Last year, Domino Club—a game dev/art collective with a wonderfully rebellious queer manifesto—published Greasemnk++, a punishing possibly-apocalyptic gay sci-fi RPG and our game of the year. Not too long later, they’ve produced another complex gem, one of a different genre and tone yet of familiar audaciousness, and one that could very well grace our lists for 2024 with a bit more polish: a drug-addled sports visual novel called SUDDEN DEATH.
Billed loudly as “ROMANTIC SPORTS FICTION,” SUDDEN DEATH opens with a line that perfectly encapsulates every waking second of the work: “Much of the appeal of sport derives from its dependence on elegant gibberish.”
The frequent employment of moveable and clickable windows gives the reader the feeling they experience SUDDEN DEATH’s story through tabloids and comment sections.
Sports on the Surface
If that line is remotely familiar to you, then that—combined with the fact you’re reading this review of a visual novel on a gay adult entertainment site—makes you the target audience for SUDDEN DEATH. That quote is from Don Delillo’s End Zone, a satirical novel that is as much about football as it is about the destruction of language. It tackles many things at once, and so, too, do the Australian footy players of SUDDEN DEATH.
RELATED: Greasemnk++ — Gay Wrath Given Violent Flesh
SUDDEN DEATH is about a lot of things: hypocrisy in drug regulation, society’s collective ability to forgive transgressions of athletes if they perform well enough or wear the right jersey, and the arbitrary line between “performance” and “violence.” But all of that hangs like a wreath on its characters, and the game’s heart: Mitch and Jordy, and the pain of falling in love with someone bent on self destruction.
Gay Athletes Underneath
Mitch and Jordy’s interactions on and off the mound are the real reason to sink about an hour of delightful reading into this not-too-far-int-the-future ditherpunk sport, and it’s clear the writer, Cecile Richard, felt the same way. Whereas much of the prose and inner workings of SUDDEN DEATH may veer so close to Don Delillo or Jon Bois’s writing to smack of a bit more than tribute, Mitch and Jordy leap off the screen fully formed and engaging, rising far and above the themes they play around in.
A long section of gripping sports play-by-play gets followed by a very different play-by-play, blurring the lines between the two.
Mitch, the mustached blonde team captain, wants two things desperately: he wants his team, the Pikers, to win in an honorable way, and he wants his fuck buddy and teammate, Jordy, to say that he loves him. This brings him into increasing odds with Jordy and the league, however, as every team juices with league-approved substances that the Pikers can’t get their hands on, and Jordy’s the sort of guy that doesn’t mind breaking a few rules to make dreams come true.
Great For Free, But We Still Want More
It is important to hearken back to Don Delillo’s End Zone here, as some major criticism it received at the time of its release was a somewhat anti-climatic ending. SUDDEN DEATH also suffers from this, though for a much more understandable reason: it is, despite the incredible polish and attention to detail, a free game from DOMINO CLUB’s Bodies in Motion jam. There are small things within the last 10 minutes of SUDDEN DEATH‘s runtime that are perhaps far too open ended (Jordy’s plan immediately comes to mind) that one can only hope an expansion on the ideas and universe presented here is on the way.
And maybe more will never come. As it is, SUDDEN DEATH is an enthralling experience, one easily knocked out over dinner. But the vision is strong enough, and largely unrivaled in the gaming space, for us to not want just a bit more of Jordy and Mitch. Then again, maybe that’s just a symptom of the juice, too.
PROS
- Instantly engaging queer drama with a unique setting
- A head-spinning play-by-play section with some of the tightest sports writing seen in a visual novel perhaps ever
- Mitch
- Jordy
- Really, the entire Pikers club is comprised of characters one can fall in love with easily and instantly
CONS
- Aside from Mitch and Jordy, one wonders if the writer wears their influences a bit too much
- Inconclusive ending
OVERALL: 72/100
Sources: Domino Club, Bodies in Motion
