Here is a game about the attractions and the perils of self-improvement. For me, the lesson is germane: Playing The Red Strings Club makes me remember that I have a bad temper.
I learned my foul temper from my father, who learned it from his father. Those two men had a capacity for sudden violence, which served them as they struggled to get by in the tough neighborhood of West Belfast, Northern Ireland. But in the quieter corridors of my life, it has brought me nothing but trouble.
Relatedly, I also suffer from anxiety — loud noises and crowds are especially bothersome — and so I take a pill every day that relieves this minor disability. I guess this pill calms me, or locks up some unloved cupboard in my mind.
Since I started taking the pill, I haven’t lost my temper, not once. I don’t think the pill burdens me with any negative side effects, but these things are difficult to know. Maybe the pill is slowly turning me into a daffodil. Who knows?
I thought about all this a great deal while playing The Red Strings Club. It’s a game that asks how far we are willing to go to suppress our worst impulses, both as individuals and as a society.
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The Red Strings Club is rendered in the pixelated style of an early ’90s science fiction game, and much of it takes place in a dive bar. The bartender and his lover work together to bring down a corporation that is seeking to reshape the world by releasing a mind control technology that blocks criminal behavior.
The noirish tone of the game is nothing new. Driving rainstorms, neon outdoors and a portentous soundtrack signal unashamed inspiration from Blade Runner and its ilk. The Red Strings Club’s story centers on an android that struggles with its power and identity.
But this game is more than just a collection of tech-hell tropes. It presents us with a range of characters who are crippled by, and terrified of, their own flaws. And so they install technological behavior modifiers into their bodies, much like my pill. These modifiers are created and marketed by a company called Supercontinent, which also manufactures the androids.
Deconstructeam/Devolver Digital
Most of The Red Strings Club is a series of dialogue boxes, offering choices that lead to different outcomes. There is no fail state, but I found myself aware of the opportunities I’d missed as I tried to squeeze the game’s various characters for information.
Most of these people are employees of Supercontinent, variously devoted to the company or to their own ambitions. Some are wary of the company’s direction and the motives of its mysterious leader.
As the bartender Donavon, I mix drinks for these people and try to get them to talk. Different ingredients spark various personality hotspots. I hit these by serving concoctions that match with the emotional state I want to manipulate, which is presented as a kind of physical target.
It’s a strange notion, but it works in the moment, both serving dialogue tree progression and acting as a mechanical foreshadowing of the game’s story.
Deconstructeam/Devolver Digital
As the android Arkasa-184, I work in a cell, creating personality modules on a pottery wheel. I use paring tools to create shapes, and I choose which modules to insert into my customers, most of whom are entirely self-absorbed. It’s a simple, pleasing puzzle that runs its course before it becomes choresome.
At one point, I’m able to override my slavelike programming and insert modules that definitely do not match the customers’ desires, but which I decide will be better for them in the long run. Again, this plays into the game’s theme of individual choice often working contrary to the collective good.
Finally, as Donavon’s boyfriend, I work as a hacker, trying to infiltrate Supercontinent’s systems. This turns out to be an exercise in telephone fraud, as I steal the voice patterns of Person X in order to squeeze information from Person Y. It’s a neat puzzle that’s supported by point-and-click item searches.
Deconstructeam/Devolver Digital
The Red Strings Club’s eight hours or so zip along at an agreeable pace, with its simple gameplay tools managing to avoid overstaying their welcome. It feels like a 1950s stage play, telling us something about the world by way of wit, but always in the direction of truth.
Its strength is in the performances and dialogue of its characters, who ask difficult questions about free will and social order. They fear being brainwashed by Supercontinent, but the company’s supporters are all adamant that its technology is no different from a behavior-modifying medication.
At one point, Arkasa-184 asks Donavon whether or not this technology might be useful if, for example, it eradicated rape, or racism or greed. As in a game like Papers, Please, there are no easy answers. The villain is a system that posits technology as a savior from ourselves. Most of us are guilty of subscribing to this delusion.
We live in an age when real-life corporations under the sway of cold-eyed businesspeople are shaping our societies through political manipulation. Or they are run by semimaniacal Silicon Valley utopians who are unable to discern their own interests from the interests of humanity.
The question of how far we allow their designs to shape our lives has never been more urgent. The Red Strings Club does a good job of framing this problem, and allowing us to explore its dimensions.
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