A beautiful concept. Relying aggressively on players bringing solid story game chops to the table, Cabbages explores something like Stoic Philosophy through playful reminiscences of MUDs and other era appropriate collective online experiences, closer to BBSs than to today.
If a thing matters, it can be struggled against, at the risk of breaking yourself, a risk that increases with each thing struggled with. If it doesn't matter, it advances and evolves like cancer, but maybe by not caring enough you can cut out the part of yourself where it metastasizes. If it only kind of matters, play the victim, griping and moaning and internalizing and stabilizing the trouble.
So, is this twenty year younger you that you play, who faces trials of life similar to those you did but contextualized through the lens of your friend's memories, is this young you a stoic? A victim? Sisyphus, bound to be crushed over and over in the struggle? Or someone a bit less of an Ideal but more of a Human?
I'm honestly a bit scared to ever play this. It's self evidently an emotional meat grinder, and looks designed to maximize bleed. I think it might secretly be a masterwork of horror game design.
Yeah, I think this might fall into the subgenre of ttrpgs as Machines That Hurt People.
It will definitely tend to produce stories about struggle, contextualized through lower energy MMO chatter, and if the group lets their thoughts drift to heavy matters it can turn very sad very quick.
I do think it's possible to play it with the problems being more wacky and low stakes, or to tell a more serious-toned digital adventure story along the lines of .Hack, but by default this might be an unhappy game.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
A beautiful concept. Relying aggressively on players bringing solid story game chops to the table, Cabbages explores something like Stoic Philosophy through playful reminiscences of MUDs and other era appropriate collective online experiences, closer to BBSs than to today.
If a thing matters, it can be struggled against, at the risk of breaking yourself, a risk that increases with each thing struggled with. If it doesn't matter, it advances and evolves like cancer, but maybe by not caring enough you can cut out the part of yourself where it metastasizes. If it only kind of matters, play the victim, griping and moaning and internalizing and stabilizing the trouble.
So, is this twenty year younger you that you play, who faces trials of life similar to those you did but contextualized through the lens of your friend's memories, is this young you a stoic? A victim? Sisyphus, bound to be crushed over and over in the struggle? Or someone a bit less of an Ideal but more of a Human?
I'm honestly a bit scared to ever play this. It's self evidently an emotional meat grinder, and looks designed to maximize bleed. I think it might secretly be a masterwork of horror game design.
Yeah, I think this might fall into the subgenre of ttrpgs as Machines That Hurt People.
It will definitely tend to produce stories about struggle, contextualized through lower energy MMO chatter, and if the group lets their thoughts drift to heavy matters it can turn very sad very quick.
I do think it's possible to play it with the problems being more wacky and low stakes, or to tell a more serious-toned digital adventure story along the lines of .Hack, but by default this might be an unhappy game.