Strange Gaming Diaries: Boa Retina, by Jennifer Raye

this one's tough. buckle in.

boa retina calls itself a "blob of feelings" instead of a "game" in itch.io's interface—and indeed, it began life as more of a mixed-media project involving multiple pieces of old technology that each tell part of a story that I can only describe as aggressively autobiographical. words like "uncomfortable", "unhealthy", and "uncertainty" pepper the store page like spots on a poisonous fish. it's one of Those itch games. you know what I mean?

and normally, Those itch games are things I welcome and embrace for all of their abstract weirdness. with yume nikki as one of my foundational media anchors, I'm absolutely no stranger to games like this! but the thing is, boa retina is not abstract. it looks the part with its general visual style and especially the giant winged eyeball thing that verbally abuses you throughout the game, but the role this entity takes is made excruciatingly obvious from the first few lines of dialogue—it's a transphobic parental figure. there's no real room for interpretation here.

this made the game a bit of a surprise for me, and one that left me in a very disquieted emotional state throughout my playthrough. the entire time, you're looking into the extremely personal details of the main character, to the point that it started to feel weirdly invasive to me...but I couldn't tell who was the person being invaded here. I've described this game to a friend before as "like the video game equivalent of meeting someone at a party and them trauma dumping to you for an hour in a way that you certainly understand and can even relate to, but it's just so Much that you're left unsure of what to really do yourself"

like, there's been a lot spoken online about the value of games and other forms of art that are caustic, abrasive, and generally Unpleasant On Purpose. but the thing is, normally this takes the form of an unapproachable inscrutability that you need to think really hard about, that you need to get really cerebral about in order to start coming to grips with it. boa retina is not operating on that level. instead, it's so emotionally sincere that it starts to be painful to watch, presenting a difficulty on an emotional level instead of a mental one.

not only that, but...well, this isn't an experience I'm familiar with on a personal level, despite also being a trans woman. my whole gender arc has been pretty straightforward and uncomplicated, all things considered, and lacked the sort of foundationally discomforting experiences that this work draws upon. inevitably, that also affects the impact the work had on me, and this feeling that I'm entering a space that I don't belong to. not in an "I am unwelcome and am being actively repelled" sense, but more in an "I feel like I'm witnessing something I really shouldn't be" sense. not alienation, but some strange sense of other nonetheless.

and then, at the very end of all of those harrowing glimpses into a life marred by troubled thoughts of womanhood and abuse on all sides...you fight the giant eyeball-thing in a big dramatic shmup segment while melodramatic prog rock plays in the background.

when I call this melodramatic, understand that I mean it in an affectionate sort of way. it's got the intimately kitschy quality of somebody putting their whole heart and soul into something and not caring even a little bit about it being seen as overwrought or cringe. it's earnest. it's cute, in a way. I laughed a little while I was playing this bit.

and then after it was all done, out of some unknown subconscious impulse, I immediately slammed the uninstall button and erased it from my computer. this isn't something I usually do with video games! normally they just stick around until I need to clear out space and sweep it up along with a bunch of other stuff! but somehow, keeping this thing on my computer didn't feel right. it felt like having someone's childhood scrapbook laying around on my c drive.

and then, ever since then, it's sat in the pit of my chest. to be clear, I played this game nearly a year ago by this point, and despite it having been something that I knew I didn't feel good about, it burrowed its way into my skull and has sat there ever since. it's something I've never seen the likes of before or since, and any attempts to assess it on a more detached and academic level just utterly fail. this game shoved its hand through my chest, grabbed my beating heart, and demanded that I goddamn feel.

I hope I get to play more games like this. I think there was something deeply moving to the experience.

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