The Outcast Lovers asks us to think about what we would really risk to save someone else. Would we endanger ourselves to protect a vulnerable person?
You’re an outcast political cartoonist in a land where certain ‘undesirable’ people have a tendency to go missing permanently. The English Protection Group (EPG) is known to make people disappear, and you’re already on thin ice with them. So, when someone in danger enters your life, you’re forced to ask yourself whether you’re willing to help them. Do you risk your own life to keep them safe? What is your life even worth to you if you turn your back on someone you know will be killed if they’re found by the EPG?
The game is a relentless single scene, charged with dread and filled with questions about your own humanity. You want it to be easy to be brave and help out this refugee. You want to feel that you’re a good person who would do the right thing. Would you, though? When the game presents the danger you’ll face for helping this person out, does that decision feel so easy any more? Even if it is within the parameters of a created experience and not a real one, don’t you start to really wonder what you would do in this situation? Don’t you wonder how close you are to this very situation right now?
I’ve said this before, but the works of developer Far Few Giants are vital in this day, asking us to take a moment to really sink into some morally-charged moments and really ask ourselves what we would do. To wonder whether we’ve already faced a moment like this without thinking about it, letting the vulnerable people in our lives suffer so that we don’t have to get hurt (or even inconvenienced). The Outcast Lovers creates a snapshot of such a moral question, delivering it with raw, unflinching clarity. It asks us to really, really examine ourselves, how we would react, and who we really are, deep down. And maybe it will prompt us to take steps to change into that person who would do the right thing, here.
The Outcast Lovers is available now on itch.io.
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