Everyone is used to the fact that visual novels are mountains of text and dialogues that we scroll through in order not only to find out how it all ends, but also to pick up the next anime girl. Therefore, everything that stands out from such a topic immediately attracts increased attention. Athanasy in this sense, a particularly striking example and a rare case when the authors’ promises to show “a well-developed universe like you have never seen before” turn out to be very close to the truth.
Machines of Grace and Love
Before us seems to be a classic dystopia. After the catastrophe known as the Violet Death, human civilization was essentially concentrated in one large underground City. As usual, it is divided into the upper one, where officials of various ministries live, and the lower one, where people, let’s say, more simply live in their clusters, and then reach the “final assembly” – this gives them a chance to be assigned to one of the ministries, to the position of some junior statistician, which is already considered a great success and a leap in career.
At the same time, everyone works for the benefit of the City and idolizes the Machines of Grace and Love, which maintain a closed ecosystem, providing everyone with biopolymer food and other resources. Yes, those in power rule not by corporate charters, but by religious doctrines.
There are, of course, secret revolutionaries from the Non-Resistance who want to come to the surface and see the sky. But in this case, the streets are patrolled by local guards with batons: in case of any suspicious behavior, they will quickly be taken for questioning, and from there – for “correction” or to the Temple of a Gentle Death.
Therefore, religious sermons here are closely related to denunciations, when you can hand over your neighbor directly to your confessors, who, logically, are called correctors – they should regularly confess. It is not surprising that many, in order to forget, drink the local drug – soma, although the majority have access to algae beer (almost everything here is algae, even cookies).
Temple of Tender Death and the Dungeon of Talking Flesh
In general, a classic picture of dystopia. But there are also strange things. Periodically, the main character dreams of living flesh – an endless mass of bones, skin, muscles and eyes. And moreover, she talks to him, calls him to her. And why people in this City never get sick, and wounds heal almost instantly? Why do everyone live up to a maximum of 40 years, and then they are sent to the Temple of Tender Death??
One of the plot lines, already at https://casinosnogamstop.co.uk/review/magic-win/ the beginning, can lead us to the dungeons under the city, where people are “corrected” to the level of grotesque monsters with pus-covered claws instead of hands and forced to work, sticking claws into that very talking flesh. The one who doesn’t work doesn’t eat – and the same monsters act as food, but they have already served their purpose (they are called vegetables). The feeding looks like this: the main “cook” devours vegetables, and then spits out the “soup” directly into the mouths of the rest of the workers.
The overseers are real demons with whips made of bones, ready to tear to pieces those who are slacking from work. And in the back streets of the dungeons you can meet a strange creature, which for some reason is called a horse. If you feed him your flesh, the horse will agree to help and this is what he will tell you about that very living flesh that everyone calls Film: “She fights to escape because she has to, but she sabotages herself in order to maintain the illusion of a prison, in order to preserve that part of herself that can create the illusion of escape from herself, because unfortunately she is omnipresent and eternal…”
What’s going on.
A game of real nonlinearity
And a real cool biopunk is happening, making you remember not “1984”, but the books Harry Harrison (Harry Harrison) and Paula Di Filippo (Paul Di Filippo), films "Island" And "Gattaca", creation David Cronenberg (David Cronenberg) and Hans Giger (Hans Giger). And after, closer to the end, we learn the shocking truth about one scientific experiment, everything that seemed like nonsense will be combined into a single, completely logical picture.
But until then, the main character, a young man named Josiah Kaviani, will have to painfully search for answers, choosing whether to remain in the faith or take the dangerous path of heresy. Even before becoming an official in the Ministry of Demography, he discovered inconsistencies in official data indicating that the Machines of Grace and Love may receive resources from the outside, from the surface, which means there may be life there.
Along this path, Josiah will experience personal tragedy, fall madly in love with a mysterious stranger, learn the ugly truth about his superiors and get the opportunity to join the local resistance. Although you can not join, betray and generally choose paths that at first glance seem wrong.
Athanasy What’s so catchy is that there is a sense of real non-linearity here, and already at the very beginning you can, having seemingly died, not see Game Over on the screen, but open a completely different story path. And in the future there will be many important forks. And you pass through every choice – this story is so addictive. I somehow caught myself that, having gone into the kitchen to smoke a cigarette or two, I continue to scroll through options for action and even emotionally imagine what I would say in Kaviani’s place in such a situation – and such an immersion rarely happens to me.
Everything is bad, but interesting
Careful elaboration of the world, high-quality dialogues and, in principle, texts, an oppressive atmosphere felt by the skin, created, among other things, by music specially written for the game, almost flawless work of the artists – all this contributes to immersion. Yes, the dialogue may seem graphomaniacal in places (the eternal gift and curse of Russian visual novels!), and in the plot, if you wish, you can find not only logical holes, but, let’s say, oddities, but everything remains within the permissible error.
Yes, apart from the above there is nothing here – no puzzles, no mini-games, no elements of other genres. But, as practice shows, in VN this is often done for show and only distracts. And in this case, I don’t want to be distracted from history and reading.
It’s just a pity, most of the endings are sad – the more I wanted to find the path that would lead to a good one. But it’s not for nothing that the authors write on the page Athanasy on Steam about "the full range of endings – from bad to downright terrible". And about the fact that “some of the screenwriter’s ideas were not censored as too dark and cruel… but most of them remained”.
Yes, Athanasy – the game is dark, even difficult. But this made the story even more interesting and catchy. In any case, you want to follow her until the credits roll, worry about the fate of the characters, decide what to do, and replay in search of at least some light in this nightmare of flesh, blood, betrayal and unfulfilled dreams. One of the best visual novels made in Russia.
Pros: fascinating plot; many options for developing the story; unusual and carefully crafted setting; The story and dialogue are generally well written; the game looks and sounds great.
Cons: there are questions about some plot situations; some texts suffer from graphomania.
