In 1983, the video game industry crashed.  While almost certainly the impact of the now famous video game crash of 1983 has been overstated in the halls of gaming history, it is still a monumental occasion.  One of the largest markets in the world and, at the time, the center of the fledging video game industry effectively vanished over night.  Video games in the US went from a lucrative industry to a dead fad over the course of a couple of prominent game releases, only returning due to clever marketing by Japanese game company Nintendo essentially Trojan Horseing US retailers.  The Crash of 1983 is such a pivotal moment that it's not hard to wonder what would've happened if it didn't.  If maybe there was a higher standard of quality that made it so the industry could sustain itself, a way to combat the oversaturation of gaming and the dip in quality that followed.  What would that world look like?

Arcade Spirits - Dating in an Alternate History

What is Arcade Spirits?

Arcade Spirits is a 2019 dating sim that takes place in an alternate 21st Century wherein the video game crash of 1983 never occurred.  This game posits the consequences of this change resulted in two major cultural shifts: the first is that the 1980s culture continued indefinitely.  In the way Fallout kind of posits a world where the shift to nuclear power and the continued focus on vaccum tube technology instead of chips would cause culture to indefinitely stall in the 1950s; Arcade Spirits kind of implies that as a result of video games not crashing the world kind of stays in the 1980s.  The second consequence of this change is that arcades, hence the title, never go out of fashion.  They continue to exist as a viable business strategy into the 21st century, and they run the gambit from massive entertainment corporations to small mom and pop shops.

In Arcade Spirits you play as unemployed young adult that you can fill in with your own name and identity, though by default they are named Ari Cader.  Ari has recently been laid off from a job they really liked and has now been staying at home depressed, concerning their roommate and best friend Juniper greatly.  Juniper, as a result, decides to turn Ari onto a phone app she uses: Iris.  Iris is an AI personal assistant that can do a multitude of things for the user, keep track of their calendar, make notes, read e-mails, etc.  But its most relevant function is that the user can answer questions Iris has and with that information, as well as the data on their phone, Iris can find the user a career path that will make them happy.  Ari very quickly clocks that Iris is more than just an AI assistant, as the app seems genuinely concerned with helping Ari in life in a way that Juniper's Iris never seems to.

The virtual assistant sets Ari up with an interview at a local mom and pop arcade called "the Funplex".  The Funplex is run by a lovely old woman named Fran, who had been running it with her husband for many years before he passed away.  Fran is a bit of an idealist, something that her employees quickly inform Ari of and communicate their thoughts on.  Fran believes the arcade isn't just simply a business, but rather a place for people to find themselves.  She has fought hard to keep the arcade open despite steep competition and an inability to purchase new games, often having to resort to interesting garage sale and auction finds from decades ago, to keep this ideal alive.  She wants this to truly be more than just a cute little retro arcade, but a place for people to come together and grow.  She asks Ari if they are willing to be part of that dream, and after confirming, sets them to work manning the prize counter.

Romance On The Arcade Floor

With that, Ari is turned loose onto the arcade and begins to meet our collection of eligible dating options.  Arcade Spirits is heavily inspired by 80s workplace sitcoms, things like Cheers or Night Court.  The game heavily focuses around a core cast of characters made up of both the other employees of the arcade and the arcade's handful of regulars; a small but closeknit group of gamers who enjoy the simple, intimate atmosphere at the Funplex.  These characters also make up our pool of eligible dating options.  They are the following:

• Gavin - Gavin is the first character you're going to meet in Arcade Spirits, the no-nonsense manager at the Funplex.  He's precise and focused, his priority is on the business side of the Arcade, on trying to dig this place out of the hole.  Everything Fran isn't, Gavin is.  That's not to say, of course, that Gavin doesn't believe in Fran's ideals.  Even if he doesn't fully understand her all the time, Gavin does truly believe in the arcade and its sense of community.  He is just, you know.  A realist.  He sees the numbers and he sees they're not exactly good, especially since they are working with so many older arcade games that require frequent repairs and there is an ever dwindling cache of parts to repair them with.  This, along with his controlling personality and his frequency of getting lost in the numbers often puts him in conflict with the other members of the Funplex staff.  But, despite being such a stick-in-the-mud who doesn't seem to understand the magic of arcade games, Gavin does have his own secret gaming love: he's a pinball wizard.
• Naomi - Naomi is, quite literally, the character that the game was built around.  When they were planning out routes for this game, Naomi's came first and came fastest.  Naomi is the mechanic of the Funplex staff, she works on all the arcade machines in her "garage" in the back of the arcade.  Naomi has a hyperfixation on arcade restoration, something that often puts her at odds with Gavin.  Naomi sees the beauty in these machines, the sheer unadulterated magic they bring.  These machines are important to her, and her inability to throw anything out, while sometimes helpful as she frequently needs to repurpose parts for other machines, is clearly a symptom of her obsession.  She is also, as you would imagine, rather shy and awkward, keeping in the back for most of the day not just do to her "projects" but due to her lack of social skills.  Still, she's kind, affable, and once you get her talking about her favorite thing, it's impossible not to get pulled in by her exuberant energy.  In other words, she's on the spectrum!
• Ashley - Ashley is the last employee of the Funplex and the other person who works the floor.  Part customer service representative and part mascot, Ashley is the resident costume designer and cosplayer.  Comparatively to Gavin and Naomi, Ashely is a relatively well-adjusted young woman, being more friendly and outgoing and often being caught up in the center of the two's arguments as a result.  That is not to say, however, that Ashley isn't her own brand of quirky.  Ashley loves cosplay and definitely feels more comfortable in costume than out.  She also has a bad habit of getting TOO into character, especially at large events.  There's a convention scene in the game where Ashley is in cosplay the entire time and only drops character when she's in very small groups of her friends.  Her obsession with cosplay is just more than a special interest though.  Ashley is experimenting with her own gender identity.  She's recently gotten very into crossplay, she does a lot of cosplay of male characters and finds the feeling she gets dressing in traditionally masculine garb rather compelling.  She's also kind of a gremlin, she is shockingly THE member of the cast who is quick to go "what if we did something illegal".
• Percy - Percy is the first of the three romance options that isn't part of the staff of the Funplex.  Percy is a regular at the establishment who is particularly obsessed with the game "Mr. Moopy's Magic Maze", a parody of both Mappy (one of my favorite arcade games) and Pac-Man.  Percy is rich, smarmy and aloof, he's a British immigrant that moved into the area for his job in stock trading and due to both his effectiveness at said job and its pretty lax nature, he finds himself with loads of free time.  He devotes basically all his free time to the Funplex, trying to achieve a world record run in Mr. Moopy, his apparent life's goal.  Your first interaction with Percy speaks volumes, he's in hot water for hogging the machine and not letting people play, so he offers to buy the machine and let the arcade keep it for him so he has free reign to use it whenever he's here.  Percy can come across as kind of a jerk at first, but quickly you find out why he's like this.  Percy has a serious, incurable heart condition that has put a time limit on how long he has to live.  Combined with his lack of care for himself, much to his friends' chagrin, Percy is clearly obsessive over Moopy because he knows he has an expiration date and wants to leave his legacy on his favorite game.
• QueenBee - QueenBee is my wife.  QueenBee is a professional gamer, a notable figure in the Esports scene for the in-universe MOBA/Fighting game hybrid Fist of Discomfort.  She is not only a regular at the arcade, she is THE regular at the arcade, a prominent gamer and streamer who, thanks to some clever work by Naomi, is able to stream directly from the arcade, using their FoD machine.  In a way, this is a plus, the arcade gets a steady stream of revenue from the Queen as she spends her streaming sessions grinding FoD and battling people who stumble into the arcade wanting to test their best against a prominent figure.  However, QueenBee is not always attuned to the vibe.  She's arrogant, foul mouthed, has kind of a temper, and often ends up butting heads with other patrons, namely parents of small children, at the arcade due to these things.  That being said, she's also sassy and funny and gets along with the staff and most of the adult patrons fairly well, though obviously the group needs to tell her to chill out.  This arrogant personality is, however, a mask.  The Queen is hyper aware of her place as a woman in gaming, and especially a woman in professional gaming.  Bee is part of a prominent ESports team, and she knows that she is on there as a token woman.  There have been plenty before her and will be plenty after her, she knows exactly what her worth is to them.  A pretty face they can parade around as a mascot for a while until she gets "too old" (meaning like 26) and then the first loss they have, they get dropped for another.  QueenBee doesn't just want to be the best, she NEEDS to be the best, or else her career is over.
• Teo - The final of the romanceable options (at least in a normal playthrough), Teo, at first, seems like he's being propped up to be the token "bad boy".  He rolls up with his crew to the arcade and starts making kind of a ruckus, as his group dominates the dancing game machines.  He's sexy and flirtatious, the kind of guy who seems like he'd be bad news in these types of games.  Teo is the nicest guy in the cast.  Outside of his flirtatious personality, which is a thing he cannot stop no matter how hard he tries, Teo is incredibly selfless and puts the needs of others before his own almost 100% of the time.  He's the kind of guy who would check in on his friends at a party to make sure they were getting hydrated, just a total Golden Retriever.  Absolute himbo energy.  He also is very passionate about his craft, he's not only good at dancing video games, he is an excellent dancer.  His crew uses the dancing games at the Funplex as a means to sort of gameify their practice, they do like actual pro dancing at various events and organize flash mobs with other crews on occasion.  He also wants to better himself to a fanatical degree.  This is, however, his biggest weakness: Teo throws himself into projects very quickly and bounces around from place to place, project to project constantly.  He is quick to give up on dreams to embrace new ones, leading to him being kind of wishy-washy about important stuff.

Gameifying The Dating Experience

Now that we've met our core six, let's talk about the dating experience.  Ari is a bit of an awkward and reserved sort by nature, a realistic way of doing the classic gaming trope of a blank slate protagonist.  Ari is not super used to complex social situations and, moreover, people being attracted to them.  They've spent much of their life believing that they are cursed and have kind of opted to keep other people out of that curse.  Luckily for them, they have Iris!

This is one of my favorite things about Arcade Spirits, the gamefication of the dating experience.  Our wonderful virtual assistant, in an attempt to aid Ari in their romantic pursuits, has decided to put the process of romantic pursuits in terms that Ari will understand.  She cooks up an RPG stat screen for them, wherein she will keep track of the responses they give when talking to their potential romantic partners and raise their stats in kind.  As well, she will keep track of their affection with any specific potential partner as the game progresses, letting you know how far along you are with any specific route.  This not only serves as a fun and effective way to spice up the dating sim gameplay, it's also a very effective tool for getting new players into a dating sim.  It gives them a really clear and obvious system from which they can latch onto to ease them into it.

These minor RPG elements are not just for flavor, however.  The outcome of choosing to raise certain stat allows you to influence Ari's personality and how they interact with their friends and/or potential love interests.  The potential love interests all respond better to different responses, QueenBee will like it when you're sassier, Gavin will like it when you're direct, Naomi will like it when you're more kind, stuff like that.  And as you engage with these responses, you'll raise your stats in these areas, allowing you to be able to successfully perform various checks throughout the game that you need your stats at a certain level for.  Just in general, you won't be able to date a character unless your stats in areas they like are high, but these stats especially become useful in the endgame, as the final confrontation(s) are heavily influenced by your stats.

As well, much like an RPG, you are given direct consequences for the responses you choose.  This is not a game where you can maintain good relationships with everyone, while they all will always remain your friends, to get up there with one person does come at the cost of another.  Not only do they favor different stats but, after the first day, you are often choosing to hang out with one person at the cost of hanging out with another.  Certain members of the friend group will, by necessity, fade into the background as you pursue others and these consequences do have a major impact on the game.  More directly though, there are several points where you are thrust into a conversation between two of the friends and forced to choose between them.  As an example, Gavin and Naomi, due to their working relationship and entirely opposite personalities, are frequently caught in arguments.  Naomi's idealism vs. Gavin's realism.  In these scenarios you end up being the mediator often unless you just try and avoid both of them.  To agree with Naomi is to lower your affection with Gavin and vice-versa.  This might be a turn-off for some dating sim enjoyers, I know in dating sims like this people like to keep up good relationships with the entire cast.  But I really like it, I really like that there are consequences to your actions.

A Short, Spoiler-Free Review

Before we get into the actual plot and themes of the game, I want to give a quick spoiler-free review for those who might want to play it themselves and are bothered by games getting spoiled.  I really like Arcade Spirits.  I enjoy its cast of characters, the sort of workplace sitcom setting its going for, many of the individual storylines, and the fun and creative use of arcades and arcade games.  I also love how it utilizes this RPG stat system to great effect, I think that this is a good entry level dating sim because of it.  As someone new to dating sims, the only one I've really played outside of this is Huniepop which is really bad as a dating sim, having this familiar, more game-y aspect to it really eased me in.  I especially love what its main character arc is, I think this game has a lot to say about video game history, 80s nostalgia, and finding yourself in early adulthood.

That being said I do think that some parts of it are less than stellar.  I think its themes can get a bit muddied, especially in the latter half of the game.  The romances can feel a bit tertiary even though the majority of the gameplay is built around dating.  And I take issue with parts of the ending.  It's not by any means a perfect game, but I think it's incredibly strong and I think it's a great way to onboard people onto the genre in question if they maybe don't play dating sims and/or have only played meme dating sims like Hatoful Boyfriend.  8/10

Where Dreams Come True

As Fran establishes when you first meet her, the Funplex is not simply a business.  It's a place to find yourself.  A place where dreams come true.  And that goal of "finding yourself" of "making your dreams come true" is obviously very central to the plot.  As you could probably tell, a lot of the characters descriptions are about them either accomplishing their dreams or self-actualizing in some way.  QueenBee has made it as a professional gamer, but it has caused her a lot of mental and emotional stress.  Ashley is experimenting with her gender identity.  Stuff like that.

But the central arc of the game is Ari self-actualizing themself.  Ari enters into the Funplex as kind of a listless 20-something.  They believe that they are cursed, half-jokingly stating that there is some supernatural force that is at the center of their job and personal woes.  Ari is, as most 20 somethings are, directionless.  Their life had been dictated for so long by hard structures and now they are out on their own and they are drowning because of it.  It's actually a pretty neat touch that Ari has a background as a lifeguard, not just because it preps them for high stress environments like running the arcade floor, but it sets up a very good character trait: Ari is good at saving others even if their life is a mess.  The Funplex, while at first seeming like just a job they're doing, is the environment needed for Ari to self-actualize, to become what they were always meant to be.

Something I enjoy about this is that Ari's self-actualization is actually separate from the romance.  There's nothing wrong, of course, with a romance storyline having "a person self-actualizing because they want to be better for their partner" as an arc.  It's a very classic romance arc, especially in romantic comedies and workplace sitcoms, which Arcade Spirits draws a lot from.  However, I think it is nice that Ari does better because Ari wants to do better, and through that they become more confident and attractive to their potential romantic partners.  Ari finds themselves at the arcade in a very real way, they don't just thrive in the environment, they BECOME the environment.  We see them crave responsibility, asking Fran if they can take on more and more of the arcade's planning, eventually becoming its official events coordinator.  Everyone in the arcade may have a dream to find, but Ari finds their entire life here, and its a storyline I really like.

Polybius

Of course, we can't talk about Ari finding themselves and growing up without talking about the opposite, now, can we.  Enter Polybius.  Polybius is the only arcade machine present in Arcade Spirits that is not a parody of a known arcade machine, this is something that is analogous to a real world thing.  That being said, they definitely used Polybius because it is not real.  Polybius is one of gaming's most infamous urban legends.  The story goes that in the early 1980s, in the city of Portland, Oregon, a mysterious arcade cabinet started popping up in arcades around the city.  It was an abstract shooter similar to a game like Tempest, called "Polybius".  Polybius was, allegedly, an incredibly addictive arcade game that would cause players to play for incredibly long sessions, playing past exhaustion and allegedly causing the death of some players.  The people who played it would report psychoactive symptoms, hallucinations, night terrors, stuff like that, but that they would be drawn to the machine in spite of it.  No one was quite sure who made it or why, but those who remember it remember men in black occasionally descending on arcades to collect from the machine, not necessarily the coins, but data the machine had collected somehow.

Polybius is, almost without doubt, not real.  What likely happened is that a number of different memories had been conflated, creating this legendary game.  There was a lot of uncertainty around video games in the late 70s and early 80s, a lot of unexplained health issues were happening from people playing games but there had yet to be research into the why of it all.  Nowadays, we know that video games can be a trigger for epileptic seizures and other light-sensitive conditions, but back then there was a big question mark and, as such, a big panic around video games and their adverse health effects.  Couple that with parents and other figures paranoia around video game addiction and you have the basis for this hyper addicting, killer arcade machine that haunts us to this day.  And the men in black?  That actually WAS happening.  Arcade owners in Portland were commonly converting their arcade machines into gambling machines back in the day and, as such, there was an FBI crackdown on arcades in Portland.  They weren't collecting data from their secret killer arcade machine, mind you, but there were a number of black-suited men tampering with arcade machines in Portland in the early 80s.

Polybius enters Arcade Spirits in its second chapter, a chapter in which Naomi, Fran, and Gavin recruit Ari to aid them in obtaining new arcade machines for the arcade.  They inform Ari of a mysterious auction being hosted by an eccentric billionaire who saves arcade collections from going to estate sales.  This billionaire believes very strongly in the sanctity of arcades and so he buys entire collections once their owners have become deceased and does private auctions for the local arcades.  He then hosts extravagant parties on his dime for the arcade owners and staff to schmooze.  In this instance, the collection in question belonged to a recently deceased pop star who was pretty big in the 80s but after her success started to waver, she became reclusive and addicted to video games, spending much of her fortune on an arcade collection and spending her time in her personal arcade.

Naomi is sent to investigate the collection, attempting to find either arcade machines they could buy to fill niches in the arcade's classic game selection and/or broken machines that either could be fixed up for cheap or used for parts to repair other old machines.  When she doesn't return and the actual auction nears, Ari is sent to find her in the maze of machines.  That is when they stumble onto Polybius, and it draws them in, compels them with an almost supernatural force.  Polybius seems to sense that Ari is susceptible to its power, that because of their belief in having a cursed working life and having a stagnant social life, they are in a point where it can dig its hooks in and never let go.  It is counter to everything the game is trying to say, it represents the kind of stagnation that many people would find appealing.  A safe, comfortable life that never moves forward.  And it's one that Ari almost finds themselves embracing.  After all, they're happy right.

In the machine, they see a fragment of the popstar that once called this collection hers, sees someone who was content with their life.  But they were never happy.  They abandoned a real life for comfort, abandoned their career for the familiar.  And they beg Ari not to make the same mistakes they did.  To not let Polybius take them too.  And man, it's such a cool use of Polybius.  Arcade Spirits, being a game about arcade games, was always going to have to address the nostalgia of the 1980s in some meaningful way.  It is so easy to get caught up in idealizing the past, taking the best parts of an era and wishing we could live in it forever.  The 1980s especially has been one of the most beloved eras by pop culture, we still are living inside of 1980s nostalgia multiple decades after the 80s nostalgia boom should've ended.  But Arcade Spirits, despite its setting, is not about trying to idealize a time period that doesn't exist anymore.  It's about looking forward, it's about growing as a person and finding yourself.  So using this decades old urban legend, a longtime gaming mystery that people have been enamored with for years, as a representative of the inability to move forward is genius.  And by freeing themself from the pull of Polybius, Ari does begin to truly look forward.

The Actual Romance Part

I want to next talk about the romance because, admittedly, it's something I'm pretty mixed on.  Now, to be clear at the time of writing this, I have done one romance plotline, QueenBee's.  As such, I am not going to criticize the individual romance storylines because I don't have experience with them, nor am I likely too.  I will return to Arcade Spirits eventually but there are some romance storylines I'm just uninterested in pursuing and I don't think that's wrong of me to say.  So anything I say in the following section should be taken with the knowledge that I have only done the Queen's.  I don't expect that to matter but just in case I say something wrong and someone with more knowledge on Arcade Spirits is like "hey, this isn't really true", feel free to correct me!

So, I've previously mentioned that something I find interesting and a quality I like about this game is that Ari's growth as a character is not just about them wanting to grow up for their potential love interest.  They find their own sense of fulfillment in life and self-actualize as a result of that fact.  But a consequence of that decision is that, frankly, the actual romance can feel like a secondary element to the story.  A vast majority of the gameplay is built around you building relationships with many members of the cast but, ultimately, a lot of this game can function whether you date any of the options or not?  It feels like these characters are almost completely unchanged by their romantic relationships in any meaningful way or, if they are, it's one sided.  Again, I'm basing this off the QueenBee route and the other routes I had to engage with when she was busy, but it feels like Ari gives a lot to these characters in conversation but they don't give a lot to Ari back.

This is made even more clear by the fact that the actual dating sim portion of the game ends just after the halfway point of the game.  Following the structure of the workplace sitcom, the midgame is home to two "event episodes".  We'll be talking about the second one, the Beach episode.  The entire crew (including Juniper!) goes to the beach to celebrate after the previous event episode and has fun throughout the day.  They hit up the candy shop, the boardwalk arcade where Ari spent part of their childhood, play volleyball, all the classics.  This is also the point where your relationship gets locked in.  This game allows you to interact with the cast one final time and then, as you reach the end of the day, you will go on a date with the person you have the most affinity with, which will feature some sort of proclamation and you will go steady with the person at the end of this.  It's a good moment and I find it to be a satisfying conclusion to the actual romantic arc, but it does feel a bit odd that this dating sim's dating portion ends at about the 60% mark and then we go into the final arc with our relationship already having been sorted.

That's not to say the romance is irrelevant in the final part, of course.  Conflict does arise based on your romantic partner and your conflicting ambitions.  And in the game's final confrontation with the main antagonist of its final arc, your romantic partner comes with you and helps dictate the conversation.  But it does tend to feel like, somehow, in this dating sim the romance can become secondary and it's unfortunate.  I don't necessarily want to call it bad, because I understand the vision.  They wanted Arcade Spirits to seem more like a realistic relationship between two young adults, people who have their own lives who enter a mutually beneficial relationship that doesn't necessarily define either of them.  It's not an unwelcome inclusion in the world of romantic comedies, again I do think it's nice that this game treats Ari's self-actualization as something separate from their romance.  But I also can't help but feel weird that the romance in this dating sim feels like just a thing that happens sometimes.

The Commodification of the Arcade

Arcade Spirits does not exist in an idealistic utopia.  While the game does present an alternate universe that could hypothetically be seen as a gamer's paradise, it does not shy away from using this setting to criticize the modern games industry and, in general, the state of arcades nowadays.  The need to maximize profit over providing a solid gaming experience.  I don't know if you've been to an arcade in recent years or seen a video of an arcade, I recommend Brutalmoose's videos on arcades,  While arcades do still exist and do still provide players with arcade gaming experiences both new and old, it is not a secret that they've been overtaken by games designed to get players addicted and sink their money into. This is especially a problem in Japan, it's an old joke by now that Japanese gaming companies have stopped really making games and started making glorified slot machines utilizing their IPs.  There are probably more Castlevania Pachinko machines than there are Castlevania games.

In Arcade Spirits, this criticism takes the form of the game's main antagonist, arcade magnate Deco Nami.  Deco Nami runs a chain of arcades that is dominant in the industry, titled "Deco's Palace".  Deco's Palace is similar to real life restaurant/arcade chains like Chuck E. Cheese, GameWorks, Dave & Busters, and the failed DisneyQuest.  It's a massive entertainment center that combines a restaurant, bar, and arcade, designed almost like a casino in some ways.  It's meant to get people in the door and keep them playing for long periods of time, draining their money slowly but steadily.  Unlike the often chaotic but also tight knit vibe of the Funplex, Deco's Palace is massive, clean, and soulless.  It is just a business, and moreover it's a business designed to push other arcades off the map if they're considered even remotely a threat.  Deco is charming, but he's also very clearly sleazy, a complete and total shark who will eat whatever small fish he can get his mouth on.

Deco enters the story after the events of the Polybius section lead to Ari takeing over as the Funplex's event coordinator.  Ari hosts an event that is so successful that it puts the Funplex on Deco's radar as a potential threat.  Deco had always had an eye on the Funplex but even a heartless businessman has enough respect for one of the OGs like Fran, or at least is aware enough that trying to push her out would be a bad move for his relationships with the industry.  However, with this event doing well, even Deco is willing to make a risky play to snuff out a potential serious competitor.  Fran does not wish to sell, knowing that Deco is likely to turn the arcade into another soulless cash machine, if he does not close the location outright.

This meeting eventually results in Ari going to Deco's Palace for the first time in their life, bringing along one of their friends who is best equipped to talk about the business side of things (I brought Percy).  And getting an inside look at Deco's Palace is harrowing but in a familiar way.  Deco Nami's arcade is full of overpriced, low-quality, reheated food that is oversalted and has very little flavor otherwise.  The employees are not only indifferent to the goings-on in the arcade, but actively trying to detach themselves from the ecosystem, lest they be contracted into being free babysitters by the overwhelming amount of parents attempting to use the arcade as a day care.  The machines on the floor all bear the images of familiar faces, the in-game parallels to arcade legends in the real world, but none of them are even necessarily games.  They're coin pushers and ufo catchers and prize machines.  I'm really glad I brought Percy actually because of his direct connection to Mr. Moopy, and his reaction to seeing the timing based ticket machine that bears his name.

It's not difficult to see what Arcade Spirits is saying here.  Deco serves a dual role, he first represents the hyper consumerism that defines the era Arcade Spirits is riffing on.  If Arcade Spirits is a world where the 1980s kind of just continued, Deco represents the conclusion to that, the greed that defined the era, its most soulless parts.  The reason why most 80s kids have childhoods that are just commercials for choking hazards.  But in the context of the gaming space, Deco represents the modern arcade industry as a whole.  An industry that has given up making proper video games to optimize profit.  The industry that favors simplistic, addicting games designed to have quick failure and reward conditions rather than develop full scale games like the olden days that players will gather around and try to top their local leaderboards.

And it's a criticism that I am mixed on.  On the one hand, this makes perfect sense as the villain to this game.  Arcade Spirits is a game with a lot of reverence for the golden age of arcades and classic arcade machines in general.  This game was conceived of by watching arcade machine restorations and the preservation of traditional arcade cabinet is a massive throughline in the story.  There are many scenes where the characters discuss the work needed to keep these machines running and how, despite this, it's a worthwhile investment just to keep these games playable in any capacity.  To see someone just throw them all away in terms of profit is truly sad, a crime against games, game preservation, and against people who could be robbed of these games they may love.  And moreover to replace them with cheap, soulless cash-ins that wear the corpse of a dead IP is kind of a tragedy.

One the other hand, I feel like this is counteractive to the other themes of the game.  Like, Arcade Spirits does a good job of trying not to be just an "old games good, new games bad" sort of commentary on the games industry.  Despite being so steeped in 80s nostalgia, it also criticizes that nostalgia and those who live in it.  To turn around and then have such a heavy handed condemnation of the modern state of arcades feels about thematically iffy to me.  The truth is that arcades do have to get that bag, and these simplistic, for profit games are actually rather fun.  They are providing the arcade ecosystem games people want to keep playing, games they want to get good at, games they want to compare to their communities.  It feels a bit like Arcade Spirits is trying to have its cake and eat it too, both be about looking toward the future and clinging onto the past.  It's something I'm very mixed on, it feels like the story fails to really commit to anything in the end.

The Ending

Perhaps the most upsetting part about Arcade Spirits, though, is how it actually ends.  Not the actual resolution to the core conflict of the game, I find that part good, but the aftermath of the game's ending.  To those who have played Arcade Spirits, it is the most infamous thing about this game.  I have stated before that Arcade Spirits is going for a workplace sitcom sort of vibe.  This is a closeknit group of employees and regulars akin to a sitcom like Cheers.  But throughout the game they become more than that.  They become a group of actual friends, a group that chooses to hang out with one another outside of their pre-established location and who hold a deep love for each other.  The kind of friend group that actively chooses to stay together, even when the context of their friendship is removed.  Ari is the linchpin, mind, the thing that brought them all together, but they found each other as well.  It's an incredibly nice part of this game, that your core cast seem like they've become friends outside of just all being around this one person.

And then two of them leave.  I mentioned in the section about the stat system that there would be consequences to your choices throughout the game.  That choosing to hang out with people comes at the cost of hanging out with other people and agreeing with one person in conversation will lower your affection with the person they're arguing with.  And that the game is tracking all these decisions throughout the game, building your affection with some characters and reducing it with others.  This is where that matters.  At the end of the game, the two characters you hold the least affection with will leave the friend group.  The game does a "where are they now" reel, going through each characters post-game lives and whichever two you held the lowest with just drift away.  This is frustrating, not because like "if I had known this would happen, I wouldn't have made the decisions I did".  I like that the actions you take in this game have notable consequences.  It's frustrating because the game has established that this group of 8 people has become very close and it repeatedly states that they're going to work together and build each other up.  They put so much work into making them seem like a group so closeknit that they're basically family.  And then two of them leave.  It just does not feel properly in line with what the game is otherwise telling us and it's just a bit of unnecessary, out of nowhere sadness to close the game out.

Final Thoughts

I already established this in my review but despite my numerous criticisms, I do really like Arcade Spirits.  I think when it is good, it's an incredibly fun and compelling story about finding yourself using the medium of gaming and the locale of an arcade to accomplish that goal.  It's a very fun workplace sitcom with a lot of interesting characters that are all endearing in different ways.  And it's clear the people who made it have a lot of love for all facets of gaming culture, representing preservationists, esports players, cosplayers, score chasers, etc.  And especially if you are coming into a dating sim for the first time, this game is an excellent starting point, utilizing familiar language to make the player more comfortable within its world.

But it is imperfect, and the ways it is imperfect are frustrating.  It feels like it's thematically all over the place, contradicting itself in key ways.  The romance feels more mature and like an actual adult romance, but because of that it can feel secondary in the story, sometimes it feels like the third most important thing in the story even.  And, of course, the ending is just frustrating.  Its messy, but it's also good when it gets there.  I look forward to eventually returning to it someday, though I promise I won't write a whole other review when that happens.  It's a solid 8/10, big recommend.

If you know me, you're probably surprised to see this here.  I have long evangelized about Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure, an odd ball obscure fishing RPG/Visual Novel for the last generation of consoles.  Or last generation as of 2026.  This is a game I am very passionate about, in... god was it 2020?  2021?  It's been so long.  Anyways, a friend of mine, at the time just a streamer I watched, was playing at least one fishing game a month and we had stumbled into Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure.  And I want to be clear, at first we were clowning on it.  We didn't even like this weird game when we were done, by the final stream of it, we were just like "god, can we be done with this".

But as the year went on and we played a lot of uninteresting fishing games, our minds kept going back to RTA.  It's a weird story about a trio of friends who do not like each other trying to complete a class project while it's implied their friendship is breaking apart.  And there's a really weird supernatural element to it too.  It's an odd duck of a fishing game, but one we fell in love with.  Playing it was a tradition for a while, we probably played through it a few times and have created kind of a small community around it.  I've made a lot of friends through Road Trip Adventure.  But I've never played it myself.  It's been sitting on my shelf for a very long time and thankfully La-Mulana was a wash for me so I had a need for a replacement and a window of opportunity.  This is:

Explaining What Happens in Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure As I Play It For Myself For the First Time

Disclaimer: Some of the things in the following blog post may not actually be official.  My friends and I have done a lot of reading between the lines over the years of this game and technically speaking not everything in this is in the text.  This is probably the closest you're going to get to me writing a fanfiction.  But it's more fun this way, isn't it? As such this will probably also be more loosey goosey than my normal writing.  Little bit of a riff.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Listen, I'm well aware that's not what a prologue is.  So to begin, I think I should give you an idea of what the structure of this game is.  Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure is a fishing simulation game with RPG elements and visual novel sequences.  You are handed quests by a wizened old fisherman and, upon completion of those quests, you get a little story sequence.  So what I'm going to be listing are the interstitials between fishing segments.  I'm effectively not going to talk about the gameplay at all, the gameplay is not good for the record, but that's not why I'm writing this.  I'm writing this because I need people to know the bizarre character interactions in this fishing game.

To start we need to understand the characters at the center of our story.  Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure only has four characters in it, the main three and the shop owner.  So here are our main characters:

• Sean - Sean is the character we spend the game playing as.  Sean is your classic shonen protagonist.  He's dumb,, loud, loves eating, and is hyperfixated on one singular thing which defines his personality.  In this case, fishing.  Sean loves to fish, he eats, sleeps, and breathes fishing.  If given the opportunity, he will make every conversation about fishing, much to the annoyance of his friends.  But Sean has a good heart.  He cares a lot about the environment and while he often takes actions that annoy his friends, they trust him a great deal, allowing him to be the de factor leader of the trio.  Also someone would be mad if I didn't mention this, but Sean's clavicle game is insane.  Bro has it fully on display at all times it's crazy.  They had to nerf it in the sequel, even, that's how crazy it is.
• Neil - For every Goku, there must be a Krillin.  Neil is Sean's best friend, they've known each other since they were very young and both have a shared love of fishing.  As is standard with these stories, Neil is an equal and opposite force of Sean.  He's shy and quiet, takes life slowly, cares more about being studious.  He takes two steps forward while Sean takes two steps back.  They come together because opposites attract.  Neil loves fishing but moreover, he loves recycling.  Neil's primary job in the group is to craft new rods, reels, and lures out of trash he finds on the group's fishing adventures.  Neil is, however, pretty dumb, despite being the "bookworm", and often takes Sean's side in arguments because he's in love with him he wants to keep the peace.
• Alice - Alice is my girl.  The fashionista herself, Alice has not known Sean and Neil nearly as long as they've known each other.  Alice joined up with the group within the last couple years as a result of them going to the same college and loving fishing.  Despite their shared interest, however, Alice doesn't always get along with the other two, usually butting heads with Sean.  Alice is a real girls girl, she loves cooking and fashion and is against the more masculine ideals Sean always presents.  She's also deeply insecure, something that comes from her history of being overweight before college, which leads to her often being defensive in the face of Sean's teasing.  This weight loss plays into her special skill, however, with Alice having spent high school learning how to cook delicious but healthy meals.  She uses her food to provide the group with buffs and healing items during the games' fishing sequences.
• Shopman - Mr. Shopman is an enigma.  A mysterious old man, Mr. Shopman owns a grocery store and tackle shop up in the mountains of Japan.  He has invited the trio out to his home to accomplish their primary goal: completing a class assignment with a very broad goal of "do a report on anything".  Shopman assists them on this goal by allowing them to buy produce for their meals as well as purchasing off of them any pictures of fish that they take.  Not any fish they take, any pictures of fish they take.  It's crazy to me too.  Shopman is also their quest giver, asking the trio to find specific fishes of specific sizes to prove to him that the area's waters are getting clean.  But something is off with him.  He always seems to know just a touch too much at any given time.

So the game begins with our main trio discussing what to do for their big class report.  The trio run a fishing club for their college and are, seemingly, the only three members.  After some bickering about their indecision, the trio decide to go down to the local museum for inspiration.  The museum is currently offering an exhibit on paintings of sea life and, being fish experts, they think this will be perfect for their vague report.  They are immediately absorbed by a specific painting, titled "The Elusive Fish", which appears to show a large, serpentine fish that was caught off the coast of Japan.  While the three are mesmerized by the painting, a mysterious old man walks up to them to discuss the painting.  He states that he knows the artist and, if they can spare the time, he'd love to introduce them.  The trio enthusiastically agree.

A few days later, they're all packed up and have taken a train out to the countryside, and are awaiting the arrival of a bus to take them all the way out to where Shopman lives.  Sean has been stuck with luggage duty, carrying Alice's numerous bags with him, leading to the first of many arguments between them.  As they wait, they go on a little adventure, following the train tracks until they reach their conclusion, stopping right before a sealed off tunnel through the mountain.  Make note of this, it'll be important much later.  The trio is confused by this, but once they arrive at their destination they discover that originally the plan was for the town Shopman lives in and the town on the other side of the mountain to merge into one town, with a train through to both sides.

Arriving at the location Shopman gave them, he reveals that he has actually been the artist of the painting the whole time.  Shopman sought to bring them up here because it has been his life's goal to once again see the Elusive Fish.  See, the Elusive Fish used to appear in a secret fishing location with crystalline water.  But after the failed construction of the mountain tunnel, the waters around here have gotten filled with pollutants.  Shopman wants to clean up the local water sources, in the hops of bringing back all the native fauna, but he is an old man at this point.  So he invited these three young adults, all of whom have a passion for fishing, to aid him in his efforts.  To assist them, he will allow them use of his RV to travel around, as well as providing them with cash and supplies.  But they will need to prove their commitment to the cult cause by regularly showing him photos of fish they've caught, proving the fish in question have returned to the area.

The trio starts out being pleasant enough to each other as they accomplish their quest, but you can tell there's some tension surrounding them.  Their playful banter having an uneasy undercurrent.  Sean is poking Alice a bit too much, Neil isn't sticking up for his friends enough in his attempts to keep the peace.  It comes to a head when Neil notes that Sean has a new phone background.  It's a fish, of course, they always are.  Sean likes to show off his trophies after all.  But when Neil asks about it, both he and Alice regret that decision as Sean launches into a story about catching this fish.  The duo is familiar with Sean's stories but this time seems different, like they're only listening to humor him and aren't actually interested in what he has to say.  They laugh off his behavior as just "being Sean", but the patience seems to be running thin.

How little the group knows about Alice is also becoming incredibly apparent.  Alice went to another school from Sean and Neil and so the trio didn't meet until college, but they don't seem to know, like, basic stuff about her.  They seem utterly flabbergasted that Alice could be an excellent cook, a skill she picked up in high school as part of her weight loss journey.  In fact, they are worried that she cannot cook up until the moment they taste her food, which is a bizarre assumption to make about someone who insists they can cook without having tasted their food.  This is even more bizarre as it's later on revealed that this is what Alice is in school for.  Her dream is to become a professional chef.  So the group knows so little about each other outside of the context of fishing that they don't even know each other's majors.  Insane.  I know there's a sequel to this game but man, these three need new friends.

Chapter 2: Ocean Fishing

So, keep in mind that this is a fishing club and that Sean and Neil have been fishing together since they were very young.  So you'd expect them to be like really into fishing, to be more than just a casual hobbyist.  It turns out, that's not true!  Sean, Neil, and Alice have never done anything greater than your standard "going to streams and ponds and catching bluegill and trout" fishing.  The fourth quest of the game is to go out to the coast and fish for Seabream, and these three are astonished at the prospect of going ocean fishing.  Like this is not a thing they've done before.  Fishing tourists, I swear, people I know who do fishing super casually have gone ocean fishing but these three have never done it.  What's more, we find out that Neil is scared of the ocean anyways!  When he and Sean were in the fifth grade, they went to a summer camp on the ocean and Sean found a cute girl from another school he wanted to impress who is definitely not Alice and so he made a big show of flexing and in doing so pushed Neil off the rocks they were standing on!  And Neil almost drowned!  Sean is a horrible friend, I swear, these people need to get away from him.

After the intensive fishing we've been doing (we haven't caught anything that weighs more than a few ounces), Sean's shirt has gotten threadbare.  Fortunately, Neil is a whiz at sewing, which matches all of his other crafting related talents.  Neil's one of those guys who is like "oh, I'm not actually talented, if you took the time to learn you'd be as good as I am at this".  You know, one of those people where you can never tell if it's genuine humility, an actual belief in other people's skills, or just having astronomically low self-esteem to where you think nothing you do is special.  This is a subtweet to myself.  Anyways, the other two are discussing how maybe they too could pick up sewing and Alice is like "maybe Neil's right, maybe all I need to do is commit more time to it and I'll be able to do it" and then Sean responds "well maybe you can Alice, but me?  No way."  And it's difficult to not feel like this is a microaggression considering Alice is a woman and Sean is a shonen protagonist.  Sean is needling them, Sean is always needling them.  Noodling them?  That's a better fish joke, pretend I said that first.  Anyways, Sean ultimately doesn't think he can pick up sewing because he is, at his core, intellectually incurious and does not want to pick up new skills that aren't related to fishing.  Boy likes to fish and hates the idea he should do anything else.  Alice eventually agrees with him that maybe he shouldn't pick up sewing and Neil is like "Alice, I don't care how right it is, don't discourage him!"

Neil reveals that he has been receiving messages from his parents to be more career-oriented.  This is a common theme with Neil that even goes into the follow-up to RTA, Reel Fishing: Days of Summer.  Neil, being the "perfect student" archetype constantly feels pressured to look towards the future.  It's something that eats away at him because he doesn't really know what he wants and thinks that where he wants to be right now is enjoying the student lifestyle.  This is also where we start to get notes that, despite Neil's claims to the contrary, Neil clearly isn't very smart.  He's flaky and unfocused, he says a lot that he's a model student but it's all kind of words.  Anyways, Neil is jealous of Alice, a very career-oriented person who already knows what she wants to be in life, and is somewhat jealous of Sean, a person who has no prospects and no future but is too dumb to realize it.  Neil is stuck with the worst of both worlds, unable to make a decision about his future and unable to live with the knowledge that that is okay.  As an aside, we find out in this conversation that Sean's professors are so worried about his lack of a future that they are setting up internships for him.  It's a thing that makes Neil very upset but Alice, in her constant need to take a dig at Sean, is like "oh it's probably just that they're not worried about you like that, Neil".  These three need to hang out with anyone else, I swear.

Alice ran into Neil at a party she went to with friends that Neil and Sean were intending to go to independently.  This implies Alice has friends outside of Sean and Neil, which is a baffling prospect because why would you hang out with Sean if you had ANYONE else in your life.  Alice also states that this party is recent, which implies they are going home frequently despite having been up on this mountain camping for like 2 weeks straight at this point.  Anyways, Sean bailed on Neil to go fishing, big surprise, and Neil and Alice hungout at the party for a little bit.  While they were there, Alice spotted a girl chatting up our resident trash goblin and watched him seriously fumble it.  They were in deep, she asked Neil like a lot of personal questions and was apparently rather clingy and Neil just did not pick up on it.  Which of course makes sense, Neil clearly is deeply in love with Sean and likely does not notice women at all.  So Alice and Sean, as if Sean would know how to handle a woman, start teasing him for fumbling this opportunity and Neil is just like "I think she just wanted movie recommendations".  Honestly, a relatable scenario, I once failed to realize a girl was clearly into me at a superbowl party and shy was super clingy the entire time, even falling asleep on my shoulder.

The gang does yoga!  Alice, it turns out, is a massive yoga fan and does extended yoga sessions on a daily basis.  This time around, Sean and Neil decide to join her in her yoga sessions and, despite all three people in this trio having very outdoor lifestyles which include a lot of hiking and fishing, Sean and Neil's cardio is just like.  Terrible.  And then they both do that thing that insecure men do whenever they lose to a girl, try to undermine the other person's accomplishments by positing that they're somehow a nutjob.  Like Alice being more fit and able to maintain exercise and balance for extended periods of time is somehow a negative trait?  And all because they can't handle the hit to their egos?  Not to say Alice is necessarily doing much better here, she reinforces the traditional gender dynamic of men being inherently stronger than women and tries to imply that Sean and Neil are lacking because their cardio isn't as good as hers.  Also, I say that they have active lifestyles but something I want to make clear is that Sean is both lazy and, due to his laziness, an awful fisherman.  Despite fishing being his entire life, Sean fails to get up at the crack of the dawn and refuses to go for long hours.  He shows up at the fishing spot at 10 AM, everybody who goes fishing is at the lake by like 5 AM, and then he only goes until 3.  He's a fake fisherman,

Sean brought fireworks up to the camp, believing that because this is a summer adventure, you gotta have fireworks.  I don't know where exactly he got these fireworks from, again, they have spent a considerable amount of time up here at this point.  Probably a month now based on how long I had to grind out some of these fish.  And also Neil, who is slowing down progress by failing to collect trash efficiently enough to allow me to craft on the reg.  Anyways, Sean decides now is the best time to light up these fireworks.  He, as you might imagine, cares very little for firework safety, immediately choosing to wave them around freely.  Alice points out that there is always one guy who needs to wave his fireworks around, implying that she has been sexually harassed, which checks out, she was a chubby teenage girl, it would be weirder if she weren't sexually harassed.  As if this wasn't bad enough, Sean brought like an actual firework with him, not just the kind you give to kids.  This is, I imagine, illegal, and Alice and Neil rightfully do not trust him to set it off because it's a proper firework.  Thankfully nothing goes wrong, unfortunately, nothing goes wrong, so we still have to hunt for the Elusive Fish, who at this point everyone has taken to calling "the Legend".  I kind of want these kids to stop looking for it so they can head back home, realize that they've grown apart, and move on with their lives.  Alas.

Chapter 3: Mr. Shopman's Change

After spending so much time out here, cleaning up the waters and catching fish, Alice begins to notice that Mr. Shopman appears different.  It's as if he is getting younger.  Not in the sense that he has developed a new lease on life or that he's filled with youthful energy.  No like literally, he's Benjamin Buttoning according to her.  His gray hair has turned mostly black and his wrinkled skin is smoothing out.  Neil and Sean, being who they are, decide to gaslight their friend.  "I don't think there's as big of a change as you think there is".  "I'm sure he's just feeling more lively after hanging out with us."  Just fully convincing Alice that the thing she's noticed isn't happening.  And frankly, if you're playing this game, you've probably noticed it too.  Shopman's sprites have subtly changed as you've caught more and more fish.  Look, all these young adults are awful, but Alice definitely needs better friends, these other two are garbage fires.  Truly they are not good for her and her adorable outfits, she needs new friends so bad.

The gang receives an e-mail from their university which has the test scores for their midterms.  This is surprising, of course, as they are on a summer holiday writing a report on legendary and elusive fish that used to be native to Japan.  When they took a midterm, who can say.  But regardless, they have received their results.  Neil passed with flying colors, something that both of his friends are upset about him bragging about before he reminds them that the test was open book.  Sean then responds that he wouldn't even know where to look in the book regardless, so it doesn't really matter.  As Alice swiftly points out, Sean just admitted that he is both astonishingly dumb and also that he has not gone to class enough to have a basic grasp of his textbook.  I don't even really know what Sean is doing in college, it feels like Sean is just going to get rich on meme stock and then retire at 22 to spend the rest of his days fishing, frankly.  Regardless, Neil sees this as an opportunity.  If he can help Sean study, he can be alone with Sean.  And as we've established Neil likes Sean in what is probably a romantic way.  Sean, being a clueless shonen protagonist, just hates this because he thinks they will actually be studying.  Alice got a B, by the way.

I've been excited for this story.  This is the internship story.  So, as mentioned previously, Sean's professors are so concerned about his seemingly absent possibilities for the future that they have taken the initiative to provide Sean with internship opportunities.  Sean has been going to this internship for a while and is seemingly enjoying his time with the company.  Thing is, Sean has no idea what the company is doing.  See, it turns out, Sean showed up for his first day and not too long after met an older gentleman who always seemed to show up late for work.  Sean refers to him as "his old pal", a thing he means literally in that he is his pal and he is old rather than being a friend Sean has had for some time.  Both Alice and Neil are surprised Sean has any friends outside of them.  I digress.  Sean say this older man showing up for work late every day and so encouraged him to take up fishing.  Cause you gotta be up super early for fishing, you have to be out there before the crack of dawn.  Never mind the fact that we know Sean is lazy and doesn't start fishing each day until 10 AM.  So Sean gets this guy turned onto fishing and, since then, every day has been him showing up for his internship, finding this guy, and just talking about fishing nonstop until the day is over.  He's had this internship for a long time and is fully unaware of what the company does and, being intellectually incurious, does not want to know.  Neil is panicking as he realizes his friend has no future, and will likely be mooching off him for the rest of his life.

The rare Shopman only interstitial.  On a particularly clear, beautiful night, Shopman looks up to the sky and notes how beautiful the moon is tonight.  He begins musing to himself about the clear sky and recollecting the first date he had with his now deceased wife.  They were going to see a fireworks show but it was rained out.  Deciding to not let the moment pass, they bought some fireworks so that they could have their own show once the rain cleared.  But you know how these things go.  It never seems like a good time.  Life always gets in the way.  Shopman kept putting it off for years until he no longer had any time at all.  His wife had passed on and now all he has is a bunch of promises he never kept.  But it's okay, he says.  Because soon him and his wife will be reunited.  Which we can just basically say that Shopman is a ghost who is ready to move on because, if he was just close to death, Benjamin Buttoning out of nowhere is a weird decision if your goal is to be reunited with your dead wife.  The last section was about Sean being too dumb to hold a job and now it's getting spooky out of nowhere, I love this game.  By the way, this was all on the mission to catch a Japanese Sea Bass, so the entire time I was just thinking of the Animal Crossing puns about Sea Bass.

Chapter 4: Mr. Shopman's Decision

A really short interstitial to lead us into the fourth chapter.  Mr. Shopman simply notes how effective our trio has been at cleaning up the local waterways, how almost all of the local fauna has returned.  Soon, the Legend will return as well, the kids will accomplish their goal.  But in this moment, Shopman is concerned.  The Legend reappearing clearly means something is about to happen, something Shopman clearly wants to prevent.  He states that he "won't let it happen again".  What isn't he telling us?  Does the Legend have something to do with the death of his wife?  We probably won't find out because none of these interstitials seem to have any real bearing on the plot, these characters are often just yapping.

Alice and Sean are fighting, because you know.  It's a day ending in y.  This time over Sean presumably tripping as Alice tells him to "be more careful where he's walking".  This exchange makes Neil decide to ask a very important question: are Alice and Sean dating?  See "some friends of his" in one of his elective classes, a class he alleged he attended recently despite us being out here for like a month at this point, asked about Sean and Alice.  After all, they are "always hanging out together", which is odd given that we know Alice has other friends she hangs out with, and people have started talking.  Sean and Alice vehemently deny this, stating not only are they not dating, but it doesn't make sense that people would posit that idea given that they're also always hanging out with Neil.  Neil responds "oh, well, you know, I guess I just don't leave that much of an impact".  Which, to me, makes it pretty clear that there are no friends from his elective class and that he's actually probing the two of them to see if Sean is available.  And then, because Sean is Sean, he cannot let things be and decides to take a dig at Alice, saying she's too loud and annoying and nags too much to ever be in a relationship.  Alice rebukes this by stating she has had plenty of boyfriends, to which Sean responds "yeah, and where are any of them now".  Neil smiles smugly, knowing that so long as he keeps stirring the pot, there's no chance of Alice and Sean getting together.

The gang once again acknowledges that this is summer, making the timeline even more confusing than it already was.  They talk like they're still midsemester in some conversations while, in others, acknowledge they've been up in the mountains for quite some time as school has been off.  Weird time shenanigans are a shockingly common thread for fishing games.  Anyways, Sean suggests that they do a "summer night fight off", a thing I have never heard of but is essentially a dare challenge where you go off by yourself in a spooky area and try not to chicken out.  Alice is vehemently against this idea but, discovering Neil and Sean intend to do it anyways, begrudgingly goes along with them to not be left alone overnight.  They head a ways away to the train station they used to get up here and Alice decides to wait in the car with the person who is currently not doing the dare.  Neil leaves the two alone and when he comes back he prods the other two to make sure they are not dating before Sean takes his turn.  Sean, being Sean, uses this opportunity to scare Alice to death.  He pretends to be a werewolf who is hunting Alice down and takes great joy in how genuinely scared she is.  Sean is the kind of guy who assumes everyone is in on the joke even if they say they aren't.  Alice, furious at Sean, locks him out of the car until he apologizes, something that takes him a while to do sincerely and he only chooses to do so when Neil believes he hears an actual wolf in the forest.  Alice, for what it's worth, was still not going to let Sean in without apologizing even with the threat of a wolf, meaning Sean could've died this night as a result of being a jerk.  Alice needs better friends.  Legitimately, when my friend was first playing through this game, this scene was the moment we went from "these people are awful and deserve each other" to "Alice deserves better".

In a follow-up to the last one, the gang arrives at Shopman's store to restock their supplies and regale him with tales of their adventures.  Sean, being Sean, immediately tries to throw Alice under the bus by claiming that she was about to let him die at the hands of a wolf.  Ignore the fact that Alice indeed was about to let Sean die at the hands of a wolf.  Shopman finds this amusing and also a bit odd, according to him there aren't any wolves or even wild dogs in this area at all.  Ignoring, of course, that wolves can roam.  That's a possibility.  The gang is now all spooked as they debate what it could possibly have been that was hiding in the foliage.  I would assume it was a boar, myself, we are in Japan, but Shopman offers an alternative theory.  See, there are said to be 13 mythological creatures who call this mountain home, forest spirits who are bound to the mountain.  Obviously, he would be an expert, he's one of the 13.  He then excitedly tells the crew that they should incorporate these local myths into their fishing club report.  Alice is very opposed to the idea, partially because it would mean investigating more spooky ghost stories but I imagine it's mostly due to the fact that ghosts have nothing to do with fishing... as far as we know.  Neil is in support of this idea, however, finding the prospect of ghosts to be fascinating.  It really feels like Neil just isn't involved in most of these cutscenes, to be honest.

Chapter 5: The Legend

The time has finally come.  At 9PM, Shopman pulls the trio into his shop and states that, thanks to all their hard work, the Legend has finally returned.  He congratulations them on their efforts and the trio briefly begin to give their bittersweet goodbyes to Shopman.  But before they can, Shopman warns that the Legend is the toughest fish they've fought yet.  They must truly be prepared to face him in the fishing battle of their lives.  As such, he has given us a final test before we can face the Legend itself.  More importantly, when we are truly ready, we have been given instructions on how to find the fishing spot for the Legend.  Shopman draws our attention to a familiar site: the sealed off tunnel from the beginning of the game.  He states that, so long as they trust him, he will lead them to the the Legend through that tunnel.  Once again, he is a ghost, this is the only explanation for his behavior.  The trio is, understandably, confused by the notion that there's a fishing spot beyond a completely sealed up tunnel, but Shopman just says to meet him there at 3 AM.  The witching hour.  Our trio has definitely been swindled into becoming part of some fish-centric cult by a dead guy!!!

Back at camp, the trio decides to regroup and talk over this bizarre revelation.  Sean is very gung-ho about this, believing that he will soon set himself among the ranks of the greatest fisherman of all time.  An impressive title for him to obtain, he's not old enough to drink.  Alice and Neil are less than sure, however.  They have picked up on the weird hour and Shopman's odd behavior and are playing the game we're currently playing: is this a ghost thing or is it a cult thing.  Sean, thick-headed as he is, doesn't believe in ghosts OR cults, and argues that Shopman is clearly telling the truth.  After all, he's been telling the truth so far.  Neil is quick to point out that just because he's not lying, that doesn't mean he's not also dangerous.  Alice also explains what the witching hour even is, proving that among Sean's many failings as a human being, one of them is that he did not have a goth phase in high school.  Sean thinks Alice is once again being a scaredy cat, having already forgotten the lesson about being nice to her, lest she let him be mauled by a boar and/or a forest troll.  But, as Sean says, what does it matter anyways.  No one cared about this witching hour thing until they got up the mountain.  It's almost as if there's a potential ghost cult we now have to deal with that makes the witching hour more relevant.  Regardless, the trio resolves to meet Shopman at 3 AM and catch the Legend.  After all, they are the Fishing Club!  Not any specific fishing club, just "the".

The group notes how good it is to be sitting around the campfire, citing that they haven't done this in "so long".  Again, an absurd statement, they've been up on this mountain for like 6 weeks now and been primarily camping.  They've been sitting around a fire every night.  Anyways, more than that, they are like "I haven't done this since the summer camp where Neil almost drowned".  Said summer camp was in the fifth grade.  Anyways, this is finally the moment where Alice asks the other two what the name of that summer camp was and, surprise surprise, it was the same summer camp that she went to!  It's been like a month since that story about the summer camp and Alice is only now getting around to telling them.  The three of them are super freaked out, noting how odd it is that their lives have intersected multiple times before.  As if the universe itself was trying to pull them together.  Alice doesn't believe in destiny though so that idea is shot down, which means Alice believes in ghosts but doesn't believe in destiny.  Bizarre combo there.  And what do they decide to do as soon as they have this life altering revelation about the nature of their friendship?  Get drunk.  Get super drunk.  This is the first time in this game that these characters have felt like college students.  Also, Neil picks up that Alice is 100% the girl that Sean was flirting with at that summer camp but neither Alice nor Sean seems to connect those particular dots.

The gang notices Shopman's fireworks when they are at his store restocking on their supplies.  As you'll recall, these fireworks have been with him since he was a young adult himself, having been purchased to do a show with his wife.  They are excited about the prospect of putting another fireworks show, though given how poor of a grasp they have on time, they probably believe it is the first one, it feels like we're in a time loop at this point.  Sean of course doesn't notice anything weird about these fireworks, but Neil is quick to note how old the fireworks seem.  When questioned, you ever notice how often the other two question Neil's observations, Neil points out that the fireworks do not just seem to be designed to look old, but that they are themselves likely very old, 40-50 years abouts.  Sean does not care.  He completely ignores the observation his friend has made, shooting it down by going "well, so long as they fire, who cares how old they are".  I'm not an expert on fireworks, but I'm like fairly confident 50 year old fireworks would not, in fact, fire.  I feel like the gunpowder is probably bad by this point.  But again, what do I know.  It's weird that this is one of the final cutscenes of the game, you'd think they'd put the mentioning of the fireworks BEFORE the part where Shopman waxes poetic about the things he never got to do with his wife.  But I digress.

To follow up from the last plot point, the gang purchases the fireworks from Shopman's shop, returning the money he has been giving them to him, once again, fish cult.  And they invite Shopman out to enjoy the fireworks.  Shopman talks about how long he's had these fireworks and how important they are to him and he never mentions to the gang that he lost his wife of course.  That would mean explaining anything.  He's just like "oh, you know, fireworks are meant to be enjoyed together, that's why I've been holding onto them".  And he just awkwardly partakes in the fireworks display, giving off the weirdest vibes.  Laughing but like, Shopman's sprites are just a touch off-putting so it again feels like the kind of fake laughter that a cultist would have.  You know the type.  Halfway through the display he gets suddenly very solemn and goes "I was such a fool" but he won't tell the kids what that means.  Just a weird dude, I swear.  Then Neil is like "fireworks are fun, I should look into buying them more often when I get home" and Shopman responds "oh I don't think you'll find any like this, sadly".  Which is weird, Neil was the one who clocked that Shopman's fireworks were old so I don't know why they're implying he thought that he'd be able to walk into a store and buy fireworks like this.  Also, is it legal for a normal person to buy fireworks in Japan?  That feels like it wouldn't be legal over there.

As we finish the final story mission before the Legend, the final boss of the game, Alice is depressed.  Having all the fish return to the ecosystem and having seemingly the only thing remaining for them to do means that this summer vacation is almost over.  So now we're at the end of the summer even though, again, they got e-mails about their midterms like two weeks ago.  Insane timeline.  She's so sad because she's been thinking on what Neil's parents said and the conversations they had about their future.  How once this is over, they go back to their real lives, have to do adult things.  Figure out their careers.  Pay taxes.  Get a mortgage.  I'm depressed talking about it, to be honest.  Sean, being Sean, decides to use this opportunity to be sexist, asking her if she's crying over some cheesy romance novel.  Why is Alice sad about leaving these people?  Anyways, the three begin to reminisce about this perfect summer and the perspective it's given them, how they now want to look towards their futures.  Alice wants to really invest her time into getting into culinary school and becoming a professional chef.  Sean wants to fish and join the MMA.  I don't know where this came from, but he says he wants to enjoy those one-on-one battles, for the record I realize he is still talking about fishing.  And Neil?  The guy who had trouble figuring out his career path previously?  Neil wants to craft.  That's what he wants his job to be, crafting.  He's so dumb.  The three of them decide to make this summer last forever, enjoy it while they still are here, no matter what happens.  Which is a bad thing to decide at the end of the game, when the only thing left to do is fight the Legend.

Chapter 6: Beyond the Tunnel

Here it is, the finale of the game.  The trio decides to head out at 2 AM to the place where Shopman stated the path to the hidden fishing spot would be, presumably to await his arrival.  However, when they arrive, Shopman is already waiting for them.  Alice finds this very odd, because they had not actually communicated with Shopman that they were intending upon coming up here tonight.  But, since he is likely both a cult leader and a ghost, he just appeared here anyways.  Is this ghost stealing their money?  Will they get it back once he moves on?  I digress.  What's more, the tunnel that was previously sealed is now fully opened.  Sean and Neil are too excited about the end of their quest to clock how truly bizarre this is, but Alice is immediately like "guys, this is weird, I'm not sure about this actually".  Proving that Alice has not yet been fully taken in by the fish cult.

However, as it is a cult, they start gaslighting her.  First by attempting to change the subject, with Shopman definitely totally joking about this tunnel being a path to another plane of existence to distract them, before following it up with "well, yes, the tunnel used to be sealed off, but it's open clearly, maybe you didn't look hard enough the first time".  Sean and Neil concur, after all, they saw the tunnel several days ago and only for a second, maybe they just didn't get a good enough look at it and their mind was playing tricks on them.  After all, Alice, don't you trust Shopman?  The weird fish cult man who is probably a ghost?  Alice, being fully convinced she is crazy by her friends and their new fish cult leader decides to go on in.  She trusts Sean and Neil, and they trust Shopman.  And besides, doesn't she want to catch the Legend?

Arriving on the other side of the tunnel, the group sees a bizarre sight.  An impossibly beautiful beach, otherworldly and mystical, is awaiting them, the Legend splashing about in the waters just off the sight.  Purple flowers cover the area, and fireflies rise above the waters.  Even Sean, as dense as he is, is taken by the beauty, noting how it feels like a fantasy world.  Shopman hands Sean the rod he used many years ago, the first time he encountered the Legend, the time he painted it, and says to use it to catch the Elusive Fish.  All the while thinking to himself how grateful he is for them, how they have fulfilled a life's goal of his, and how he won't let it happen again.  That he will protect these children, that he won't let someone else be taken by the Legend.  Guys, I think we're in hell.  I think Shopman has brought these children to hell.  And has said to them "here, catch the ferryman of the damned for me so I can mourn my lost wife".

Chapter 7: Free At Last

Upon catching the Legend, we discover that it's an Oarfish.  Yeah, just an Oarfish, not some sort of mystical creature of the afterlife, just a normal fish.  It takes almost an hour to catch it in universe, despite it only taking a handful of minutes in real life, even in game time I don't buy it was 50 minutes.  Meaning that the gang only catches it as the witching hour is almost over.  Sean is fully drained from the experience and so Alice and Neil begin their study of it, noting all the information on it for their project, which is going to be quite the report you know.  I wonder how people will take it that they found an Oarfish on a secret beach through a sealed off tunnel in the mountains.  Things are even weirder though.  After the put the Oarfish back in the water, it does not leave.  The Legend remains on shore, watching the children carefully.  As this happens, the fireflies start to increase filling the beach with light.  And the tunnel into the secret spot gets further and further away.  Shopman orders them to run, assuring them that he'll be right behind them, but stressing the urgency.  They are to run and not look back.  Ever.  Once again, this ghost fish cult leader brought these children to hell and put them in a situation where they had to do a frantic dash to escape at the last minute.

We flashback to 1960, with Shopman reading his wife's diary.  His wife had recently passed and this entry is the last thing she ever said to him.  She mourns the time they no longer have, the life they couldn't live together.  How they never got to do that fireworks show they promised, or catch the Legend together, because of course his wife loves fishing.  Who doesn't!?  She says that someday they'll be together again, that she'll find a nice fishing spot in the afterlife.  That the two of them will meet under the moonlight and tell each other of their adventures together, spending the rest of their afterlife together fishing and being in love.  I think Shopman's wife is the fish.  I think the Legend in his wife, and that's what all this was about.  Shopman is in love with a fish.

Back in the real world, the trio makes it out of the tunnel only to see it has sealed behind them.  They panic, thinking Shopman is now trapped, but note that he promised them that he would come back to them.  So they wait.  Hours pass as they wait to see Shopman's return, but with no avail.  He seems to be gone.  As the night turns to day, they decide that maybe they simply missed him.  Maybe he went the long way around the mountain and went home, thinking he would just see them in the morning.  When they arrive at his shop, though, he's not there.  What is there instead, however, are a pair of books he has left for them.  One is a collection of every fish they've caught on their journey, all the photos they've taken during this summer, and comprehensive information on each specimen.  The other, though, is far more intriguing.  An old book, damaged and water logged.  Shopman's own personal journal.  One that depicts a fisherman far greater than the trio could've imagined, a man who caught impossibly large fish, had some of the greatest catches they could conceive of.  The last entry is dated not too long after his wife's death, in which he says he is heading out to try his hand at the Legend.  A fish we know he would never catch on his own, only capturing a glimpse of it.  The crew is stunned, but also, taken aback.  This log is dated from the 1960s, which is just shy of 60 years in the past.  They find it difficult to parse, Shopman was old but not pushing 100 old.  They have not put together that he was a ghost, of course, so they assume it must be a different guy.  We never learn Shopman's actual name.

A few days later, the trio have returned to their university, still without hearing from Shopman.  They are a little worried about him at this point and, seeing no other option, decide to return to the museum, thinking maybe he worked there originally and that they'd find him there.  When they arrive and ask around, they discover that not only is Shopman not there, not only does he not work there, but that they've never had paintings of fish, which I find to be an insane statement, it's like the game is gaslighting me now.  I know for a fact that the thing that started this plot was the trio finding out their museum was hosting an exhibit on paintings of fish.  Anyways, Neil decides to split off from the group, saying they'll meet at the museum cafe in an hour with his findings.  

At the museum cafe an hour later, Sean and Alice are in the middle of getting drunk, they definitely just had a bar asset from another VN that they reused here, and as they are talking about how much they miss Shopman, Neil arrives.  He said that he had gone to the library... at the museum?  Museums have libraries.  Anyways, he had gone to the library and looked at a bunch of reference books about local folklore in the prefecture they were in.  He discovered that there are lots of legends around a mysterious fish who appears to those seeking the afterlife to guide them there.  Alice quickly realizes that this means they were very close to being imprisoned in hell and that Shopman had been using them for his own goals, goals they are totally unaware of because he never mentioned his wife to them.  Sean, however, brushes the whole thing off, just going "hey, Shopman said he'd see us again so clearly he didn't pass on, we'll see him again soon".  The other two make fun of his complete lack of understanding of what happened and try to play it off as if they were complimenting him for being dense.  Sean, for once, is not as dumb as everyone thinks he is and calls them out for making fun of him.  The three give some kind words to the memory of Shopman, and the game ends.

Review

I want to make it clear that I adore this game.  Like truly love it.  This stupid fishing game has brought me so much joy over the years.  I can't recommend it enough for its bonkers plot and all the drama in it.  That being said this game is terrible.  Truly awful.  The benefit that most fishing games have is rumble.  The controller rumbles, so you can properly feel the fishing action and adjust your play accordingly.  Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure does such a poor job of being a fishing simulator that you can barely feel the fishing to know what exactly it is you're meant to do.  I think the biggest example of this is the line breaking.  Line breaking is a common mechanic in these games, a thing you have to consider and adjust your fishing around, but RTA gives you very little feedback to tell you how close your line is to breaking.  Sometimes it feels like it just snaps randomly.  

Combine that with the fact that fishing is such an empty experience.  There's no music, as is common for fishing games, but the environmental sounds are bad and often just constitute a stock sound effect of flowing water.  As well, the game just looks cheap and rushed.  The fish models are fine, a little gross looking, but fine, but everything else is so bad.  There's a certain charm to how undercooked everything is, it feels very budget Wii game.  And while I dislike the modeling, the sprite work is rather charming, especially all of Alice's cute outfits.  But for much of the gameplay it's not a looker.

As well there is just far too much grinding.  This is a fishing RPG and you have to get all the characters to pretty high levels during a normal playthrough to be able to finish the game.  Unfortunately, the material gathering and crafting mechanics are really poorly implemented, so Neil, the craftsman, slows progress to a crawl in the late game.  He both gathers too few crafting materials, randomly gather 3-5 bunches during a day's progress which can sometimes be as low as 3 materials, and because he gathers too few materials he can't craft anything.  So he ends up getting stuck.  Meanwhile, Alice, the cooking queen, levels up super quickly and if you know what you're doing will reach max level before the others reach level 25.  It's a very poorly balanced game.  If I am being honest with you, removing all my biases from how much I adore this game, this is a 6/10.  Maybe even a 5/10.  For me though it's a 9/10, I can't help myself from rating it highly.

I love cooking.  Ever since my mom started to go blind I've been taking over as the primary cook in the house and while I'm not the best at it and I definitely let my depression get in the way of doing it a lot, cooking is a hobby I've really enjoyed.  I've made a lot of friends with it, been exposed to a whole bunch of new foods and, by extension, cultures.  One of those friends actually recommended this game to me!  Shoutouts to my dear friend Sab, one of my favorite people, an amazing musician, check out her stuff.  Cooking means a lot to me and I have been drawn to games about cooking for as long as I can remember.  I was the token "Cooking Mama" person in my friend group growing up and to this day I keep an eye out for interesting games about food.  So an entire puzzle/visual novel ABOUT food?  Sign me up!

Venba - A Cute Game About Food and Culture

What Is Venba?

Released in 2023, Venba is a narrative cooking game set in a roughly 30 year period from the late 1980s to the recent past, around the late 2010s/early 2020s.  You play as the eponymous Venba who, along with her husband, Paavalan, have recently immigrated to Toronto from their home of Tamil Nadu to seek out new opportunities.  Life is hard for them in Toronto, however.  Despite Paavalan's degrees, he struggles to find a job in his field due to it being more competitive and a not insignificant amount of racism.  Venba, similarly, is having trouble gaining momentum in her career.  Back in India, she was an accomplished teacher whose students loved her but in Toronto she's having far more trouble.  Her English isn't great and she can't relate to her students in the way she could back home.  And she keeps getting passed over for a more substantial position because of it (and also probably racism let's be honest).  The two of them are struggling so much that they consider packing up and moving back to India.  And then Venba discovers she's pregnant.

The game then proceeds to tell the story of the family through a series of vignettes, glimpses into specific days of the family's growth as they struggle to raise their son, Kavin, to have an appreciation for their native culture when he's surrounded by Canadian culture. In almost every instance, these vignettes also center around cooking.  The central gameplay of Venba is actually very similar to something like Cooking Mama, you are tasked with cooking a traditional South Indian dish step by step completing little minigames to simulate the various cooking steps.  Stuff like moving your mouse up and down to simulate chopping vegetables or moving it in a circular motion to rub paste into a fish.  The recipes in Venba, however, also have a puzzle aspect to them.  Venba is working off of her mother's cookbook, a precious family heirloom that she brought over from India, and being an old family cookbook it's covered in stains.  It's up to the player, therefore, to "solve" the stain covered text and figure out the missing instructions.  Food is so central to this game that it even comes with a cookbook (and I definitely need to print out and try some of these recipes.)

Spoiler-Free Review:

Venba is an incredibly charming game.  With an adorable art style and a true love of Tamil Culture, Venba oozes personality throughout its short run time.  You can tell this story was very personal to the devs, they are Indian of course and I imagine they must be Tamil and they talked about wanting to do an immigrant story from the perspective of the parents for once instead of basing it in the second generation as so many do.  The themes explored in this game are handled incredibly well, I am not an immigrant to my country nor am I the child of immigrants, my family has been in America for several generations, but I could so easily put myself into the mindset of both Venba and Kavin throughout.  The writer(s) did an excellent job at making a story that I'm sure most resonates with people who are either immigrants or second generation but also can be connected with even if you don't have these lived experiences.  The puzzles are incredibly well designed too, just, they're very clever and really make you think about the art of cooking in such a unique way.  There's a particular one later on in the game I REALLY love, I'll talk about it in the spoiler section of this post.  The only things I'm not super sold on are, a, the length, I wish it was longer and had more to it, but b some of the recipes don't get the full attention I wish they would.  I just want to solve these puzzles, I wish there was more game to this game.  But overall I really enjoyed it.  8.5/10

A More Thorough Look:

Just as a heads up for people, from this point on I will be talking about spoilers for this game.  If you intend to play it yourself, which I recommend you do because it's really fun, and you care about that sort of thing, don't read on.  Also just going to put up a content warning here as well, while Venba doesn't get too intense with its depictions of racism, focusing instead on systemic issues rather than direct crimes, there is a depiction of a hate crime in Venba and I will be talking about it.  If this kind of subject matter is potentially triggering to you, be careful reading forward.  I think it's an important moment in the game and I think that it handles it well enough to not be that triggering but I want to be sensitive to these things.  Let's go!

A Game About Cooking:

One of the things I really enjoy about Venba is its depiction of cooking.  Depictions of cooking in media, be it film, television, video games or just little TikToks are something I feel very passionate about.  If you know me you know I've gotten up on my soapbox more than a few times about how I dislike media that makes cooking feel impossible because cooking is intimidating to a lot of people, it is a massive hurdle for them and cooking content that makes it seem complicated reaffirms these beliefs for people and ends up with them being turned off from cooking.  Venba, I think, does a good job of both voicing these concerns, this hesitancy to cook, while also making cooking seem fun and accessible.  I know the developers talked about the difficulty they had translating Tamil cuisine into puzzles because, like a lot of South Asian cuisine, they can get pretty complicated.  But I think they nailed it, I think it gives people a good space who may be intimidated by cooking to learn that cooking is fun, cooking isn't something difficult that you have to overcome but an artform you can create in.

I'm also a massive fan about how each puzzle is not only a fun little brain teaser but also does help you conceptualize how to most effectively make the dish.  They make for very good tutorials on the order of operations of the dish, the best way to ensure the dish is done well and what it should look like roughly when the dish is complete.  I really do want to commend the artists for managing to so accurately depict what the final dish looks like in its stylized art style, like, it can be really helpful.  And I understand, like, the recipes are VERY detailed, I haven't made any of them but I checked the recipe for Biryani and it is thorough.  But it's also just nice to also have a visual indicator of what the dish roughly should look like when it's done, especially when it also comes with some practical instructions like "what order ingredients should go in".  I know there's like a whole thing of "games simulating stuff don't always teach you how to do the thing in question" but I think Venba does give such practical instructions that for visual and hands on learners you can kind of get an idea on how to make the dish(es) in question.

But Venba is not just a cookbook.  While it does give you the recipes and some knowledge on how to make these dishes, Venba is a game about culture.  And, moreover, how integral food is to culture.  Full disclosure, while I hope that I am able to communicate the thoughts and ideas in Venba well, as I have mentioned previously I am American and moreover a white American.  My family has been in the country for several generations and, even if we were in touch with our original cultures, on my mom's side I'm German and Irish and on my dad's side I think I'm Danish?  While these are cultures that have their own rich food history, their cultural identity is not as strongly tied to the food they make as, say, Indian culture tends to be, food is not as central a component to my ancestors.  So if I say something wrong going forward or seem out of depth I apologize, thank you for being patient with me, lol.  I try my best but this is definitely something much harder for me to connect with due to my own lived experiences.

Venba does an excellent job of showing cooking as not only important culturally but also the why of it.  Why these little rituals, these quirks and ticks you engage in while creating this edible art, are significant.  I'll touch on it later on, because I want to talk about the cookbook in more detail by itself, but Venba feels isolated, divorced from her home.  She is pretty literally on the other side of the world and cooking is her way of touching base with that part of her she has left behind.  So there's kind of a ritual to it.  She turns on the radio to the only station she can find that plays Indian music (which by the way, soundtrack is great, it's sung entirely in Tamil and from what I understand evokes so many eras of Tamil music, again, I'm not an expert but it seems like those that are really vibe with it) and does things very traditionally in a way she might not have previously.  She even points out in the first Chapter of the game that her recipe for Idli and the way she prepares is different from her mothers' but she wants to do it that way, she wants to engage with her traditions.  It's her way of feeling at home while away from home.

You then grow to relate to her frustrations when Kavin, who grew up in Canada and is more connected to Canadian culture, seems to reject his native culture.  It starts off in little ways at first, Kavin wants pizza over what his mom cooks as most children would.  But it grows into a familiar story, he feels like his culture is stopping him from fitting in and he grows to resent it.  There's a particular scene where Venba prepares her son a ton of Biryani to bring with him to college and he is not pleased about it, clearly worried about how he will be perceived if he's "the Indian kid".  And like, I get it, but you also feel the heartbreak, feel how sad it makes Venba to keep trying to reach out to her son, keep trying to throw him a rope to his own culture, only for him to reject it.  To Venba this food, this life, is everything and to Kavin it is smothering.

This cultural divide comes to a head in one of the last stages of the game.  It is Kavin's birthday, one of the first after Paavalan died, and Venba asks him if he's coming home for it.  Kavin tells his mom he wants to (probably a lie) and that he'll see what he can do.  Venba, excited to have her son home, excited to be a family if only for one night, makes an absolute feast.  Every dish she can imagine, all laid out for her son's arrival.  It's an attempt, an attempt to get Kavin to embrace his heritage, to see the beauty, the vibrance in the culture he's always been hesitant to embrace.  And he doesn't show.  Venba is clearly heartbroken, silently waiting all night for her son before going inside, defeated, the food left out, the dishes still in the sink.  You kind of get a glimpse into how much the relationship between the two has broken down, with Venba sending her son messages he did not reply to, trying to keep touch with him even as he grows.  This food is not only an attempt for an Indian parent to try and get her son to embrace his culture but a mom trying to bridge a gap to her son.  Tragic stuff man.

We then take control of Kavin.  It's a few years later and Kavin now works as a television writer.  He's on one of those Western kid shows that is designed to show the diversity of the nation in question and the person in charge asks him to pitch a dish for a scene where all the kids bring food from their native culture.  And he is uncomfortable about this fact.  He sees a group of kids hanging out in a cafeteria and talking about their culture and their food as being not even close to his lived experiences.  That he was uncomfortable and embarrassed by his culture growing up, that he was so desperate to fit in he rejected everything Indian about himself, and that having a character show pride in that when he didn't feels like a betrayal.  But he relents.  He decides to make a dish from his mother's cookbook, which she left with him as she has moved back to India, for the show.  He's clumsy with it, unsure of the process, but along the way he realizes what he has done.  He falls in love with Tamil culture, wants to be a part of it and, most importantly, wants to do right by his Amma.  Cooking this dish, immersing himself in his culture, has caused him to have a revelation.  He quits his job and flies back home to India, where the game ends with him learning to cook directly from Venba.

Systemic Racism and the Language Barrier:

Unsurprisingly, a game that deals with immigrants a cultural preservation in the face of said immigration does have some themes of racism in it as well.  Venba doesn't touch on this theme in depth by any means as, first off, that's not what the game is about.  It's not a game about racism, why would they touch on it in depth.  But also I think it's more accurate to the lived experiences of a lot of immigrants in the big cities of the west to not really depict racism in any super present way.  Like, a lot of Western cities, both in the past and still today bill themselves as cultural melting pots and so explicit racism isn't usually present.  But you still see it in the very subtle ways that our society works, how these places may put walls up for people who have trouble speaking English, people who are poor because of moving to the west, etc.  Venba touches lightly but poignantly on elements of systemic racism, and I think it does so very well.

I want to first touch upon typography in Venba, as I think it's a good scene setter for this section.  Venba does something very clever with its typography.  We are, obviously, playing as Venba, an Indian immigrant whose native language is not English but Tamil, Tamil is the language that we are seeing most of the time.  English is, in this case, the foreign language, a second language that Venba and Paavalan are both "fluent" in, Pavalaan moreso, enough to get by in Canada but not enough to where speaking the language is natural.  This presents an interesting problem, we are always seeing Tamil so Tamil is the language that we should be "understanding" and, like a lot of fiction, we see that as the language that is native to the localization, in my case English.  But English is also a language meant to be understood and it's difficult when you're already using English to then find a way to treat English as a foreign language.  So what Venba is color the font.  When characters are speaking Tamil, they have white text and when they are speaking English they have Yellow text.  Simple, easy to understand, genius.

Due to this very easy to understand dichotomy, you also get a good grasp on the specific nuances of the conversations they have with other English speakers.  One of the early parts of the game sees Pavalaan trying to get a job in his field.  He has a couple degrees from Indian universities and, back home, was a pretty notable writer, writing is his passion.  And you have him trying to get jobs over the phone, trying to show his enthusiasm for the work, point to his degrees, point to his experience.  But, it doesn't seem to matter.  He may very well be a good fit for the job, the best fit even.  But the people on the other line only seem to take one thing into account: his English.  Pavalaan speaks English pretty well but his words are slow and can be disjointed, the way a lot of immigrants' words can be.  And you know he probably has a thick accent.  He is being kept from this job that he is very qualified for because of where he comes from.

This systemic issue also hangs over Venba.  Like I said, we don't see Venba in the work environment at all but it still casts a shadow.  Almost every level ends with a letter from the school Venba works at part time.  Venba was a teacher back in India and back home she was very good at her job.  She was the young, cool teacher who could relate to the kids and pull them out of their shells to learn.  In Canada though, this is a much more difficult issue for her.  The cultural barrier is a big part of it, she has a much more difficult time connecting to the kids here.  But she's still very good at her job and she is gunning for a full time position, a proper teaching job that will not only be fulfilling for her but help make ends meet.  The duo are struggling and have had to make compromises just to make their bills and Venba having a full time position would help immensely.  But, throughout the entire game, Venba is repeatedly rejected for this job, a job she loves and is good at.  We don't know a lot about the other teachers that have taken this position but we can assume things about them given the other context clues present in this game.  In a bit of dramatic irony, she is finally approved for the job after Pavalaan dies, after she can no longer afford to stay in Canada and chooses to move back to India, her last reason for trying to make it work (Kavin) no longer answering her texts.

I have to also imagine that the racism really shaped Kavin.  Kavin is very interesting with the text thing, while Tamil is his first language, like a lot of second generations, Kavin quickly adapts to the native language of the country he's in over his own native language just from osmosis.  It is very early in the game where Kavin is also majority speaking in English and his mother has to remind him to speak Tamil.  This problem only gets exacerbated as the game goes on, with there eventually being such a language barrier that not only is Kavin speaking faster than his parents can understand but the words don't even make sense.  Words become smudged and blurry as his parents struggle to communicate with their son who now exclusively speaks in English.  Put in a pin in the blurry text, by the way, it'll come up later in a very cool way.

Anyways, Kavin is doing what a lot of second generation kids do in a culture that not only surrounds him but is prejudiced against them, even in smaller systemic ways: he assimilates.  He embraces the local culture, tries to fit in(even going so far as letting people call him "Kevin"), even at the cost of his culture and his relationship with his family.  To bring you back to him going off to college, Venba has made her son a lot of meals to take with him, to remind him of home.  Not only that, but his parents want to go with him, want to see his college, see his dorm, meet his friends.  He fully rejects this.  Kavin worries about being the "Indian kid in Canada", of being othered in that way.  He just wants to fit in, wants to be a part of this world he was born into.  And doing that means being "the Canadian kid who happens to have Indian parents", because at the time he grew up (and probably still now), it was an easier life to live, an easier way to fit in.

But the biggest thing that happens with regards to depictions of racism in this game is Chapter 3.  Chapter 3 is rather unusual for this game in that it's the only chapter that does not have a cooking section.  Instead it's full Visual Novel, you're just progressing the plot and maybe selecting some dialog options here and there.  By Chapter 3, Paavalan has swallowed his pride and now works as a salesman for a relative.  He does not like this turn of events even remotely, something he makes abundantly clear, but it's paying the bills.  One night, Paavalan is late coming home, nobody has seen him since he left work and he was meant to be home hours ago.  Worried and confused, Venba and Kavin set off into the night to look for him.  While they try to keep their spirits up, with Venba choosing to practice Tamil with Kavin, they eventually find Paavalan at the bus stop.  He's beaten and bloodied, his paperwork flying everywhere and his glasses shattered on the ground.  He was the victim of a seemingly racially motivated attack, the game letting very little be confirmed but allowing the implication to cast a massive shadow over this scene.  When I first got to this sequence I actually was really worried Pavalaan had taken his own life because they show his glasses on the ground without him there first THEN show him beaten at the bus stop.

A Story About A Cookbook

Let's talk about the cookbook, the most important element of Venba.  Not the one the game includes so that players can learn to make the recipes in question, the in-game one, the one Venba had passed down to her from her mother and the one she inevitably passes down to Kavin.  The in-game cookbook is the central gameplay element of the game.  It contains within it the puzzles that need to be solved, the recipes missing text due to stains and smudges that the player must figure out to complete the stages.  This is not only a fun little gameplay element, a fun and creative way to build a game around cooking puzzles.  While it does certainly accomplish that, the Cookbook holds incredible narrative significance as well.  In a game about connecting and reconnecting with your culture, this cookbook with its stains and blemishes is paramount.

Flash back, if you will, to the first chapter of the game, the chapter where Venba makes Idli.  As mentioned previously, she forgoes the way she would usually make it to opt for her mother's recipe, a more complicated one but one that feels like home to her.  This is when she discovers that the cookbook is missing pieces, text is being obscured by stains, it's hidden or blurry.  These stains are not just stains, as I'm sure you could probably piece together.  The stained pages are meant to represent Venba's disconnect from her culture, the divide that forms between her and her home now that she is in Toronto.  And these half complete recipes are her trying to bridge that divide, she wants to feel at home, feel her culture, feel her family with her, but she doesn't know how.  Something is holding her back, something is stopping her from being able to form a complete bridge.  So she works with incomplete recipes.  Until she has mastered them herself, as her own mother did.

This incredibly unique and creative puzzle element adds so much depth, so much nuance to the narrative.  It kind of blew me away when I realized that's what was happening, how much this cookbook represents to Venba and her own story.  How well it contextualizes the events of the game.  How significant it is that we don't see her ever bring the recipes together herself.  The recipe book she gives Kavin is a "fixed" version of her mother's book, all the stains gone, all the recipes rewritten, a master passing on her craft to the next generation.  To Venba, that bridge is no longer shaky, it has been built.  This is who she is, Tamil culture is her culture, and she not only can see through the stains, she doesn't need the book at all.  It's second nature to her.

But you know what's not second nature to her?  English.  We're bringing it back, the realization I had when I made this connection.  So, we've established, through the cookbook, that blurry or missing text = a disconnect.  That is the metaphor we are working with here.  Where else have we seen blurry or missing text outside of the cookbook?  Kavin.  When Kavin leaves for college, he has one final meal with his parents and talks about his upcoming move.  And every so often, words are missing from his speech, words that his parents have trouble understanding because their English is still limited.  This is also the conversation where Kavin tells his parents that he is not bringing the food they've packed for him to college and he does not want them to come with him on move in day.  This is a gap that has formed between him and his family.  And just like with the cookbook, this divide, this disconnect, is represented through missing text.

When Kavin inherits the book himself, his mother has done a lot of work to make it pristine.  The pages are clean with no stains, no blemishes, the recipes are precise and well written, all of them by hand.  But, the disconnect still exists, and in Kavin's case, it's much worse.  His mother wrote the recipes in Tamil, in their native language.  She's actually always writing in and reading Tamil throughout the game, we just perceive as English because of the perspective we are seeing it from having Tamil as the "normal" language in her brain.  The thing about it is, Kavin's Tamil is very rusty.  He hasn't read in Tamil in ages, probably since he was living at home, and his translations are really poor.  He mixes up a lot of words and just fully mistranslates some of them.  It's a very neat puzzle in the game, probably my favorite, having to use context clues to figure out what words Kavin is messing up.

But it's also an interesting layer to the theme of this cookbook in the storytelling.  While Venba saw the cookbook as incomplete, she understood it.  The bridge to her home was shaky but it was there, she just needed to find the way.  Kavin, meanwhile, has been running away from his culture his entire life, trying to fit in with another world entirely.  So rather than the cookbook manifesting to him as an incomplete but recognizable text, he sees it in a language he has forgotten.  He doesn't feel connected to this culture at all, it's literally a distant memory to him, and so he views the book at first like an outsider would.  He is having to rebuild his relationship with both his culture and his mother from the ground up, this is not a bridge that exists that he needs to learn how to cross, it is a bridge he needs to build.  And he can only build it by choosing to stop running away, by confronting his guilt.  By learning his mother's recipes.

Final Thoughts:

Venba is marvelous.  It manages to pack so much into its very short length.  I spent an hour and a half on it and I think if you had a good grasp on the puzzles you would spend less.  It's a very good single sitting game.  But there's so much to it, you can tell that this was a very personal story to the developers.  As you can tell from the pieces I wrote, it covers so much about the experiences in trying to keep your culture alive while living away from it.  It's fun, it's creative, it's the kind of experience you can only get from a video game.  I really enjoyed it.  I wish it were longer, I wish there was more Venba to experience.  This is a game that's going to stay with me long term, I don't think it's one of the best games I've played all year but I will be thinking about Venba for a long time.  It's something very special, I hope everyone gets a chance to play it.