful things can happen to poor sad Cancer Prize in this game, and if you're the sort who likes to watch characters who don't at all deserve it suffer horrible fates then boy howdy are you going to love this game's lovely slew of awful endings that can befall its plucky heroine. I know that this review has simply been effusive praise thus far, but you must understand that this game truly is *that good.* There are a couple little nits to pick- thematically, the game is clearly doing *something* with race as a social component that it touches on but never really gets into, for one, sometimes the UI can be a little finnicky, like when options you're trying to click wiggle out from under your cursor in character creation, but ultimately it is mostly small little worries like that. So if you're a no-world-dreamer, someone who likes gross things and girls, who's got a tolerance for the dark and the disgusting, I cannot recommend this game enough. It is gross, it is beautiful, and there is nothing quite like it currently in gaming. So come with me, and dance a dance of hope for the future.