The most disappointing kinda things I play on this site are narrative leaning things that LOOK great, but really didn’t have the story to match it. I ultimately walked away from Cosmic Star Heroine and Frail Hearts thinking, “those were certainly RPGs.” However, I didn’t think I’d end up having that opinion for a visual novel type of game… alas…

Critters for Sale is a 2021 game by Sonoshee. It’s a point-and-click visual novel adventure through a short series of vignettes, all named after animals that are vaguely tied together in a cruel universe.

First things first, we gotta talk about Critters for Sale’s strongest aspect: its presentation. The game heavily embraces the use of black and white dithering with pictures, giving this ghost story kinda vibe. When people are used, their faces morph when they’re expressing emotion in a way that’s uncanny, and a fair amount of people just look Off in a way that feels alien – and they may as well be aliens, with the presence of the otherworldly. When the backgrounds are abstract, they’re animated to feel like a dreamy haze. The UI also has this rippling to it, as if the whole thing’s ready to glitch out. I had to close my eyes whenever things got flashy, but I can’t deny, everything looks great.

This is also matched with a really nice soundtrack of electronic music. Sometimes haunting, sometimes a stark contrast to the atmosphere of the environment to make it feel more off. The game’s setting combined with the soundtrack gave off Shin Megami Tensei vibes to me, so it felt that I’d be getting jumped at some point. Most of the soundtrack is provided by VRTLHVN, but here’s a list of other contributors. Overall, this rules.

Gameplay is simple point and click action, and the puzzles and minigames present are easy. However, while you CAN play the episodes in any order like the Steam page advertises, a puzzle in the Dragon episode relies on information from the other episodes. As it’s also the last episode, I think that’d just encourage people to read the episodes as a linear order, which I think goes against the intended point.

But bah, why are we talking about gameplay for something like this? Let’s talk story!

The episodes of Snake, Goat, Monkey, Dragon, and Spider tells the stories of seemingly regular people being made to witness the bizarre underbelly of the world. Or, they all may be the same person – after all, reincarnation and alternate timelines is in vogue. Death is a recurring motif, from the bad endings to witnessing death in the service of dark machinations. Dark forces are at work in the background, with the biggest threat being the time displaced Noid Men who push for spreading Satan’s power.

The ideas build up a surreal backdrop, which is further built on with weird swings. There is a weird guy dressed up as a gimp in the middle of a casino, rambling about the very real presence of aliens. A talking tiger is one of the administrators to the path of reincarnation. Michael Jackson is here and he’s apparently a friend of some version of the Snake protagonist at some point in the game’s multiversal timeline. Is using footage of him legal, even if it’s filtered? I… dunno.

The strongest sequence in Critters for Sale for me was the Goat episode, where you’re friends with Stefan Burnett, or rather, a version of him from 923. Stefan winds up falling in line as a Noid Men to spread Satanic evil, and with newfound immortal life, he founds Death Grips and the band’s used to spread terror. It’s absurd… but with the subject matter of a bunch of the band’s songs and the manic image that the internet made of the band, it fits.

To be honest, I wondered if Sonoshee is affiliated with Death Grips because the usage of the band’s likeness and concert performance felt way more egregious than the Michael Jackson stuff. The band and Michael Jackson aren’t really credited though. I mean, cool that the credits still paid honor to the indie composers that contributed to this game, but it just makes me wonder if Sonoshee fell into some litigation hell, especially with the usage of clips.

But after playing through the game, I can only think… okay, so what?

Critters for Sale maps out a bizarre world with the presence of the supernatural and extraterrestrial and… it doesn’t really do anything with it? Oh damn, MC Ride is working with satanic forces! …And that’s just contained within that one episode. The idea of Michael Jackson being a man unstuck from time and space is also just contained within the one episode he’s used in. It really just feels like they were used to have nerds point their fingers and clap, as if the ideas these celebrities were used for can’t stand on their own without the need of Epic References.

There’s the recurring idea of the otherworldly ruling Earth with the Noid Men, but they just feel like background presences in the long run, even with the few upfront encounters. In fact, the one time Earth is truly threatened, it’s because of aliens, with the only connective thread to the rest of the game being a doomsday device that also happens to be rendered a complete non-issue if you get the peaceful ending of the episode.

These ideas recur, but they don’t really coalesce toward a substantial whole, so it just makes me wonder: why should I care? Evil is played as a looming force, but it rarely actually does anything. It’s all evil plotting, but you rarely ever see an evil plot actually play out. The Monkey episode has the most direct display of evil and the most shocking part of Critters for Sale… and then it just ends with further evil plotting. Okay, now what? Well, because of the non-linear story and the presence of reincarnation and alternate timelines, that doesn’t really matter and won’t really affect anything – so why should I care at all? What stakes are there to be invested in?

I may be a bit unfair, as it is teased that Critters for Sale is the start of a greater universe. Last year, Sonoshee opened up a Steam page for Zeizen. The official description points at a heist story dealing with an alien artifact and bizarre science, so it’s clearly teasing a continuation of the stuff spouted in Critters for Sale. The question is, will the specific things introduced in Critters for Sale be built on and help form a more cohesive whole, or would it just be throwing more ideas at the wall? It’s hard to say, because there hasn’t been any news on it.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t like Critters for Sale that much. The visuals and music all fuck, and I admire the ballsiness of just throwing Death Grips in there, but as a whole? …Ehh. It just feels like the game threw a bunch of ideas in a blender and is nudging you saying, “isn’t this cool?” without ever doing anything substantial with those ideas. In fact, I can’t help but feel that the game does it because Death Grips also does it with stuff like the general fascination with the Manson family and “You Might Think” being all about possession.

Part of what bothers me about it is that I’m a fan of the QAA podcast. I’ve spent years exposing myself to the coverage of conspiracies, esoteric mysticism, the fascination with aliens, the behavior of cults, and their impacts on society. So with Critters for Sale presenting a story with fringe ideas and not really doing anything with it, I’m just like, “so what?” Is it just to be surreal? Because you can still do things with the surreal, you know.

Sincerely, when it comes down to it, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is way better at handling esoteric ideas, even if I still got issues, because at least I think it goes somewhere with it. In fact, if I may dare to make further comparisons, Hylics is also a game with an unusual art style that deals with themes of reincarnation, but it actually does coalesce into a clean narrative.

But as for Critters for Sale… well, at least it’s pretty short. It’s not straight up bad and it’s neat to look at, but I don’t think it’s an experience that’d stick with me. Well, the game at least. The soundtrack whips.