[Games] Please (Review)

Release: 2019

Developer: somewhat

Genre: Horror, Walking Simulator
A part of the Itch.io Racial Justice bundle - 5/1,741

While rummaging through a pool of maggots, feeding them to the living cavities demanding to "be filled" at the end of Please Follow I was reminded of Nana's Username 666. A classic YouTube horror short about the quick demise of an internet user trying to pry too much out of YouTube's ancient UI. Despite seeing the person in the video face an untimely end, something that I was willing to accept as reality,I was pressured into replicating the events of the video by friends even when my small self was pretty sure a dismembered hand would break through my screen once I went too deep. I had a lot of faith in my foolproof plan: unplugging the computer when things went south, which in hindsight would probably not have worked against a supernatural, satanic force. But hey, I was young.

The comparison between this title and the username video is flimsy, though. It was brought on by the "vision" sequences that ended my play through of Please Follow which featured lots of sickly red visuals. With the maggot feeding, eyeball piercing ritual concluding with a thrust into a horrifying "Lynchian" (forgive me for the cliche) fever dream it got me thinking a bit about the setting of these games and what they were saying because there is little there to help you figure it out. Please and Please Follow are two short horror pieces from developer 'somewhat' that exist in a quasi-connected universe. The first is only seven minutes in length, give or take your speed while its follow up pushes the twenty-minute barrier. Both are incredibly interesting, utilizing their short playtime and stunted graphical quality to create immediately disturbing environments.

In Please you play as an electrician commuting back and forth from their apartment to multiple generator rooms to fix the electrical problems that plague your complex. At this point in this write-up, I will be delving straight into spoilers and will be using the rest of this space to touch upon what I like about this title and give a few thoughts on my reading of the game. Let this be my full recommendation that this game and its follow up, which will be covered soon, are worth checking out and take less than half an hour to play back-to-back so absolutely please download them. And maybe come back if you're interested, I am always open to chat about the games I cover here.

Well, that's not good.

What I enjoy about Please is how strong of an unnerving environment exists and is built in such a small amount of time. The rough-rendered PS1 graphic style is an immediate hit with the creep factor as the disorienting wails of machinery and human screams blend into one another with each task. The hard cuts from the stairs to the factory floor create a disassociated sensation and as you go from machine to machine making your repairs you always feel as though something bad is about to happen even though it never does. As strange as it may sound, it is the same kind of unreasonable paranoia that you felt as a kid when your mom sends you into the basement alone late at night to grab something and the lights are off.

There's no monster in the basement, but there could be. There is no spooky demon hiding in YouTube waiting to strangle you, but there could be. You have to do it anyway, even if you don't want to, because you were asked to please. The political messaging of this title feels both incredibly vague yet also very on the nose - or to be more accurate, the way you end up reading this game seems super obvious, but the presentation is vague enough that you could be wrong despite your sureness. As you head to each of your maintenance tasks given via under-the-door manila envelopes you have a chance to sneak a peek at newspapers littered through the hall on the day to day.

A war is won, an energy source is discovered, and political prisoners are being taken and protests are happening. None of these articles are legible beyond their headlines, but a bustling world and drama is happening outside of your mechanical hustle. By the end, the world catches up with you as your game fades into pixelated obscurity through a wall of children's wails, adult yells, and mechanical noise. This follows the purging of your building's energy source, a nauseating mess of flesh and human teeth that screams as it vanishes with your push of a button. I personally think it says something about the way the exploited must exploit others as resources to keep the machine running, even as the blood that oils bares less and less drops.

"Politeness is a sign of dignity, not subservience." reads the closing seconds of the game. To me it feels critical of complacency. Criticism against those who enable or participate in cruelty against others in industry not because of the awareness that they're in a vulnerable position and must do what they believe is needed to survive but because their relationship with the workplace is one built off "politeness". For them it is the "right thing to do" and they "owe it to the company". Again, this reading could be completely off mark because the game is intentionally vague, and it may actually be about worms. But I feel like there is no other way to look at a flesh wall's gore being used as a power source without reaching this sort of conclusion.

Leaning heavily into archaic aesthetics allow for immediate access to an unsettling, grungy visual style that goes against the norm and leads us into unfamiliar territory. For such a short title Please leaves a massive impact and has a lot to say and show with that presentation time, which is a feat worth celebrating in my opinion. Like I said earlier, I give this title and its follow up a full recommendation. If you need a quick, unsettling title to run through give this one and its follow up a chance. Both are worth your time.

Please can be purchased through Itch.io now.