by JAKE MUNCY
Aevee Bee, Mia Schwartz, Lulu Blue
Best friends, married couples, business partners: Human intimacy tends to work in dyads. We Know the Devil is a visual novel, written by indie game critic and zinester Aevee Bee, interested in how pairing off can hurt when you’re the one left out.
It’s a game about the terror of choosing who to grow close to, especially when you’re young and just figuring out your sexuality. Oh, and it’s set at a summer camp where delinquent teens must defend each other from the Devil.
We Know the Devil stars three teens: sweet Venus, self-loathing but spunky Jupiter, and sullen and snarky Neptune. As the player, you don’t directly control any of the three. Instead, your method of interaction is to choose who gets to spend time together. You get to choose pairings, nudging two characters closer together at the expense of the third.
It’s a pared-down version of the relationship-building we’ve come to expect from role-playing games, designed to prod at our intentions and our assumptions about the way these relationships work.
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