The Red Strings Club

The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk bartender game in which you pour special drinks to get information out of people. Although the game succeeds in developing its themes of free will, power, and (the lack of) agency, its all-over-the-place structure hampers some parts of the experience.

You mainly play as Donovan, the bartender of The Red Strings Club that is an information broker on the side. Donovan can “use spirits to tune into customers’ emotions,” to allow them “to savour, mourn, or contemplate their souls’ fundamental sentiments.” In practice, this means each customer will have some circles over them displaying certain states of mind, like anxiety, regret, and pride. Each spirit the player pours into the glass veers a “soul disk” into a specific direction: absinthe makes the disk go left, while tequila makes it go down, for example. The objective is to make a drink that moves the disk to match the circle the player wants to activate.

After serving the drink, the customer will react to it and the conversation will be influenced by the emotion activated. Serving your friend Brandeis a glass of pride, for instance, makes him open up about his plans to hack the North District traffic mainframe and earn bitcoins. Now, serving him a glass of regret will make him confess he’s sorry to be working for the same rebel group that tortured Donovan, making the player aware of his stance on the “hacktivist” group Proxima: they may be dangerous and violent, but they remain the only ones that can “play on a level field with the corps and the government.” Players will get different information depending on what they serve Donovan’s customers – and, since the game often autosaves after each decision, they will be stuck with that information, stimulating repeated playthroughs.

Donovan lives in a futuristic city dominated by corporations. Here, androids make implants that tap into people’s minds: if a guy is having trouble amassing followers in his social media accounts, he can go and get an implant that will increase his “online social network charisma.” There are enhancements that “block negative stimuli” and even eliminate “the need for social acceptance.” In other words, if Donovan can manipulate people’s emotions with his drinks, corporations can mold their entire personality.

The plot starts when one of these androids – Akara-184 – breaks into the bar almost destroyed, pleading for help. After accessing its memory data, Donovan discovers a corporate plan to release an implant that is supposed to eliminate depression, sadness, and anger. While some people think this implant is good – who doesn’t want to be happy all the time? –, Donovan knows capitalism very well and so begins his investigation on the true intentions of the Supercontinent Ltd.: will these implants make people docile and more prone to exploitation? Will they be optional or mandated? Are they already inside everyone and just need to be activated?

As Supercontinent’s employees enter his bar, the character gets a chance to know more. Diana Meyes, the leader of the project, for example, seems to be pure in her intentions, thinking her implants will “serve the greater good.” Another employee, Larissa Robillard thinks only in terms of what she will gain with the project: “Darling, I’m all right with selling weapons, not getting shot by them,” she says to Donovan.

The story mostly revolves around the illusion of agency. Dononan makes his clients reveal information with his drinks, pulling their strings – as the name of his bar suggests – but he has a problem when corporations start to do the same thing. People are being fully manipulated: their feelings and, consequently, their ideas are tailor-made fabrications. This is shown literally with the implants that Akara makes for Supercontinent’s clients: the player must carefully mold the clay to match a specific design – set by the corporation – to attend the needs of a client.

The implant Donovan is trying to stop for being marketed, like his drinks, taps heavily into people’s emotions, and it is said it can stop even rape, crime, prejudice, and fear. His position, therefore, as other characters are not shy to point out, is a hypocritical one: Donovan doesn’t have a problem with people being manipulated if he’s the one doing it. Akara confronts him near the end, asking what precautions he would make if his plans to stop the implant fail. Akara puts the questions directly on Donovan’s hands: would you like for it to stop rape altogether? To prevent murder and suicides? Would this rob people of their free will? And is free will even a thing in a cyberpunk world?

Supercontinent employees talk about how marketing is completely based on manipulating people; how tapping into people’s emotions is what politics is all about; how people everywhere are being constantly bombarded with information and opinions, with images, sounds, and colors: basically, how they never stood a chance. Supercontinent’s implant is just the conclusion of this process. It even sheds a light on the problem of modern democracy: do the people still have political power if they have become puppetized?

And the situation quickly grows more complex, as this is a cyberpunk world where powerful AIs exist. Akara, for example, can read people perfectly and even make ethical decisions. Donovan used to pull the strings in his club, but when Akara starts to work for him, he immediately stops being the smartest one in the room. The game’s climax, then, is a pessimistic one, showing that the battle is not to free the people, but for the puppet master position.

The writing is far from subtle, however, using its noir vibe to make the character reflect openly on the sad state of their society. Right at the beginning, for example, Brandei states: “We live in a city ruled by corporations. If I didn’t associate with scoundrels I’d be out of work in no time.” But there are some quirky elements in the narrative to balance the tone. Donovan, for example, has a supernatural aura around him: his connection with the club is shrouded in mystery, which is further reinforced by the end of an excellent encounter with an optional customer and a dangerous game of Russian Roulette.

At the end of each interrogation, Akara also quizzes Donovan about the last customer to test if the bartender –  and so the player – really got how that character truly worked, giving rewards if the most answers are right – although never revealing which were and which were not.

The game’s narrative structure, however, is undeniably problematic. After a brief tutorial that shows how preparing drinks work, instead of starting to develop that mechanic, the game shifts to Akara’s perspective, and the player must learn to mold clay into specific designs. Why teach a mechanic if that mechanic is going to be exchanged by another one right after the tutorial ends? The best thing would have been to put Akara’s part as a prologue, before everything, and then focus only on the bartender part – and make that prologue skippable in subsequent playthroughs, as it’s time-consuming. The climax also abandons the bartender setting and becomes a basic point-and-click adventure, making the conclusion feel out of place regarding its mechanics.

Despite some problems with its structure, The Red Strings Club is a great game that takes full advantage of its cyberpunk setting to raise important questions concerning agency in an increasingly cybernetic world.

November 25, 2019.