Analogue: a Hate Story certainly isn't billed as a feminist game. It's creator, Christine Love, cheekily describes it as being more about transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay. Maybe that's true. All I can say is that as a man, the game struck me as unflinchingly feminist. Now, I don't mean that in a confrontational, all-men-are-rapist-pigs straw feminist sort of way. Hell, maybe feminism is not even the right word for it, maybe it's just a game about female experiences presented matter-of-factly. Ladies, this may seem obvious to you. But to us males, this is a wholly unsettling and unexpected revelation.

The story as outlined is simple and humble enough. You, a private detective (in space!), travel to a recently discovered wreck of a space ship, which had been previously lost for thousands of years. This ship once held an entire nation of people as it traveled to a distant planet. Somewhere along the way, the ship's inhabitants died out completely. It's up to you to sift through the ship's computer data (with the help of artificial intelligence friends) to discover the fate of the lost nation.

If you're like me, that story sounds fairly pedestrian so far, right? But the ship's recovered computer logs tell a much different, much more personal story.

Over thousands of years, this isolated society has regressed in both education and culture to the whereabouts of 15th century Korea. Despite living on an impressive space-faring vessel, and being assisted by futuristic artificial intelligences, its inhabitants are mostly simple farm folk who know little of the ship, or the universe, around them. And just like in 15th century Korea, conditions for women are horrifyingly bad.

The AIs ask you personal questions throughout the game, such as who you are, where you're from, and whether or not you've visited Pyonyang. You know, getting-to-know-you stuff. The first time I played through, I was asked if I was a male or female, and I answered honestly. I played through the game, and that normally would have been the end of it. However, there's a Steam achievement for playing through a particular ending as both a male and a female, so I played the same ending again. As a female, the writing changes. In this new scene, it was all I could do to not reach through the computer monitor and slap that AI around until the smug falls out.

This AI's dialogue is fairly standard and neutral as a male, while as a female, the AI's dialogue is condescending and dismissive of everything you say. As a male, this concept that I could be disregarded so easily was a bit shocking.

Is Analogue a FUN game? By no means. In fact, there's a race-against-the-clock mission (in a visual novel!) that really should have been heavily altered. But its story is solid, and compelling enough to make you overlook its flaws. Even weeks later, the story stuck with me, haunting me, making me question every interaction I've ever had with women over the course of my life.

TL;DR - Do you like reading? Play this game. It's important.

There's no doubt that Steam has been flooded, for better or worse, by visual novels as of late.

Now, don't get me wrong, Indie titles are great, but amidst the endless stream of "waifu"-bait visual novels (VNs) you'll see here on Steam, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find many decent stories with an intriguing plot that aren't about getting in a girl's pants for an affordable price. That's par for the course when discussing visual novels, but that's also why I tend to trust VNs from well-known studios/devs, because at least you know you'll get plot while playing VNs of acclaim like Clannad, the Grisaia Trilogy, or The Devil on G-String in exchange for their premium price.

But, let's rewind time back to 2012, when Gangnam Style was top of the charts around the world and every tween and their literature teacher was dying to see Shaky Camera: The Movie The Hunger Games. In this archaic age of yore, there were, quite frankly, no good visual novels on Steam, save for one: Christine Love's Analogue: A Hate Story. Back then, I wasn't sure how much story ten bucks could really buy, but boy I was surprised.

Analogue eschews all the teenage high-school setting jazz you'll see in 99.9% of visual novels out there. Instead, it opts to tell the fate of a ruined colony ship, the Mugunghwa, in a decidedly sci-fi setting. It does this with considerable polish.
Analogue's presentation is simple, nothing more and nothing less required to tell its story, letting you explore the lore of the ship's mysterious downfall at your own pace as you literally read through logs like the investigator you are supposed to be. At the very least its more interactive than half the VNs on the market, with a very entertaining minigame thrown in halfway through the story.

Now then, you can hold off on impulsively buying those tempting 11 Anniversary Lootboxes in Overwatch since for those same ten bucks, you get a substantial story and can brag to your friends all about the "Joseon" Era of Korean history.

And at the end of the day, what's more important? Getting yet ANOTHER Tracer legendary skin or knowing what "Joseon" means? You be the judge of that question.

Just uh...don't blame me if your 10 bucks gets you neither of those, in the end.

Pros

• Absolutely riveting plot
  
• Cute AI girls
  
• Different outfits on a whim for Cute AI girls
  
• More game interaction then smashing "ENTER" every 10 seconds
  
• Stop a nuclear explosion with your hacking skills
  
• A feminist game that makes sense
  
• You can achieve the impossible dream every indecisive teenage Light Novel main character wishes they could make by quite literally cheating the system

Cons

• No voice acting, but that's completely fine
  
• Relatively short, but there actually is a sequel so more playtime there too I guess
  
• Learning about how unpleasant people from the Joseon Dynasty could be is disgusting, but that's the point
  
• Not that I care but its based off of Korea and not Japan so you "purists" may have some beef with that.

No but seriously. Play Analogue.

I will start off by saying that I am a great lover of Visual Novels and games of the sort.

I will admit that coming into Analogue: A Hate Story, I was fairly skeptical and I wasn't sure what to make of it. The only real negative was that I found the game did not make it very easy to get into and I felt like the user interface was a little bit unclear in sections. A factor that I have no doubt would initially put people off.

Little did I know that later on I would come to the conclusion that this game is worth every second I invested into it. The story is incredible once you have managed to piece things together and after some time you begin to learn new things and discover new secrets. The level of depth and thought that has gone into the creation of this game is incredible and I would reccommend everybody to play it. There are some fun little additionals which are added into the game through the use of the command centre, which is a nice little addition which I haven't seen implemented in too many others.

At £6.99 it is incredibly reasonable for a visual novel and there isn't really a good excuse not to buy it.

This is ancient history now, but for a while, back around 2005 or so, there was a perception, largely created by a single translation group, that the "visual novel," a format of linear text adventure that grew out of the Japanese PC games scene, might actually have something to offer beyond cheap titillation. They chose short, indie works like narcissu, Planetarian or OMGWTFBBQ, melodramatic stories of finding that last emotional connection in the moments before your early and miserable death. And then they pretty much stopped doing it (at least for free), because, hell, translating this stuff is a pain, and that was the end of that.

Analogue feels much like the promise of those earlier works. Written in English by a native speaker and skilled writer, with a great sense for how to use the interactive features of the format to really draw you in, in a way that "an ordinary book" can't. It's smart, somber, and complicated; it's a well-told story, and not just "for video games." And really, I just have a thing for simulated terminal interfaces.

I bought Analogue: A Hate Story on a lark. It was on sale, and I was bored, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm a big fan of the science-fiction and transhuman genres, and Analogue seemed to offer a bit of both.

I was not prepared for what this game had to offer.

Perhaps calling it a "game" is a bit generous. It's an interactive novel, with almost no action sequences to speak of. The closest you'll come to any sort of twitch-reflex or quick-time events is typing into a terminal while an angry countdown clock stares you down. But still, there are choices to make and consequences to pay, with five potential endings - four of which can be carried right into the second game, Hate Plus.

Don't go into this game expecting action and excitement. If you're looking for that, then you're in the wrong place. But if you enjoy a gripping tale of political intrigue, psychological horror, and surprisingly dark themes - then this is absolutely worth the price of admission. Don't let the cute, anime-inspired artwork fool you. This game is absolutely for adults, and not because of any sexual themes or nudity (although there IS a bit of the former).

If there's anything to complain about, it's perhaps the usual drawback of an interactive novel. It's relatively linear, fairly short, and light on replay value. Oh, sure, it's worth trying for the different endings (most of which require their own distinct play-through), but you'll still be forced to read a lot of the same letters and dialogue. And, while the writing is absolutely fantastic, it still gets repetitive the second or third time through - especially once you've learned all of the twists and turns that the story has to offer.

But still - if you're into mature, psychological tales of intrigue and murder, then this game is absolutely worth at least ONE play-through. You won't regret it.

Its like a choose your own adventure game mixed with a visual novel and I loved it. I usually treat VNs like the plague but this game right here is something special. I really felt like I was Sherlock Holmes mixed with Indiana Jones IN SPACE on a mission through time discovering the mystery of the space station you found. It was very engaging having to dig through all the files piecing together the lives and politics of the people who had once lived there. The twists and turns and trips and burns are all very interesting and kept me going along wondering what I would discover next. This game is pretty amazing and if you dont mind lots of reading and anime chicks then I definitely recommend this game.

Analogue: A Hate Story was my first shot at a visual novel and I came away rather impressed.. The story turned out to be very dark and grim, definitely not something for kids.. I'll also say that the game may require a walkthrough for a certain 'timed segment' where you will be doing a lot of typing.

I think at some point I'm going to replay Analogue: A Hate Story and check out some of the different endings, but for my first play through (which took me around 4hours) I was very satisfied. I'm still not 100% sure whether or not visual novels are my thing, but I am certain that thanks to this game I'll definitely be checking out some other ones in the near future.

This is a visual novel that does not overly rely on anime tropes, but instead draws from the darker points of Korean history, places the plot in a distant transhumanist future and uses this seemingly incongruable mishmash as a setting for a social commentary. While the game has been called feminist, I would actually say it goes quite a lot beyond that.
If you are interested in sentient AI's, dark family dramas and human rights issues, you might enjoy this strange little gem.

Do AIs give you feelings? Do you like women? How about making straight people uncomfortable? All these things and more are available in Analogue: A Hate Story.

You should really play this game.

It was one of those things that just stays with you, and you keep thinking about it the rest of the day after you’ve played it. It’s also not that long– I got 98% completion in, according to Steam, 2.8 hours. So it’s more than worth the investment.

There are two stories here. The frame story is that you are sent as part of your job to go through the records of a recently rediscovered lost ship/space colony that has been gone for hundreds of years. You head over and start sifting through the log files with the help of the ship’s AI. The second story is what actually happened on the ship. The setting is simultaneously a future dystopia and a past dystopia– the frame story takes place more than a thousand years in the future, while the secondary plot takes place six hundred years before that.

It’s hard to describe the game without getting into spoiler territory, but I’ll do my best: the gist of the secondary plot is that on this space colony, some unspecified disaster caused major social and educational regression and an extreme population reduction that ultimately resulted in the establishment of an extremely oppressive patriarchal society in which women rarely are allowed to leave the home and are often married off as young as 12 or 13. A young girl put in stasis before the disaster due to an illness wakes up hoping that a cure has been developed, only to find the world has gone to hell.

The game is simultaneously a reflection on the horrors of the past– a particularly disturbing post-game author’s note lets you know the circumstances are based very heavily on actual customs of Feudal Korea– as well as a warning about where we could head in the future. The girl wakes up and tries to tell her new “family” about her illness by emphasizing how thin and pale she is, but all the men hear is a woman’s whine and all the women hear is bragging about good looks, which would sound extreme if the exact same thing hadn’t happened to me in the past. It’s an examination of the ways women survive in such an oppressive society, and what happens to those who don’t fit the mold.

The final reveal of the girl’s storyline was something I saw coming by the time I got there but was hoping wouldn’t happen all the same.

The gameplay itself was clever, if simple. The navigation was freer than you usually get in a VN, as the interface is of a computer system you can explore more or less however you see fit– as the AI offers commentary– though the AI will dole out information based on how you interact with them so the story itself it ultimately nonlinear. In addition to reading snippets of the ship’s logs and chatting with the AI, there’s also a command input console where you can type in whatever you please to the ship’s computer. I thought the puzzles involving the commands were interesting enough to require some good thought while also logical enough to be solvable on your own.

The weakest part of the game to me was the ending of the frame story. The story itself is somber, serious, and tragic, but the AIs end up flighty, silly, and almost like caricatures. Like, after everything that’s gone on, Hyun-ae suddenly turns into terrible tsundere and decides she’s in love with you and wants to get married? What? The LAST thing she should be interested in after what she’s seen is some kind of weird relationship with a stranger. The tone shifts from torture and oppression to some kind of parody with no warning whatsoever, and it’s like she just forgets what you were looking at. It’s jarring, but also comes off as though the game doesn’t take its very, very serious subject matter seriously at all. “Oprression and mutilation destroy lives. CAN I BE UR WAIFU????” Just wat.

In the same vein, I thought calling the “best” ending a “harem” ending was ridiculously tacky. In a story where women are literally being forced into harems, just what the hell. Is it supposed to be a joke? Why is that something to joke about? Is it some weird attempt at meta-commentary on VNs? Wrong place, wrong time.

So yeah, the last five minutes or so of the game are… bad. They’re just bad, there’s no way around it. But overall? This is an engaging, emotional, tragic story with a message that hits close to home, and I really recommend it.