Developer: Zachtronics
Publisher: Zachtronics
Release: Out now
On: PC, Mac OS, Linux
From: Steam, GOG. Humble
For: 11/$15/ 12
Eliza is a visual novel about Evelyn, a woman starting work as a ‘proxy’ for the eponymous service. The service is counselling by algorithm. The proxies sit and listen, while clients say whatever they have to say, and the system takes measurements of things like heart rate, vocal stress and such, before analysing keywords used and delivering a reply. You read the script it generates, and nothing more. That’s the job.
The game itself is about everything to do with that. Counselling. Crunch in the tech industry. Ethics and isolation and empathy, and Men In Tech. And it’s about recovery. You get dialogue options here and there, but until the final act there’s not a lot in the way of big decisions. I mulled over those closing decisions for longer than I’ve thought about many I’ve made in real life. Indeed, if it seems I’m sticking to the slightly dry facts in this intro, it’s because if I start talking about how much this game has spoken to me, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop. It is doing so much. I have lost sleep thinking about it. And I am glad.