Milky Way Prince - The Vampire Star is not a pleasant experience.
These things aren’t alluded to or discussed through the veil of metaphor; they aren’t themes.
They are the entirety of the story, the entirety of the game.
Even beyond its unpleasantness, Milky Way Prince’s depiction is aggressively literal.
Why make that, and why play it?
That notion is a popular one but it is only half-true, and it’s clumsy.
The wrong kind of depiction can do more harm than good.
What would the message of Milky Way Prince be, in that case?
Nothing any reasonable person doesn’t already know.
The real answer, I think, is technique.
Milky Way Prince is the work of Italian developer Lorenzo Redaelli and his micro-studio, Eyeguys.
And, even ignoring the fact it’s a debut, it is masterly stuff.
To dig at and to challenge.
This is the good stuff.
You fall into an entirely flawed version of love.
What happens next is, in many ways, less important than how.
Nuki and Sune’s relationship is quick and vicious.
As Nuki you’ll work your way through waves of internal monologue, unanimously self-doubting, depressive, self-loathing.
There are a half-dozen things to interact with, adventure game-style, in your room.
The nursery rhyme book that opens the story sits on a shelf for you to re-read.
it’s possible for you to plink-plonk on a piano, gradually developing an appropriately melancholic tune.
Seemingly small choices made with things like this will branch Milky Way Prince’s story.
Before which date do you apply your final bit of perfume?
Do you shave, the way Sune apparently likes it?
Can you ever take your medication?
More consequential though is your choice of dialogue, branching but also ingeniously capricious.
But again, what matters here is the how of it.
Redaelli plays with form relentlessly.
All of this pulls together most effectively in the most unchartered of territories for video games: sex.
Will you always protect me?
Each time it’s followed by five rotating symbols, to represent the senses.
It’s a special kind of deliberate ridiculousness, one that takes genuine maturity of thought.
That can be an almighty powerful experience; it can also, on occasion, feel a little crass.
