[Disclaimer: I received a review key for PULMO through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
PULMO is an art game in the purest sense of the definition that Roger Ebert would shake his head at. It's also a game about death, isolation, trauma, grief, hope, and as many interpretations as you could get from anyone playing. But because it's art, it can also be perceived in any way you want. Someone can tell you that you shouldn't feel a sense of wonder and awe while looking at any element of Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, and they would be wrong. Someone can tell you that you shouldn't feel a sense of sadness while gazing into the eye of the Mona Lisa, and again, they would be wrong. PULMO is a vehicle to play through an interpretation of various emotions that a lot of us go through during our lives, but how we express those emotions and how we interpret them can be an indivudualized experience. Such was the case for me with PULMO.
PULMO is a collection of about 10 semi-interactable title cards, followed by 10 playable scenes or vignettes, interconnected by 11 short animated sequences in a similar vein to the game. Each scene is titled (in the scene selection) with names such as "Ego," "Border," "Pressure," and "Thesus." Each of the animated sequences is also titled in the menu: "Diversity," Smallness," Uncertainty," and Insignificance." These are the only kinds of hints the player receives as far as what each scene and animated sequence might be about, but as they're only viewable after you've completed the respective scene/animation, there is no influence on what the player's interpretation during the game. And since the game could be played in a single sitting, I would be hard pressed for someone to constantly play a scene, exit back to the main menu to look at the Scene Selection or Memories section to be directed on how they think they should feel according to the titles.
I think I finished PULMO in two sittings in a single day, spending just over an hour from beginning to end. Two scenes took me a silly amount of time. In one scene, you have your featureless character with an umbrella out while it's raining, and after a few seconds, it starts raining bodies. Your task is to walk down the screen and avoid the bodies as they rocket towards the ground. You are given some warning as a shadow grows on the ground where they're going to land, so all you have to do is avoid the plummeting bodies. This second, embarrassingly, took me 24 minutes. After the handful of attempts, I thought maybe I was supposed to stand still, but that wasn't it. I also thought maybe you could make it by taking a straight line down, but that wasn't it. Turns out it was just good old-fashioned serpentine. There's another section that took me 17 minutes to find a hidden and winding path in a large body of obscuring water. So if you're a better gamer than I am, you could probably complete PULMO in about 30 minutes.
PULMO feels like it's the kind of game that would be perfect for a video game club. A bunch of people play the game from start to finish, and then discuss it over your preferred beverage of choice. I would 100% discuss this game further over a couple of drinks and a Switch to pull up reference material if I knew anyone else who has played it.*
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
I don't think I've ever played a game like S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch (just S4U from now on). From what I could tell as the credits of the game were rolling, I didn't do particularly well in my decision-making while interacting with characters, or in my "side job" of trying to help people online with their problems, or in my job as an architect. I didn't really develop any relationships for the character of Miki, either online or in her real life. I didn't really do well overall, and by all accounts, I'm pretty sure I got the "bad" ending, but even after all of my failures, I felt that I reached a conclusion that wasn't "You suck at life, please try again." There was an end to this phase of Miki's life, and seeing her through that and seeing that U0U Games had a thoughtful end even when performing as poorly as I did (or at least, as bad as I felt I did) still gave me a kick in the feels.
The pretext of S4U is that you're Miki as she looks back on her computer and wants to open up a password-locked photo album but can't remember the password. To recover the password, she opens up what is essentially a screen recorder program called Magic Player. When you open the Magic Player, you start a new game where you play through Miki's past from three months ago. The majority of the game is played as an interactive visual novel where you use your real-life keyboard to type out pre-generated responses in chat windows while communicating with co-workers, clients, and family. There are also a couple of mini-game-type activities integrated into the narrative that feel well thought out and not immersion-breaking. It's a class in multi-tasking and keeping track of conversations and appropriate responses based on who you're talking to since, at times, you're allowed a choice of responses, some of which are time-sensitive.
The story takes place in a fictional 2011 set between June 17th and July 6th, over nine playable days. Each playable day is structured in a similar way. Miki logs onto her computer and engages with customers who hire her either directly or through her "handler," Nil, as an "online mouthpiece" for people to help them with whatever their situation is that they're willing to pay for. One person might need help trying to figure out if their significant other is cheating on them. Another person might need help establishing a professional-level contact. Another person might need help tracking down a colleague who has been missing for three days and risks their own job if they're not found. Over the course of the game, you find out that your clients are not always forthcoming with all of the relevant and necessary information, so you have to wing it and try to guess how they might respond. This is where I really faltered throughout the game and I can't blame any of it on localization issues, of which there were some, but ones I only noticed while rewatching my playthrough.
I don't know what can be deciphered from my apparent lack of how to respond as a character pretending to be someone else while trying to elicit information or get clients to respond in a specific way that ends up with Miki earning an income outside of her architectural job. I know as a real person, I'm not already great with small talk, which might not apply here, but it could also be applicable, and I don't actively engage in online forums (Reddit, Discord) with any regular gusto. But that could really only apply to situations where Miki is offered multiple responses when trying to express how the player is feeling while also attempting to interpret how the character of Miki is feeling while also guessing how the person that Miki is currently being an online mouthpiece for would respond in any particular situation. Maybe it's not as complex as I'm making it out to be, but at times, it really felt that complex in the heat of the moment.
As I briefly mentioned, I can't chalk up any of my failings to anything to do with the localization of the game from its original Japanese to English. I can only imagine how much of the original game was filled with both regional and national colloquialisms that would have a hard time being translated into any language. There were also several grammatical and syntax errors, but again, I really only noticed those while rewatching my playthrough. There wasn't anything serious that made me feel that an error in translation was holding me back or leading me down the wrong dialogue tree. I think it's probably related to the Transposed Letter Effect and not immediately noticing grammatical errors while not actively looking for them.
That being said, I wasn't always able to follow the subplot of the whole Cyber-Life and TT thing. I got that there was something about a larger corporation(s) and regular civilians and online people, and maybe Internet-based consciousness. There was stuff interspersed throughout about AI-generated content and the effects that has on different aspects of everyday life, which, while not really applicable in 2011, felt very pointed in 2025, but that can be forgiven since it's a fictional 2011. There were articles on the Tico newsfeed that I would try to read and place within the larger world building context of the story but I know there was a lot that went over my head either because I failed to make any connections between the jobs Miki was doing, the role that Nil and/or Pi played in both the micro and macro telling of Miki's story, or that I just let something slip while glancing over the newsfeed while catching up on client interactions.
But again, despite feeling lost for sections of the game and story and overall feeling like I didn't really "do very well" overall, I felt that this story impacted me a lot more than I had thought going into the game. During the phone conversation with Miki's mom at the end telling her that she wanted to visit with Miki's sister Daisy and that she wanted to buy her a computer costing 10,000 (which was significantly more than I was every able to make), after being laid off from her architectural job felt more like a loving emotional gut punch than the mom holding anything over Miki. The way I interpreted that interaction, there was nothing but love and caring behind her actions. Sure, there was the constant mistake of her Mom referring to Miki still being in college (in her dorm, unless I misunderstood something), but none of this interaction came across as holding anything over Miki's head or flaunting wealth.
There's plenty more I could talk about in regard to the gameplay, mechanics, mini-games, how I played, and the amazing work of the sound team. A lot of this will reference videos and elements that you can watch from our playlist over on YouTube. So, let's quickly bullet point this.
Loved typing on a virtual keyboard with my real keyboard, partly because my laptop has a latex key cover over chiclet-style keys.
I loved having different responses. I loved that this carried over to both in-person conversations and interfamily text messages.
I loved that there were mini-games like the architecture sketching program and the loading bar. I'm sure there were others that I wasn't able to unlock due to choices and decisions I made.
I loved that there was a board that I feel would have been filled up to the left of the computer had I completed more of the interpersonal side quests.
I loved the sound of the keyboard, and even the vending machine sounds were all very satisfying. Even the music was soothing and fitting for this style of game. I'm sure that I could've expanded Miki's collection of music had I not been so focused on trying to save money.
I don't know if I'll immediately go back and replay this game, seeing as how it felt like there were a lot of branching paths that were based on decisions and replies I made, some in the moment and some more thought-out than others. I feel like I would need a flowchart of all the responses I type,d and that's not something that sounds like fun for me. I'll probably look at other walkthroughs to see what needed to be done and what else there was in the game, but for now, I'm content with Miki's story and the conclusion that was reached. A little sad, a little melancholy, a little hopeful. This was one avenue for Miki's story, and I'm glad that I was able to experience it.
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Benign Land through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
I am, admittedly, woefully ignorant about the Troubles, the time predominantly in Ireland between 1969 and 1998 when Irish republicans fought for Irish unification and separation from the United Kingdom, while Ulster loyalists along with the United Kingdom fought to keep Northern Ireland part of the UK. There is a whole lot more to it than that inadequate sentence, but that's the best I can do right now without just copying verbatim the entire Wikipedia article. So I knew that going into Benign Lands, a video game adaptation of an immersive visual arts experience about Ireland's history with the latter half focusing on the Troubles, what I was getting myself into, but only just and again, admittedly most of the imagery went over my head.
Beforehand, I knew the generalities of the conflict. I knew about Bloody Sunday, but couldn't give you an exact date, and to be honest, I'm not great with remembering specific dates of historical importance. I knew about the Good Friday Agreement, but again, I couldn't give you any kind of specifics. I knew that there were bombings carried out by the IRA, but I couldn't give you locations. I'm sure that it was covered to a certain extent in any of my World History courses from Jr. High through High School, but only that the conflict was still ongoing because I graduated High School in 1998 and I couldn't tell you when our textbooks had last been updated. I knew that certain neighborhoods in Belfast were separated between Catholics and Protestants, but I didn't know that they were called "Peace Walls." I also knew nothing about the Prison Maze, the multiple hunger strikes, or any other dozens of things that were not deemed important to go over in the flurry of information during history classes.
So this is where I was going into Benign Land, pretty bad I admit. I was hopeful though because the game says that the original experience was created from an outsider's perspective, which I misinterpreted as meaning that the player didn't have to know anything about the Troubles in order to get the message of the game. What I didn't know was that the outsider was actually the developer, Leandros Ntolas. Again, that was on me for not being better prepared before starting.
Now, before we get to the actual gameplay, there needs to be some hardware context. I played on the Steam Deck because I knew that my laptop would not be able to handle anything that uses photorealism as its basis. I first started the game on Wednesday night and immediately knew that I was going to have to make some graphical adjustments because just in the menus, the game was maxing out at 12 fps. I also noticed that the GPU was running at 99% while the CPU was hovering around 45%. Not a great sign. So I lowered the graphics down to Low and was able to get a max fps of 24, but even that felt exceedingly sluggish as you'll be able to tell down below in the playthrough video.
First, I couldn't tell what was going on when I tried to invert the Y-axis for the right joystick. I could hear and see the click, but the box itself never changed so I had to go into the controller configuration in the Steam settings to make the necessary changes. I can't always tell from the other playthrough videos I watched, but the way the game felt to me was that I was swimming through thick viscous water, that the controls were sluggish and response-delayed. The first time I played (and the video I recorded) there were countless times I found myself looking up at the ceiling or down at the ground as I found that I was often overcompensating with the right joystick. There also seemed to be a baked-in mechanic that slowed you down if you were going in the wrong direction of where the portal to the next scene was, coupled with invisible walls hampered my desire to explore. There were also two instances above where the portal didn't seem to initially take and made me think that there was something else I needed to do.
Sadly a lot of that last paragraph made it hard for me to either enjoy and/or understand everything to do with the visuals. True that I didn't catch most of the visual references, but I can only blame myself for that. The rest of the blame lies with the Steam Deck and that this game, even on low settings was too much for the system to play smoothly and in a way that felt enjoyable. While a lot of the visuals were impressive and beautiful to be in the presence of while I walked/floated through each environment, I was saddened that I felt more frustrated than anything with how the game played than anything else.
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