(not exactly a review; if I have time/motivation I might add reviews to ifdb eventually)
These were the first two games I played, which is convenient as they had similar themes and formats. Both stories are about immigrant experiences, of longing for a culture left behind, of positive mother-child relationships (no tiger moms, thankfully). Both are hypertext stories; Mother Tongue is told entirely through a cell phone texting-like interface (the protagonist talking with their mother), while Congee uses a mostly standard Twine interface, with some texting-like features. Mother Tongue has binary choices that quickly rejoin, while Congee is mostly linear.
As a Chinese-American who is at best semi-literate in Chinese, Mother Tongue kind of spoke to me. I can’t help but compare the protagonist’s relationship with their mother with my own. The child seems to treat the mom more as a friend than a parent (this is not a dynamic I’m used to). At the same time, it seems like the mom doesn’t know anything about the child at all, asking what their hobbies are and what they like and dislike to do (I guess it’s drawing out conversation, but it still feels kind of strange to me, perhaps for the idiosyncratic reason that I am not used to having conversations like this). In addition, the segue into the Big Topics at the end doesn’t feel entirely natural to me.
I felt like I actually learned a bit of Tagalog (which will be soon forgotten; but I will remember that it has VSO word order right). Also I would have preferred a more lengthy game, perhaps with multiple conversations over time. But I really appreciated this game overall.
Congee is about a Hong Kong student living in the UK, who has gotten sick with flu-like symptoms (in pre-covid times apparently) and is longing for a reminder of home, in the form of congee soup/porridge. Like Mother Tongue, it has a simulated text messaging conversation with “[x] is typing” animations, and there are lots of segments with time-delayed text which I wasn’t really a fan of (I’m impatient). There are also lots of embedded images, which I didn’t see in my first playthrough as I was in an airplane, which is unfortunate as they add a lot to the story. I didn’t have as many feelings about this game as I did about Mother Tongue.
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