...okay. This was actually the first game that was ever pitched to this channel, but I've been saving it. You've gotten to know me a little by now, right? you know my sensibilities, you trust my critique enough to at least hear me out. cause i'm gonna need you to trust me on this one. it might not be for you--it wasn't for me when i read it--but it's worth your respect, and it's worth your time.
okay? cool. here. I'll preface it a little bit.
Darling Demon Eclipse wrote a treatise called Faggot Games: an Urgent Warning. In it, she suggests that a faggot game exemplifies loud, brazen, queer sexuality; has a central role for fetish and kink; has challenging unexpected visuals, blends the cozy and the macabre. It is a full-throated challenge to a rising paradigm that seeks to erase and redact queer existence by any means necessary. What, at this moment, is the point of being polite and palatable? why give up our edges and make ourselves small; who benefits? The picket fence clean-cut homosexuals can sneer at the polyamorous neopronoun bungenders all they want, it's not bun's hand on the wheel steering us into fascism. the kink and leather communities were vital to the origins of gay pride, interlaced like corset ribbons with the queer community. We dismiss that bond at our own peril.
it's in this solidarity that i bring you slug fest by tocixcog.
slug fest has two goals: to have fun, and to get you off. slug fest wants you to slime up and wriggle around, to have weird beautiful sex in a weird beautiful arthropod anthro bod. you can have a shell if you want, it doesn't mind.
i was surprised by the sheer variety of sensuous writhing in slug fest. I, an outsider and a fool, thought, surely one would exhaust the limits of the soft and slick relatively quickly. slug fest says, no, in fact, there are at least 22 ways to squirm in delight. Something tells me tocixcog had to narrow it down to these 22 unique features of slugdom (not to be confused with slugdomme), 22 different partners to roll around with, and all themed thoughtfully to the major arcana card that instigates them in play. Slug fest doesn't care what deck you use--in fact, it even suggests you could number some index cards 0-21 and shuffle those. But, the prompts still understand each tarot card's underlying meanings, utilizing them not just as numbered prompts but as structural frames from which the fantasies enticingly droop. My favorite is probably [the magician], but they're all great in their own ways, and I won't spoil the rest for you. It's a free game, find the link in the description, take a look for yourself, and toss tocixcog a tip and a thoughtful comment while you're there.
slug fest's system is based on the To Change system by Duck and Ewen. slug fest sells itself as a single player journaling game, and the play is all in the fantasy. slug fest sets up the scenario for you, and wants you to play it out for yourself. The prompts are provocative and compelling, and ooze with glee no matter the situation they pose you in. Sometimes the transformation finds you willing, sometimes it catches you by surprise; but it's always interesting, and always an opportunity to enjoy yourself and get a little sexy and a little silly. sex is already kind of ridiculous, isn't it?
i think it's interesting that its illustrations portray the human elements of the sexy slug people relatively normatively. There are rows and rows of tits, and they're all water balloon perky. The head and shoulders at the front of the long soft slug body have delicate collarbones and pretty faces smiling from behind long locks. I understand that the contrast is part of the appeal here; the contrasting symbols of slug and sex symbol making the one titillating, the other queasy. The bouncy tits undeniably sexualize the slug body where less exaggerated features might allow some interpretive leeway. That, too, is a part of the fantasy; to simultaneously be thin and attractive, and also moist and flaccid. To delight normative sexuality, and also to perplex and repulse it. It is a cheeky push and pull, coupled with the majority of the prompts assuming you have a human partner. slug fest has space for slithery slug-on-slug action, of course, what are we doing here, but it doesn't treat it with as much nuance or variation as the human partner options, leaving that to the player's imagination beyond the prompts.
There is no end state to slug fest. you start with one cause that transforms you; then, you explore each event as it changes you bit by bit into and out of and back into the slug you were always meant to be. stop whenever you like. start whenever you like. you're on slime time now, there's no rush. The back of the book is full of lovingly and beautifully rendered body options to choose from, why not try each on for size? How does that change the events you play? Are arms really that important, ultimately?
There's a lot to like about slug fest. The pdf itself is full of hyperlinks that make it a breeze to flip back and forth, the tone of the writing is fun and flirty and coy, and the game mechanically encourages the same kind of mix-and-matching of the prompts as it does its paper doll-like bodily features. it's not perfect; i find the main font really unpleasant to read and the text could really use some space to breathe between the columns and the art, but that's my only real complaint. Like I said at the top, it's not my bag, but I do admire it and I think it does what it sets out to do successfully and with gusto.
I'm just a hagfish fellow, myself. Totally different.