RAPEY COMPUTER GAME OF THE WEEK

I have this routine I like to do whenever parents or politicians or some other type of zealot decries a video game as perverted. I like to take off all my clothes, smear myself in lubricant, and sit down to play something that’s actually perverted. Something like Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, which is an independently developed PC game about seducing people, taking them home, torturing them, and uploading a snuff film of their death to the internet. It’s also a love story.

Players in Beautiful Escape take on the role of Verge, a lonely 20-something sadist who’s hopelessly in love with an indifferent boy called Daily. Both Verge and Daily are “Dungeoneers”--an online group whose members have strong feelings about the fine art of building a dungeon, imprisoning people inside it, and then filming their attempted escape through a gauntlet of razorblades, blowtorches, fake doors, and rape traps. They then upload their films to the Dungeoneers site.

To the Dungeoneers, the dream end to a torture session is the titular “Beautiful Escape,” wherein the “sobber” successfully escapes your dungeon, but is left too emotionally and physically damaged to think about anything else for the rest of their life.

Reading all that you might assume Beautiful Escape is just a questionable exercise in bad taste, but it’s actually a lovely little piece of work. Verge’s relationship with the Dungeoneers is interesting, as the only people who understand him also think his videos are trash. The act of trying to get strangers to come home with you is also exciting in a rapey sort of way, and at its crux the game has its own moral dilemma. You need to learn about the sobber’s background to deploy charm in the right places, but the more you know about them, the more upsetting it feels to strip them naked and send them hopping over a line of drills.

It’s also short. Beautiful Escape takes very little time to tell its story, and once it’s done with that the game is over, leaving you to mull your actions over in a pool of shame and confusion. Kind of like going clubbing in Bolton.

If you’re interested in playing Beautiful Escape (and of course you’re interested, you fucking pervert), you’ll find it right here. Perhaps you’d also be interested in the developer’s other magnum opus, Marvel Brothel? Well, there it is.

QUINTIN SMITH

1 year ago

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