Never in my life have I identified with a videogame character more than I do with the abomination from the roguelike Streets of Rogue. This little guy is easy to root for with his perverted naked body, demon eyes and unwavering optimism. If he has a backstory, I missed it. If he has a backstory, I’m not entirely certain I want to hear it.
Most likely, he’s done some gruesome stuff to get to the point where we meet him in the game. That’s okay. I know what’s in his heart, and he means well.
I’m getting ahead of myself, of course. Let me explain a little bit about what my little rascal brings to the table.
Some would say his most important attribute is that he can jump into people’s bodies and control them, which gives the game a Being John Malkovich quality, only my little guy has the ability to jump into anyone’s mind regardless of whether or not they are John Malkovich. And while the game doesn’t expressly say whether any of the nonplayable characters are or are not Malkovich, the retro art style means anyone can pretend they are jumping into Malkovich if they would enjoy that fun little make believe game.
As I mentioned previously, he’s a hideous little monster. Shop keepers yell at him to leave when he saunters into their stores in his natural form. Cops chase him down and try to kill him with a singlemindedness that is both rude and understandable. He is, after all, a complete abomination and proof there is no God. It’s part of his sick charm.
Everywhere he goes, he wants to make friends but doesn’t always know how, and this is where I’m mostly going to focus for the rest of this article.
Anyone who has spent time as a disgusting demon boy can attest that the more unattractive a person is, the harder it can be to make friends. This is true for both inner and outer beauty. The more attractive you are on the outside, the more you can get away with being a total dick. The more attractive you are on the inside, the more people will like you regardless of any disfiguring features. Of course, the golden ideal is being both hella sexy and a good person while the worst case scenario is being ugly both on the outside and inside.
Unfortunately for my little guy and me, we are both hideous on all levels. It’s not that we try to be terrible people with no redeeming qualities. The two of us mean well but have trouble keeping it together for any extended periods of time.
Being physically repulsive is probably the least of our worries when it comes to interacting with the rest of humankind. Like other human slugs of internet era, social media has given me a way of interacting with people without scaring them like I’m an especially effective scarecrow keeping the birds from the crop. My little abomination can possess people’s bodies as a way of socializing without the drawback of physical unattractiveness forcing people away.
And it sometimes works well for both of us for a little bit. I’ll integrate myself with an online community somewhere, and they’ll think I’m funny or nice at first – or at the very least, they’ll tolerate me. Similarly, naked little buddy will posses the body of a cop or gang member or alpha gorilla, and they’ll run with him for a short time.
Occasionally, we actually meet some short term goal. I’ll work with my new friends on a project, whether it’s playing together on an eSports team or something creative like a series of collaborative articles. My little demon might complete a mission or even get to the end of the level (he must evacuate the possessed body at the end of every level). Those times are nice. Those are the moments where the two of us think we can maybe actually function among other people this time. It’ll be different, we think.
But it never lasts.
In my case, something from within always screws up. I’d like to blame it on being bipolar, but that would be a cop-out. Sometimes my mental disease is a contributing factor, for sure. However, plenty of people have been bipolar in the past without ruining literally every relationship they’ve ever had outside of the strange outlier of their marriage.
No, the reason I always fail to keep friends is I’m altogether unpleasant, self-absorbed and fundamentally unlikable. Conversations with me are not like pulling teeth. They’re like pulling every bone from other people’s bodies with only a pair of dull tweezers.
I am toxic, and the best thing I’ve done in recent years to save other people from myself is mute people on Twitter who I find myself tweeting at too much. If I tweet too often at someone without a reply, I mute. If I keep getting in arguments with someone, I mute. It’s a slow process, but if I live long enough, I may eventually mute every single person who speaks the same language as I do.
It’s been years since I’ve attempted to do anything social in real life with anyone other than my wife, and I doubt I’ll ever try to make another real life friend again. I’m even beginning to sour on the prospect of making more online friends because people like me who have toxic personalities can only hide their appetites for destruction for so long. Eventually, we always get into some dumb, drawn out fight where everybody loses. It’s almost impressive any of us have continued to exist in the gene pool after so many eons of this universe being around.
This is why I relate to my little buddy so hard. He’s trying. He’s really trying, but his true nature is a demon boy, and he’s not going to stand around for too long, just enjoying the company of other people. Possessing a normal body and hanging with the crew is not enough for him. He hungers for more. He hungers for a lot more.
You see, our pal has missions to complete. Maybe they’re real. Maybe they’re imagined, but he gets itchy and bored and has to manipulate his new friends in ways that at best tips them off but at worst gets them killed. He usually gets them killed and then saunters away unaffected to make new friends who will maybe stick around this time if he could only restrain himself enough to appreciate just being a good little freak.
Other times, he gets caught from the jump, which is to say he gets caught attempting to literally jump into someone’s body. His perspective friends do not like this at all, and they yell at him to leave or (more often) attack him outright, beating the ever living crap out of the body he possesses. Usually, this only gets the possessed killed. It occasionally snowballs from there and the game ends.
But the thing about people like my little monster and me is that the game is never over, regardless of what a screen says. We will keep masquerading as normal people among you, attempting to get you to act the way we want you to act, ruining your every moment when we are together.
We’ll be found out, yes, but society is a roguelike too. Get as far as we can with one group, game over and learn more for the next group. If you don’t learn from the last run, you don’t ever see the end of the game. I’m not that great at roguelikes. I never make it very far. If I have one deep run, it’s always a fluke.
Here’s to the gross little demon in this fabulous game. I consider him my son.
(Tiny Build provided the press copy of this game for this article.)