Repression

General Recommendation: I definitely recommend this game, in addition to the usual elements of humor in EndMaster’s works, this one has an additional layer of depth.
Preview: Can you break out of the cycle of emotional repression you’re stuck in in a way that improves your life?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
I think this work is best read after one has already read a number of EndMaster’s other games and has a sense of what to expect from them. The way this game subverts player expectations means more when you fully understand how different this game could easily have been.
In a lot of ways, I see this game as a companioin piece to “A very special choose your story” (hereafter called AVSCYS). Both focus on the misadventures of a high school loser, and both are incredibly clever in their own ways. However, while AVSCYS focuses on the powerlessness of the narrator to change things, this game does the opposite: It focuses on the incredible power and agency the narrator has to affect the world around him.
Whereas in AVSCYS, no matter what you do you wind up dead or otherwise humiliated, in this game all of your actions are charged with consequence and meaning. Every action you take has an effect on your mental health and the lives of others. The wide variety of endings is where this game really shines. This, more than anything shows the power the narrator has to turn his life in a multitude of different directions.
This game also deserves praise for the complexity and nuance of its moral lessons. Too many similar stories seem to be trying to deliver a message that can be boiled down to a neat pithy phrase (as done humorously in AVSCYS). However, these pithy phrases can never be applied in all cases in real life. By instead showing how different actions have different outcomes in different situations, this game potrays a much more powerful statement about the complexity and difficulty of navigating of the real world.

Specific notes:
-The repeated refrain of “you feel nothing”, echoed across many of the bad endings really hammers in the bleakness of the narrator’s life. He has no hopes, no connections, nothing to live for, and can’t see any way to change his situation. The fact that this refrain is repeated multiple times helps to make this sense much more powerful. The wide variety of nothing endings makes the endings where you do succeed more powerful.
-Most of the “you feel nothing” endings do this, but the catatonia ending in particular shows just how detached and hopeless the protagonist of this story is.
-The sequence where you kill your mom and go on a shooting/try to cover it up with your sister is somewhat disconnected from the rest of the story, but nevertheless plays an important role. Covering up the murder shows the sense of panic and disorientation that prevades the narrator’s life; after having killed his mother, he’s more shocked and surprised than anything else.
-This game really gives the player two kinds of choices: You decide what to do, and then you decide how to feel about it. After killing your mom, you can panic, or you can keep your head. After deciding to go on a killing spree, you can decide if you care about revenge, or just causing chaos. This game is more than just events happening one after another, it’s an exploration of the ways the narrator’s emotional reactions affect himself and the world around him.
-I like that characters appear across multiple branches, and that events remain consistent. Henry is bullying Aaron when you arrive at school no matter what, but depending on your earlier choices, your reaction to this event can be very different. At the same time, the player is allowed to get different information about the characters depending on which path they encounter them on. On the shooting path, you don’t learn much about Jessica, but what you do learn adds depth and groundwork to her appearances in other pathes.
-Again, I’d like to draw a contrast between the shooting in this game and the one in AVSCYS. While that game focuses (very effectively) on the dark humor of the situation, this one takes a much more introspective look at the narrator’s decisions. EndMaster is capable of approaching the subject from a variety of different angles, each of which have their own value.
-If you do choose to follow the school shooting path, it’s fitting that you can’t get any endings where you feel something. You can die and find a kind of peace, but no outcome leads to any kind of emotional resolution. This isn’t the way for the narrator to find answers.
-The narrator finds relief in some of the “you feel nothing” endings, which is fitting. Many people in depressive states like this one are reluctant to leave them because of the emotional vulnerability they’ll be opening themselves up to.
-It’s interesting the wide range of interaction the narrator can have with the mother. There’s the incest, obviously, but there’s also murder, alleigance, hate, compassion, and disgust. It can be tough to have such a wide range of character interactions while keeping all personalities consistent, but neither the narrator nor the mother ever seem to deviate from their base personalities. The wide variety of interactions sheds light on the complex relationship the characters have, rather than feeling like disparate stories.
-You can get positive endings by choosing to side with your mother or sister, as doing this is at least expressing some kind of emotion. However, dividing your family means you can’t get the best ending of making peace in your family, you can only improve your own personal situation.
-After siding with your sister, the game has a nice progression where you can choose whether to interfere or not in a variety or disputes. In some cases your help is appreciated, in others, it’s obnoxious or unwelcome. The game does a good job of showing how the context of the situation matters, and that good ideas and principles can’t be applied unanimously to every situation. Trying to get too big too fast is just as depressing as doing nothing, and ultimately drags the narrator back down into his depression.
-The game also shows well that choosing to change and rebel isn’t enough, you have to do so thoughtfully and effectively, otherwise you’re just trading one bad situation for another. You can end up becoming just like your sister, or just like your mom, who are each dysfunctional in their own ways. Or, you can get a lifestyle that seems superficially satisfying, but doesn’t resolve any of your internal doubts.
-I like that the game allows some endings to be mediocre, like the one where “you feel normal”. There’s no real victory here, but things have changed a little, in a way that is mostly positive. This reflects real life, most of the time outcomes aren’t clear cut.
-All of the arcs in this game are about power, but the arc where you side with your sister is about aggressive power. You are not a peacemaker, but you can be a victor, a bully, a rebel, a defender, or any number of active roles. This is a good contrast to the arc where you side with your mom and never get access to the same kind of power, and to the arc where you side with neither, and develop the power to affect positive change in more subtle ways.
-Again, reaching out to your mom works, reaching out to Henry doesn’t. Different approaches are needed for different people.

Grammar
There are a few grammatical errors in the game.
Mastery of Language
Sentence structure is mostly good, though there are issues in places.

Branching
Quite good, there’s a lot of different ways this game can go. The wide variety of different possibilities adds to the game’s theme.

Player Options/fair choice
Not great, certain actions lead to choices the player doesn’t really have control over. But that’s not really the point of this game, so it doesn’t create any problems.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Playing this game a few years ago, the very first ending I reached was group hug.

CONCLUSION: An entertaining, well written, and surprisingly thoughtful look at the life of a repressed teenager.

Ahh, finally the random storygame button was good to me.

Repression might be Endmaster's simplest and most straightforward game. It's a very quick read and while the story has these big moments of dark and absurdist humor, I think many can relate to the loner high school loser who just feels dead inside. (Especially on this site.)

Emotions as the tagline suggests are a key thing here, the better endings all require you to break the cycle of numb repetition the character's life has become. Although doing that of course is easier said than done, because you're weird fucking loser and much of what you awkwardly attempt will backfire. But approached this way, even ending up catatonic in a mental ward can be seen as a small success.

Then there's the points where the game is clearly just having fun with you as you begin your day, getting ready to deal with your overbearing mom and then going to school, as kids will do. Hugging your family after a heart to heart talk, that kind of thing. (While trying to shove the body in the closet was so messed up and hilarious that I remember it clearly from when I first read the game years ago, it's a wtf moment that outshines the more infamous hug scene in my opinion.)

The "hug" by the way, even though it's a meme by this point, it doesn't read as all that shocking? The events are unexpected, but Endmaster has a tasteful way of handling phrasing so that it's clearly just going for laughs and the surprise factor, not actually mind scarring or anything as people sometimes build it up to be.

Once all the mayhem and fun is had on the opposite path, the 'true' winning endings of the game are actually quite wholesome and healthy, with good moral lessons all around in how to be a normal person, more confident and emotionally connected to people without going overboard. The sister also gets a surprising amount of characterization once you actually start to talk to her, and I liked Jessica too despite her not having a huge role in things.

If this had only been featured in the old School-Based section all along, it might've inspired copycats and then we wouldn't have had to nuke that category.

This game is actually kind of artistic in an unexpected way. It’s got the gross-out comedy and the over-the-top sexual and violent situations from Basement Dwellers, but this is way more sophisticated.

The constant refrain in the endgames of “You feel…” followed by the emotion you’ve found was great. That was artistic and interesting and tied the whole game together, making it feel like one unified entity.

I think the game sort of folds into three part, and I discovered the three parts in exactly the right order. First you experience stumbling through the horror and the bleakness, and the no-way-out of dead-end emotions.

You can’t help anyone, and you can’t impress anyone, and everything is horrible.

Then, you figure out, wait, I can do stuff with these emotions. I can shoot people and defeat them physically, and degrade the bodies of the people who humiliated me. It’s a kind of hollow victory, and the game clearly shows that that sort of victory kind of sucks. Or do nothing at all and end up a catatonic shell. This part shows what happens when the repression of the main character is ripped suddenly away.

Then you figure out that you can create more real victories by taking a stand and supporting your mother or sister and not escaping or keeping your head down. And this way, yes, you get the incestuous stories, which is another kind of repression lifted, but aside from the shock value there’s surprisingly hopeful and happy endings with no shock at all. Now I’m dating Jessica, and things seem brighter. Or now I’ve allied with my sister, and I have a friend in her and the air is getting cleared. I would *never* have expected those ending to be here, and I actually found them better written than any other endings. (aside from the shooting at school, barricaded with Jessica. That was pretty brutal and really well written too.)

So I went into this thinking I know what I was going to be reading, and about 1/3 of the way through, I realized that there was more depth here than I thought. I’m authentically impressed.

Ok

Always hate when theres only one correct answer to choose and the rest end the story, whats the point in having opinions then???

That was interesting.

Well articulated story. Would love to read more.

...i'm just gonna say that so far, each and every single ending is f*cked up. its interesting tho.

ended up in jail, nice

Repression isn't so simple as one would believe when first playing through this dark but hilarious tale.

Like onions and ogres, it has layers.

<<<SPOILERS BELOW>>>

You play as a very mentally-flawed teenage boy with a cunt for a mother and a whore for a sister. In other words, the gods dealt you a shitty hand. The point of the game seems to be the message that, just like in real life, you can either focus on playing that hand as best you can or intentionally throw the game and face the consequences.

You can try and get through everything as normal a person as possible, well-meaning in intent and thought, or you can go absolutely batshit insane and check out the darker paths and endings. Some are even heavily mixed in bad and good, such as the incest ending. Endmaster seeks to have a bit of commentary many people should hear, but he doesn't take it too seriously, and people who don't need to hear this message can still get a kick out of it.

No matter what you're going through, you can still choose to change and live the life you truly are able to. Maybe even have the reputation you seek and the relationships you dream of. The point is to try, but not try too hard. This all shines through in how the game is written; chase after Jessica and it turns out she actually likes you, but don't be too pushy with helping her, and be patient and not a fucking monster on your first date. Repair your relationship with your sister, but don't pick fights you can't win and white knight a relative, but also don't obsess over her approval and join her in her irresponsible habits.

Its a humorous yet darkly-real take on mental health and being "normal." Some concepts such as these have real roots to them, and those should be discussed over letting people revel in true faggotry.

On my first day on this site, I dare say I had a "Repression" moment, where I tried too hard to earn approval from people I liked on an internet level and ended up being a huge retard. I had to step back and realize what I was doing, and, like the character in this game if you make the right choices, I chose redemption, or at least an attempt at it, rather than dying a massive asshole.

Whether intentional or not, EndMaster crafted a cautionary tale, here, and a fun one at that.