The SuperDQP Weekly - December 9, 2024

The Class of ‘09 games are… a lot. I find them captivating, in a not-entirely-pleasant way. There’s a lot that I need to vent about.

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A Game Recommendation

This newsletter is going to be pretty heavy, and let’s face it, I think most of us need something dumb right now.

For today’s recommendation, we’re going for some real junk food slop.

I think every consumer of art and entertainment needs their go-to comfort food for rainy days when the energy just isn’t there, and for me, in the gaming landscape, few developers excel at this better than Team Ladybug, a Japanese indie dev who makes eye-popping metroidvanias and shmups with gorgeous, lavishly detailed pixel art and animation.

Their games are dumb, and they know they’re dumb. I wouldn’t be the first one to compare their games to a lot of Treasure’s work on the Sega Genesis and Saturn. Big, explosive, short dopamine rushes with lots of explosions, killer sound design, and very tight game feel.

And if you want to get into Team Ladybug’s work, I think Drainus is an excellent place to start.

It’s a shmup along the lines of Gradius or Thunder Force where the main twist is that you can temporarily absorb certain bullets or obstacles and throw them back at enemies, and save them for power-ups. But the real twist, the ja ne sais quoi of Team Ladybug’s oeuvre, is the beautiful sights and sounds, the artistic direction and dedication to making everything feel really good.

It is simple and actually pretty easy compared to most other shmups, but on a depressed, lazy afternoon, Drainus is magic. Junk like no other. Mwah.

Drainus is currently available on Switch and Windows PC via Steam. It played well on my Steam Deck.

Please read the content warning on this one

Content warning: harsh language, pedophilia, sexual assault, substance abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, teenagers committing serious crimes

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, know that you are not alone, and that help is available at any point. Don’t hesitate to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK), or call 9-8-8 for mental health crises.

Class of ’09, man.

I need to write about these games, not because I like them, per se, but so that I can hopefully get them off my chest and try not to dedicate a brain cell to them ever again.

One can dislike a work of art for many reasons, from poor quality to difficulty with comprehension, to a worldview that you find repulsive, to just plain incompatibility with a work’s goal. But every once in a blue moon, a work comes along that burrows into your skin and drives you insane, like a tick.

Sometimes that’s fun. The 2019 film Cats melted my brain, but, you know, in such a way that I had a good time. That’s a movie that you can (and should) invite friends over to get smashed and guffaw at.

The Class of ’09 games made me stew. And very few pieces of entertainment make me stew.

The games are crass comedy visual novels centering around two teenage girls, Nicole and Jecka, as they navigate high school and post-high school life in the late aughts. They initially caught my eye both through positive word of mouth, and because they target my age demographic specifically.

To paraphrase Dan Olson, the Class of ’09 games are revealing. Whether you like the games, or dislike the games, no matter what your opinion is on them, that opinion requires some level of emotional authenticity to justify. So, I may as well present my context up front.

I went to high school from 2007 to 2011. I had all the trappings of an angsty late-aughts teenager: a DS, a Jack Skellington hoodie, two flip phones – the first one got stolen – and an iPod stuffed with Linkin Park and early-2000s Metallica (St. Anger wasn’t that bad, metalheads are just mean).

By the time I started high school, I had been thoroughly bullied and humiliated in middle school and was mentally pretty checked out. I was sexually assaulted in a locker room in my freshman year, and a year or so after that, things mellowed down from “actively hostile” to “generally kind of unpleasant.”

The protagonists of Class of ’09 cope by abusing opioids and Adderall. I got by with less dangerous coping mechanisms like violent video games, stress eating, and dissociation.

SBN3, Class of ‘09’s writer, claims that the games are based, at least in part, on real experiences, though he justifiably won’t specify what those real experiences are. While Class of ‘09’s depictions of pedophilia and bigotry are exaggerated for comedy, I do believe him. I’m not setting out to invalidate the experiences of people who suffered in high school, or people who resonated with Class of ’09.

In fact, I too resonated with Class of ’09, at least a bit. And that’s why the games got under my skin.

The Class of ’09 games are bleak. They contain plenty of off-color jokes and try to make the audience laugh through the pain, but there is so much pain in these games, and so few outlets for it.

The games’ high school is staffed with pedophiles, attended by drug addicts, and runs rampant with sexism, homophobia, active suicide encouragement, and racism of the casual and not-so-casual varieties. And while all of these are ballooned to comedic, It’s Always Sunny-esque extremes, they still take a toll on the games’ two protagonists.

Nicole, who leads the first two games, reflects this reality back at it. She sees the world as cruel and chooses to be cruel right back. She ruins people’s lives and manipulates them into showing their true monstrous nature, and she does so without a care in the world. She is here for no one other than herself.

Jecka leads the third game, The Flip Side, released this year, and in one of the game’s endings, the audience watches as she eventually comes to view the world as Nicole does: apathetically. For her, it’s a world where nothing will ever get better. She consistently bounces between an abusive father and a school environment where nearly everyone, staff and students alike, preys on her. She knows – and the audience sees – that things only get worse as she moves on to an adult career. So why care? Why go on?

I feel for these two because I was once in their position. School was dangerous for me. I had very few places to seek refuge from the sheer toxicity of it, and fewer still of those refuges were actually healthy. So, I saw things like Nicole and especially Jecka: hopelessly.

But that small detail – refuge – that’s what separates my own real experiences from Class of ’09. As pessimistically as I saw the world, there were pockets of safety and comfort.

For one, I was a band kid, and I flourished in band. My trumpet became an outlet for creativity. It was a class where I could take up space, practice a discipline, and take pride.

It wasn’t perfect – I teetered on the knife’s edge between “abysmal self-esteem” and “getting my ego inflated to an insufferable degree” – but god damn, it was something.

And I did have people cheering me on. I did have friends, something Nicole genuinely struggles with in Class of ’09. They weren’t friends I felt comfortable leaning on; I didn’t feel comfortable leaning on anybody. But people were looking out for me, both students and faculty. I recognize that now, in hindsight.

Teenagers have a timeless reputation for being heartless, but I don’t think that’s ever been entirely true. Teenagers are human. They’re growing and learning and some of them have a lot of capacity for empathy; a capacity that I was mostly incapable of recognizing in others back then because that recognition was, in many senses of the word, beaten out of me.

But I have that recognition now, as a 30-something amateur writer, out of the closet as non-binary and with a firmer idea of who I am and who’s standing up for me.

Perhaps the reason Class of ’09 stuck with me, for better or worse, is because I can’t stop wondering whether SBN3 has that recognition or not. Because he put Nicole and Jecka through hell without any recourse or hope for the future. The most they can do is either laugh it off or die by suicide. Or both.

How much of that bleak high school experience still haunts SBN3? Because at this point in my life, I’ve mostly moved on. My life wasn’t going to discover itself.

But Nicole and Jecka will never share or delight in that sense of discovery. And tragically, I can’t stop thinking about whether SBN3 has or will, either.

Again, if you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, know that you are not alone, and that help is available at any point. Don’t hesitate to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK), or call 9-8-8 for mental health crises.

A Wishlist Recommendation

Okay, after all that, I need to recommend something more optimistic.

I mentioned it in my very first newsletter, but one of my favorite games of the past few years has been Jump Over The Age’s Citizen Sleeper. It’s a text-heavy RPG in the same vein as Disco Elysium where you struggle to make a living and join a community aboard a ruthless space station.

Well, it’s getting a sequel: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector. And yes, having played the first game, it has shot up near the top of my list of most anticipated future games.

The first game resonated with me a lot; it was written by a non-binary creator and reflects a lot of late-stage capitalism hardships that many people are struggling under today. But it’s ultimately optimistic about human nature, as those in the lower rungs show solidarity and companionship with one another.

That is, after all, a key part of the cyberpunk art direction: the punk aspect. The defiant compassion towards one another that tears against a corrupt system. Citizen Sleeper grasped that so well, and I have confidence the sequel will do the same.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector launches on January 31st, 2025 on PlayStation, Xbox, Game Pass, Switch, and Windows PC via Steam. The first game is currently available on the same platforms, including Game Pass.

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