Unfortunately I have gotten addicted...

As far as free to play card games go it's actually pretty generous with what it gives you- it's easy to build a sizeable collection if you complete your daily missions and the wildcard system means you can pretty reliably get any singles you want. While Arena suffers from all of the balance issues endemic to MTG (if anything they're worse because of the Alchemy cards), the creative flexibility of the game always shines through in all the different ways you can build your deck. There are so many different avenues to a win and you can pull off a win with any sort of jank you like, as long as you're willing to keep at it.

The novelty of a fake browser game is that you're using a computer to use a computer (imagine that!) which helps offers a deep level of immersion... now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the deepest level of immersion a game can offer. Other games use the computer as proxy for an experience you cannot actually have but in a browser game, there are no character models or mechanics between you and the experience. Your mouse is the player's mouse, your actions are their actions, your body BECOMES their body.

And in Dum-Dum, you become an idiot.

That's really the root of the fun of the game, stepping into the role of this hapless "dum-dum" who's wandered into a game between geniuses and has to stumble their way through it with pluck and a bit of creativity. It's a really charming setup that they have a lot of fun with, and it adds some nice flavor to the standard "hacking and creative program usage" gameplay.

In fact, I wish that they had taken the gimmick of using "dumb" solutions to problems further. Like the opening gag of it is really funny but halfway through the game it starts to feel like you're being gaslit when the game keeps telling you how wAcKy you are for basically just using the programs as they are intended, and since everything is pre-scripted there isn't a ton of room for the player to really feel like they're expressing their creativity in the problem solving.

Fortunately, the straightforwardness of the gameplay puzzles is balanced out by the incredible depth of the fake OS system as a whole, which is jam packed with content and does a great job of rewarding exploration and careful observation. I found all sorts of side quests and hidden pages and programs by digging around and I ended the game with a bunch of achievements still locked so there's probably more out there to find if I feel like spending a bit more time on the game.

This attention to detail extended to the story as well, a quirky cyber-espionage narrative about unraveling the secrets of a mYsTeRiOuS tech company that was way more fleshed out than I expected. I can't say I was ever too surprised by the game, but that didn't mean I wasn't invested, and I actually kinda devoured the whole thing over the course of a few days because I was having such a good time with it.

So yeah! To quote the game: 👍❤️😀⭐

Edit: Although one really WEIRD thing about the game is that the Steam page seems to indicate that they made a special "Halloween episode" expansion that was only available in October 2021 and then they haven't updated since so it's like... I dunno, I'm assuming plans for future events fell through and they just moved on but it's weird that this existed but is unplayable.

I adored the first installment and could not WAIT to find out what happened next, and now that I know I'm still kinda processing how to feel about it. It's difficult to talk about because I think everything that I disliked was intentional and served its purpose well, but that didn't make me like those things.

One of the biggest strengths of this story is that it does a great job of drawing the reader into Hedwig's mindset, which is kind of a double-edged sword here because Hedwig spends much of this book frustrated and confused, which meant I had to experience that too. This was all well and good in the first book because we were getting to discover this world and these characters and uncovering this mystery, but this book slows down a lot on those fronts and most of the new elements introduced didn't lead to anything yet so it's sort of just...?

I guess I was just disappointed because the thing I was excited about was getting some answers, but this book didn't answer any questions so much as it did replace them with newer, stranger questions. Which is interesting in its own way! But in other ways felt unfair, especially because the apparent time travel(?) stuff kinda makes me feel like there's no point in trying to figure anything out for myself.

Despite all that, I enjoyed the moment to moment of the game because the individual scenes were well written and there were a lot of gag-worthy moments. Art and music were once again top notch as well, and I also loved the end of the game- like I kinda forgot that the player was not actually Hedwig, so I was really caught off-guard when the proverbial wall broke.

(Mild spoilers) The only "theory" that I really have about anything in the game is that it seems pretty clear that Hedwig was the person Catherine wanted to kill, and Catherine thought this person was the anti-Christ, and Hedwig was apparently locked away in the cell for a mysterious reason and is now being removed for a mysterious reason... I dunno, it must mean SOMETHING. Or maybe it doesn't. Who knows at this point?

So yeah, mixed bag. Despite any misgivings I might have though, I am still voraciously curious to find out what happens next.