Let's Sperg Lets play Secret Little Haven - Pretending To Be a Girl on ICQ: The Game.

[Norvic]

Imagine you're 29 years old, you're a hipster who lives in Seattle and you've just made the decision to have your penis surgically removed. How did your life come to this? That's the question Victoria Dominowski attempts to answer with her semi-autobiographical game, Secret Little Haven.

Secret Little Haven is a game about being a teenager of unspecified age in 1999. Meet Alex. Alex's parents bought him a 'puter for Christmas, and it's the biggest mistake they'll ever make in their lives. In just 5 months, Alex has become a screaming weeb. He's addicted to an anime called Pretty Guardians Love Force, a Sailor Moon ripoff so blatant that even the creators of Tokyo Mew Mew would be embarrassed.

Alex is less a character, more of a type. If you know the premise of the game, you can rattle off his backstory without ever having played the game. Not popular at school? Check. Pretends to be someone he's not to try to fit in? Double check. Prefers his online friends to real life? Checkerino. Subtlety, we'll quickly discover, is not this game's forte.

As the game opens, we receive an IM from Alex's online friend Sam. Sam is very excited about a Pretty Guardians movie that has just been announced, but that opens in 3 days. I guess they do movie release schedules differently in Japan. Oh, and SPOILERS, the guy that hangs out with the Pretty Guardians, he's going to become a pretty guardian too. Did I mention this game isn't exactly subtle?

While we're in the middle of weebing out over this new movie, Alex is annoyingly interrupted by his real life school friend Andy. Andy is in to sports. Andy makes Alex feel like he doesn't fit in. Andy is guy's guy. Alex feels like he has to pretend around Andy. Andy comes from the same central casting agency as Alex.

Unfortunately, while we're concentrating on convincing Andy that we're 100% hetrosexual and in to chicks bro, we accidentally get baited in to agreeing to go to a basketball game on Saturday. The same Saturday the Pretty Guardians movie opens! Oh no! Our central conflict, and it's an earth shattering one.

How on earth will this awful situation be resolved? Find out next time on Lets Play Secret Little Haven.

 

[A Useless Fish]

Can't he just go to a later showing of the movie? If it's that big of a deal, it's bound to be on several times during the day.

Or is thinking things through for more than a second not recommended for this experience?

 

[Norvic]

Or is thinking things through for more than a second not recommended for this experience?

If you were inclined to want to believe in the message of this game, it's definitely one where you need to turn your brain off before playing.
Five minutes in and we've already encountered the absurdity of a film being released 3 days after it's announced, so expect your suspension of disbelief to be stretched to breaking point.

 

[A Useless Fish]

If you were inclined to want to believe in the message of this game, it's definitely one where you need to turn your brain off before playing.
Five minutes in and we've already encountered the absurdity of a film being released 3 days after it's announced, so expect your suspension of disbelief to be stretched to breaking point.

Understood. I'll fetch the absinthe.

 

[superscript]

Hyped bro for this weeb game with slang from 1999!

 

[Commander Keen]

That shit looks nothing like ICQ, the fantasy is shattered. I thought only pedos used ICQ anyway. My online friends in the 90s all used IRC and trolled various off-the-wall channels.

 

[Little Dude]

Unless this ends with the outing of irl Magical Girls, I can't envision it going places worth paying for. Victoria should have learned that the journey has to be worthwhile when the ending is spoiled by the author.