![]() Despite being a Sony venture in Japan, and despite being a game that Sony commissioned specifically because they wanted a horror game, both the European and American branches of the company took a hard pass on the title. Which was why Sony Computer Entertainment refused to publish it in the West. The game gives credence to the sexual orientation and sexualities of literal children in some deliberately uncomfortable cutscenes, and enables players to actually murder child-like creatures called “imps.” It’s the sort of thing Lars von Trier would probably make if he were in the business of making video games, and the type of content most publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. That goes double for the way most of these issues are depicted in-game. ![]() It’s the sort of thing that would be difficult to get funding for today, and it’s almost unbelievable that it could get made when it did. In 2006, Punchline dealt with heavy topics like suicide, child abuse, queer sexuality, and gender dysphoria, contextualizing all of them in the framework of a psychological thriller. This is the most barebones descriptor of the plot possible, as the actual narrative content is among some of the most tragic, twisted, and flatout bizarre in the medium. They verbally and physically degrade her, as she tries to both unravel the mystery of the group and uncover a series of repressed traumas. She’s then forced into indentured servitude by the Red Crayon Aristocrats, a terrifying group of preteen girls who basically exist to make Jennifer’s life a living hell. ![]() On a nice afternoon out, she finds herself trapped in an abandoned orphanage and promptly knocked unconscious and dragged to an abandoned warehouse. Released in 2006, Rule of Rose follows Jennifer – a young woman in 1930’s England.
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