#this tiny middle-schooler was just waiting for a chaotic zombie breakout to happen

[no-wings-no-angel]

So, i just woke up from a dream that I was playing a zombie apocalypse game. It was set around a family of five plus two cats but they were my actual cats. Gameplay was rotational third person pov between the three daughters of the family, it was a bit like the twd games and until dawn / dark pictures anthology style: quick-time events, choices-matter, slight fight mechanics.

There was a mum and a dad, the children were sisters all about the same age (preteens/middle-schoolers) and all pretty much the same base model, only with different hair, eyes and clothes. Their characters were very trope-ey, summarized into 1. an annoying girl with long blonde hair that would either get someone killed out of pettiness and/or die by her own childish hubris, the kind that is hated by the general fandom and thorn to shreds despite being a child; 2. a little girl type with low pig tails and big eyes who would also die, but now by being an oblivious sheltered child (also she was the only one who called her father “daddy” all the time and sat on her mother’s lap even though she is visibly 12 or so), loved and patronised to death by fandom but more of an idea of innocence than an actual character; and 3. an unreasonably well-prepared tomboy who wore a cap and had short hair, also the most (if not only) likeable girl character, a fan favourite that would make everyone compliment and rave on about how the game has a strong girl character and good female representation and how she is a feminist icon, maybe make some 30 year old men angry just for being generally smart (Most of these judgings of fandom were my opinions during the dream. I remember thinking they were all pretty unrealistic and had to remind myself to check for women in the game’s production later). Dad was a Strong And White Male Protagonist type. Mum was gorgeous, nice and loving but not much else, always kept the pigtails girl in her sight. I remember the game introducing the sisters by some petty discussion between them and me going “aw shit, they’ll end up killing each other, won’t they?” and hating it. The little girl and hubris girl had some sort of sibling drama going on that would probably kill them later but overall respected the tomboy a lot.

I was surprised by the dad being unplayable, since he was THE Sweet and Strong but Rough Around the Edges older man material that would make the daddy-issues-ridden and the chronically-thristy fanbase alike CRAWL to him like flies to a corpse and cry their hearts out online when he certainly dies protecting the ones he loves.

The weird part about them was that they were all the very white and light eyed picket fence suburban north american types and acted like it, which was funny i guess. They did not fit the setting at all, considering their very low-middle-class / working people / just-out-of-the-city-centre brazillian home: one level but elevated on a stone foundation so it won’t be on the same level of the street, made of bricks and cement, small grass patch but mostly cement courtyard in that broken tile shard style, everyone gets in by the kitchen back door despite having a nice entrance door to the living room (guests only, duh), round archs on the waist-tall front wall and gate (the cement/tile part of the front yard was all covered from the sorta-porch to the wall and gate, including the clothes hanging line and parking space, i can’t explain it very well), etc.

I was very anxious about the family cats, since there was some ambiguity about if the messy and ripped trash bags were work by zombies already inside their lot or by the cats (and about them generally being animals in a zombie apocalypse game). As one of the sisters (the annoying hubris one) was gathering them to lock them in her bedroom, one zombie spotted her from across the wall (even though she crouched behind the thick block front stairs before it looked her way) and she quietly held the cats to dear life, anxiously hoping they wouldn't meow or screech. It started throwing stuff like boxes and bottles in the yard on the general direction of the child and i screamed “THEY CAN THROW SHIT IN HERE???” since i’m more used to the twd walker, dumb and slow type of zombie.

When i had to decide on a timed choice between screaming for help (and probably attracting all the idle zombies on street) or trying sprint into the house (and hope that the zombie wouldn't jump over the waist-height wall and wasn't secretly super fast or something) i woke up in panic. I have great anxiety about this type of decisions-matter horror games, so it took a while before i calmed down. Also those were MY little bastard cats.

Only good thing about the game was the first scene, which was a great, rainy and progressivly faster drive through my actual city, which isn't a global city by any means, so i was impressed that an english language game was set in it (yeah, it was all in english for some reason. Again, weirdly all characters passed as very white north americans and had north american mentalities and only spoke english. Dream logic). Fucking great scene, really, the characters (just the tomboy and dad, mum and other sisters were home) thought it was just one normal 5 pm jamming, but after going through some short-cuttings the roads went clear and tension rose as they sped through it all, the crying desperate people, wrecked cars, fires and all that nice zombie breakout stuff, it was very movie-esque. As they were approaching home pov slowly shifts to the little girl sister lying on the grass, drawing her family with mum and sister around her.

Now editing this 5 am ramble i kinda wonder if this dream game of mine would subvert all of the tropes and supposedly shit writing of the girls and make them actual reasonable and well-rounded child characters with their own strengths and faults as the story progresses or really be a mediocre (but very beautiful, speaking graphics and photography) game. Guess I’ll never know