Curate of Curiosities

Previously, Brooks Cracktackle from the indie RPG The Demon Rush got isekai'd into another Canadian indie game as a failed writer with oneitis. He then did a bunch of odd jobs and blackmailed a doctor in hopes of getting a ride to the next town over, in the process encountering a ham-fisted portrayal of economic inequality.

The first thing that we see upon reaching the city of Beaton is a workers' strike led by a man who looks quite a bit like Obama, railing against a parody of Microsoft, with posters behind him that look a lot like the iconic Che Guevara photo. This is the kind of subtletly that we've all come to expect from Vagabond Dog.

His name: Trudeau Liberte. Yes, this is a Canadian-made game featuring a left-wing politician named Trudeau. You probably don't need to think too hard about it.

Anyways, we were supposed to meet up with Larry here regarding our book deal.

He and his wife are in the hole, due to the wife's expensive habits, which she drags us into. At least we don't have to pay for it: We only have enough cash for the next couple days, after all.

That little misadventure took up the entirety of our first day here, so there's not much to do right afterwards except go to sleep. However, it took me a while to find out where I could sleep, giving me the perfect opportunity to get acquainted with Beaton's nightlife.

Very few of the characters in this game look all that appealing, but look at him! Was the artist trying to make the ugliest NPC they could?

Another thing, what do you mean you lost a fishing pole? You're literally holding one right now!

You can buy one for him at the convenience store, and I believe that you could also buy one in Dubstown. So why doesn't he just buy one himself?

Next, you go to the dock and fish up a lake crab. They're a lot more common than you'd think. And given the kind of game this is, you'd expect there to be a fishing minigame, but there isn't. You just cast your line and wait.

We get to sleep on Larry's couch. A massive upgrade from a filthy mattress back in Dubstown.

Like in our very first night, we're given another dream sequence. This one introduces us to Sam, Brooks' college roommate and writing partner. Like everyone else in this game, he has a platitude to give you in his first minute of screentime.

There's a girl he's into, and he wants Brooks to get her number for him, Her name is Amy. Funny, that's the same name as Brooks' ex who's getting married soon!

(And yes, I named her after another character from The Demon Rush)

But before we can find her, Brooks gets pulled into pointless, time-wasting errands thanks to the science teacher.

I believe that it was at this point that the course of Brooks' life was determined. He would be faced with irritating platitudes and dragged into meaningless busywork.

This is Amy. She seems to be into comets like the science teacher, and not so much into Sam.

So we're helping a stalker get closer to his target. Just another of the morally dubious things that this game is intent on forcing our character to do.

Conveniently, Brooks is closer to his type than he is, so she gives him her number. Uh huh, now I see why he's so intent on crashing her wedding.

For our second day in Beaton, Larry wakes up Brooks and drags him outside to see the sunrise. And all because he resents his wife for financially burdening him, and wants to teach us a lesson about work ethic.

Oh, as if the fact that his writing career failed to take off wasn't bad enough, you're bringing him to this warehouse for the express purpose of destroying unsold copies of his books. It's like you're taking out your frustration over your wife driving you to bankruptcy and not being able to satisfy your publisher out on him! Especially when there are probably less wasteful things you could do with them, like stick them in a bargain bin!

But while we're here, let's try to call Amy. She's not there, but Mark, an old acquaintance of ours, is, and he's our ticket to the wedding!

Another town, another clash between income classes. And with that, another really boring minigame.

We meet Red, a warehouse owner and representative of Vagabond Dog's overly simplistic understanding of the upper class, who calls Larry a slur around 30 seconds after he shows up.

The objective of the minigame: you move boxes from one end of the room to the other. Isn't that riveting?

You know what, you're right. But there's a reason I'm throwing everything away to be with her: I have absolutely nothing else going for me! That, and I need material for this book I'm writing as part of the contract I have with Larry.

Back in Dubstown, we didn't really see consequences for the movie theater takever (mainly because we didn't really take sides in the issue). Here in Beaton, some disgruntled workers are willing to take matters into their own hands.

Between them taking a dump on Red's car and him vomiting, there sure are a lot of bodily fluids in this scene.

But this isn't the only work opportunity that Beaton has. Like the last town, we can take temp work.

On one side, we have planting seeds on behalf of not-Microsoft.

And on the other, we have harvesting weed. It functions just like the soy processing and pork butchering: you need to harvest a certain amount of weed in order to fulfill our client's quota. It's only slightly less boring than planting seeds.

For all the mildly unsavory stuff that Brooks has been up to, we can say this: at least he's a trans ally.

Since we've done such a good job of moving about a dozen boxes, we've been invited to the exclusive bar for warehouse union members.

The mayor's up for reelection, and those strikers that we saw causing a ruckus when we got here might be trying to rig the election machines so that their guy can win.

So what do we do? Exactly the same thing! The mayor and Red supply us with a Personal Hacking Device, that they recommend that we practice using before putting our plan into action.

It's Frogger, but with entirely stationary obstacles.

With that, we can sneak into city hall. Red gives us the option to dress up as a guard, or sneak into the vents. This is a false choice, we get shoved into the vents anyways.

So it's off to a really boring vent maze to plant a whole bunch of spoofs to drain those votes from the unsuspecting public.

Like the mayor said, there's someone else

No, I didn't think that they were acting in our best interest. I'm not even from this town at all. I'm just hard up on cash and need to catch a bus to the next town, so I can have a friend of mine drive me across several states so I can...huh, I haven't really thought of what I'll do once I reach the wedding.

Well what do you know, they're both in the pockets of mega-corps. And Trudeau's even getting funded by the same theater chain that's responsible for displacing Dubstown's locals! This is the kind of incisive political commentary that we play indie games for.

Since it clearly dosn't matter who wins in the end, I decide to select the other guy. If anyone asks, the other guy in the server room can give me plausible deniability.

Imagine if that made its way into the book he was writing. All of a sudden, we have a definitive connection between Liberte's upset victory and this one drifter who showed up one day to meet up with a writing agent and work at a warehouse. He could end up facing jail time if this sees light, to say nothing of both candidates.

No one's here to give us a free ride this time around, so we pay the $711--nearly all the money I have at this point--for the bus ticket.

And so ends the Beaton section. As expected, it's a bit of a step up from Dubstown; we go from simply investigating a zoning issue to directly interfering with municipal politics. But of course, we still get our share of platitudes that blatantly signpost what passes for our character's arc. Yes, we are already well aware that at times, we'll be forced to make unsavory decisions to get ahead: the game told us this in bold red letters in the prologue!

I wonder how much detail the hobo's getting into with their retelling. Because this is starting to make me think that they're trying to waste the hitman's time so that he doesn't kill them. I also wonder what the purpose is in telling him this story at gunpoint. Are they trying to teach him a lesson about life, or simply doing this for cheap thrills?