He Fucked the Girl Out of Me
An autobiographical story of a transgender woman and her traumatic experiences with sex work. Personal and intense in its prose, abstract in its presentation. Defamiliarization and impersonation as representation of the coping mechanism. The game portrays the victim as not herself but other abstract being, a shapeless ghost, as a representation of the mind distancing itself from trauma. A melancholic, surreal sea of consciousness brings life to fuzzy, drowned memories because it is so difficult to face trauma that repressing it is the instinctive reaction to get as distant as possible from those events. And a fitting pixel-art aesthetic - not just a stylistic choice born from lack of resources but the representation of the raw feelings of an innocent mind. One of the best games of the year so far.