THE NEW LORD OF NOTHING IS TAKING PRAYERS

I have not read/watched JJK but I really liked this. Even without the context of the show the story and characters hold up on their own, and the bits that I do know about it tells me there was a lot of reinterpretation. I really related to the exploration of transness, trauma, self worth, and manipulation/desire. The use of sex work as well, its relation to queer/trans bodies, and the way it was tied into the concept of “Diviners” was really interesting as well. I really liked how that tied into the progression method, how you had to divine in a sense the next word or phrase that would give you another piece of the story.

That method of interaction may be a bit oblique though, I actually had to inspect the twine code in order to progress. I did still try dozens of phrases once I figured out how it worked, but I didn’t really make any headway doing so. There is also one missing passage, ⟪⟪ Good Girl ⟫⟫, which I think also made things a bit trickier. Still, I think its such a cool concept for a piece of interactive fiction, and the high difficulty kind of adds to it. It feels like a locked box of a story, secrets hidden away to be discovered by no one. I almost feel bad for breaking that box open, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate this game as much as I did.

The presentation is also wonderfully minimalist, the use of different text boxes and colours, boxes within boxes, and lack of box to communicate Junpei’s inner thoughts is impactful and well done. The bits of art that we get are also incredible.

Just a really cool game overall, it really got me thinking. Thank you for sharing.