Fiction for Utilitarians: The Sexy Brutale

[feotakahari]

At the mansion known as The Sexy Brutale, time twists and turns on itself. The guests and the staff all have a role to play, and they speak the same lines and perform the same motions time and again. Each night, every guest is brutally murdered, and each day, they wake up and start all over.

You are an intrusion in their perfectly constructed world, the one person who stands outside the script. You can’t talk to them, or even be in the same room as them. But it’s up to you to help them from the shadows, and find some way to stop the events that lead to their doom.

The Sexy Brutale is a difficult game to discuss without spoilers, because there are a lot of things you’re expected to find out rather than directly told. The game is at its best when your sense of reality takes a sharp, sudden lurch, like when you find out what happens when you’re in a room with someone else, or when you learn where the staff members go when they pass behind locked doors. As such, even a discussion of the story’s basic questions requires a spoiler warning.

What do you do when you’ve done something you can never take back, something you will never be able to rationalize or defend? If you atone, what does atonement actually mean? If you forget, what price do you have to pay? And if you move on … Well, how do you move on at all, if moving on means living with the memory of what you’ve done?

TSB isn’t a game about answers, though in its way, it does answer some of those questions. It’s more about how it feels to be stuck at that crossroads, and what happens when you refuse to make a choice. It’s about what it does to you when you bear all that guilt, and about the possibility of finally letting go. It’s one of the best games I’ve played in years, and I recommend it to anyone who’s struggled with guilt or addiction.

(Note that the suicide warning is for a different character. It’s not thatkind of game.)