Analogue: An Even More Hateful Story - Hate Plus

When Christine Love writes, you should probably listen. She's proven incredibly capable of spinning choice-powered yarns around love and hate, weaving in themes of misogyny, history, the ramifications of technology, and many more with a deft, personal hand. Seriously, if you're not convinced, go read Kieron (pre-vengeful virtual ghost state) and Alec's respective write-ups of Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story. Then join me after the break for the first details on There's Not A Pre-Subtitle This Time: Hate Plus.

But OK, the title is still kinda long. This time around, the full thing's Hate Plus: Mute’s Golden Days. It's a direct sequel to Analogue, too, so expect more ships, AIs, and divisive art styles. Love explained:

"Hate Plus is a sequel to Analogue: A Hate Story that continues directly from the end of that game, and explores, over the course of three days, the events leading up to year 0. If Analogue was the backstory of *Hyun-ae, then Hate Plus is the backstory of *Mute. It plays similarly to Analogue, but instead of your AI companion simply showing you files they’ve picked, you’ll have to investigate yourself, and discover what happened together."

If you have an Analogue save file sitting around, you'll be able to resume right where you left off with choices intact - which in theory makes this story even more multifarious than Love's previous games, given that it can both begin and end at multiple, fairly different points.

It'll be out this summer, with an improved UI and More Words Than Ever Before in tow. I know, I know: you (probably) don't play games to read. But that's a mistake because a) brilliant people are expressing all kinds of interesting, provocative, heartfelt stuff via Twine and b) words are the greatest. Hate Plus, then, is probably something you should be very excited about it. Also, summers are usually super happy and gross. NEEDS MORE HATE YEAH THAT'S THE PUNCHLINE HERE I GUESS.