The Strings Club Review
Hello steemians, it has really been a while, have been busy with so many other projects but today we are making a review on a wonderful game titled The Strings Club so let’s dive in.
Credits
It is difficult to talk about The Red Strings Club without gutting too much of its history and of what makes it so special since it is intimately related to its narrative development. It is also difficult to talk about The Red String Club because each one of us, both developers and players, will have their own point of view about the game. Donovan, tireless waiter, will have prepared a special cocktail for each one of us.
If you enjoy music, it is at your "Fingertip" because in The Red Strings Club they always serve the best and the sound and soundtrack of the club are the perfect choice. Whether you're looking for a night of alcohol, confessions in a bar or a night in which to bring down a terrible evil megacorporation, Fingerstip's music is your faithful companion.
Content
Maybe you're one of those clients that the first thing they think about when entering a bar is how well decorated it is , how old it looks like that piano at the entrance to be in a world of cyberimplantes or in the good aspect of the waiter ... It is likely that The Red Strings Club will serve you a "Marina" because the team's care behind their artistic style has only improved.
The cyberpunk universe has been imagined one and a thousand times in dozens of films, television, literary and video games. However The Red Strings Club gets, largely thanks to its strange aura that is achieved by mixing everything (like good cocktails), that we do not feel in a cyberpunk world to use. Maybe it's because of its main location; a whole wooden bar with an old piano and old neon lights , or maybe because one of its mechanics is making pottery, even with organic matter, or because a good part of its graphic adventure aspect is made through the interface of a landline (something that seems old to us already in 2018). The fact is that the art of Marina returns to make Deconstructeam shine from the first moment through its visual aspect making each and every one of the characters that walk through the Red Strings are recognizable at a glance.
And if you're one of those parishioners who come to your favorite bar just to chat; either with our waiter Donovan or with the rest of regulars at The Red Strings Club it is most likely that the drink you enjoy the most here is a "Paco" . Because Deconstructeam is clear about what kind of games it wants to do and what kind of experiences it seeks to transmit to its players and these would not be possible without the hand of its narrative designer Jordi de Paco (nor the conjunction of art and music as we have seen).
Gameplay
The Red Strings Club is a game that does not hide its cards at any time , at least not all, and from the beginning, almost like in Chronicle of an announced death , tells you the end; Brandeis will fall from the top of a skyscraper in free fall towards his death. Quiet, no spoiler is, literally, the ten seconds before the game's own start menu. The important thing here is ... how did Brandeis, who looks like an innocent pianist in a club, fall from the top of a skyscraper?
Not only does it not hide its end, its final scene, but it does not hide its narrative development neither present nor future. The Red Strings Club, whose name is a clear reference to its own narrative design, shows us at all times the different bifurcations our story may have through its "red threads" system. These threads will begin to expand, as when dismantling a skein, starting from our starting point; What is Supercontinent plotting?
If we are in a cyberpunk world can not miss the evil megacorporations and the starting point for The Red Strings Club, and the death of Brandeis, is the discovery by him and Donovan, the waiter of The Red Strings Club, the secrets and shady plans of Supercontinent to convert all the owners of cyberimplant (more than half of the population) puppets without bad feelings ... or maybe they are not so puppets? What would happen if humanity lost its depression, homicidal anger, murderous jealousy, homophobia ...? What would happen if we eliminated everything negative from the human development equation? Would we still be human?
To try to stop the plans of Supercontinent we get into the skin of Donovan , broker of information and waiter by profession , who will weave his red threads from the bar of his bar. We will have to extract information from our clients to discover the plans of Supercontinent and evaluate to what extent their plans are a threat. From the bar we will be taking information from our customers so that Brandeis, our partner in the complex task of tearing down a megacorporation, will infiltrate Supercontinent.
Further Info
If one enters, if only once, The Red Strings Club realizes at the moment that Donovan is not a waiter to use. No matter your mood, he always has a perfect drink for you. It's almost like it's ... magic. And is that Donovan is able to create cocktails that connect directly with the feelings of their customers. Something quite useful if one wants to extract information from their clients. How would Donovan prepare a White Russian?
Each of the clients that enter The Red Strings Club will be, in one way or another, connected with Supercontinent and it is our task to try to get as much information as possible about the plans of the megacorporation. For this Deconstructeam has created a simple, but fun, system of "cocktail simulator" through which we will create different drinks to connect with the customer's feelings. Every so often, and always depending on the client, we can ask a series of questions whose answers will be influenced by the emotional state that we have strengthened in him.
Jordi de Paco and his team give here a slight twist to the conversational adventures that we all know by allowing us to directly influence the mood of our interlocutor and thus search their mind. We do not stop being in front of a puzzle game since discovering your state of mind, discovering which drink will suit you best and knowing what questions to ask is nothing more than a small puzzle hidden among so much verbiage (and small verbiage, some of the better written dialogues we've seen in a long time). Each client will be a small game in itself since not everyone will accept our questions lightly or all will accept our drinks just like that ... being the bartender of The Red Strings Club is not an easy task.
Donovan's ability to pull his "red threads" as he says and his ability to affect people are the central core of the Deconstructeam game. When we reach the end of the game, the information we have gathered will help us, this time in the skin of Bandreis, to fight Supercontinent ... or not. Because, and that is that the paths of the red threads are inscrutable, although we know the end of the unfortunate Brandreis we do not know what will be of Supercontinent until we get to them. The Red Strings Club is a game that lasts between three and four hours but has its biggest asset in its replayability.
Things to come across
These red threads are nothing more than a narrative map of the entire Deconstructeam game where we can see what inflection points we have overcome (and how we have overcome them) and we can see what future turning points we have left. Every time we get an information, a specific effect on a client or a different confession ... we will affect the development of the story.
Deconstructeam has recreated a solid cyberpunk fictional universe through conversations with its characters. Depending on the attention we give to our parishioners, we will not only know data about Supercontinent, that enemy to beat, but we will know more and more about the future designed by Deconstructeam. The dialogues of Jordi de Paco are happening one after another , like the drinks, with an impeccable fluency in most of The Red Strings Club, almost as if we were real participants in the conversation. And, in the end, we end up being participants in it.
Behind The Red Strings Club one can not help but see certain things that affect him to a greater or lesser extent. The Red Strings Club is a game that constantly reflects and revolves around the feelings, the way of being of each one, our façade in social networks or in the bar of a bar, our ambitions, whether artistic or economic, our relationship with we ourselves ... Because there is a little of all of us in those parishioners, and in that waiter, who open, to a greater or lesser extent, the depths of their souls.
And that The Red Strings Club knows and its closure, without entering the field of the spoiler, is, in the background, a conversation between the game itself and the player. The questions and answers are moving away from the fictional terrain and enter the more personal field looking for the reflection of the player behind the game. There is something melancholic in these last dialogues between player and game that make us think of Team Gotham's Solo and the reflection that the player seeks to create about love (this relationship is not trivial since Jordi de Paco has lent a hand in the narrative of only).
There is, or at least we have lived our visit to The Red Strings Club, an important artistic reflection around the creation of video games as a whole .
Game Details
Developer- Deconstructeam
Publisher- Devolver Digital
Platform- Windows, macOS, Linux
Release- 22 January 2018
Genre- Adventure
Conclusion
In interesting reflections around the design of emotions, feelings management and, yes, video game design almost as a science of emotions. At a certain moment, even the playful concept of "magic circle" is mentioned in various aspects , referring almost to that protective envelope of the game in front of the real world. As if to say: "Quiet, what you tell Donovan will only be known by him, you can open yourself".
The Red Strings Club is one of the most interesting games of the national panorama of the last months and it becomes, by own merit, a kind of spiritual sounding for all kinds of creatives . Through our immersion in the universe created by Deconstructeam we feel involved in a kind of dialogue between creators about why we create, what we create and what we want to create (perhaps very linked to the inherent pressure that the study must have had at the time to tackle a project after the success of Gods Will Be Watching) and about how we created.
The Red Strings Club is an interesting reflection exercise for the player through his narrative. The immersion in our fight against Supercontinent Ltd becomes little by little an immersion to each players own vision of the world.
Happy Gaming!!!!
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