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Excerpt from my essay about Ghostware. Full review linked here: https://kazukogiegue.com/?page_id=890

This is not a review of Ghostware: Arena of the Dead. This is an essay about what it's like to play Ghostware: Arena of the Dead.

“You found yourself here after a fairly long search. The nostalgia for younger years makes you enjoy retro games.

However, something here looks… different.”

It’s a hot summer afternoon. The first brutally hot day of the summer. I’m at my desk in the basement, crisp air conditioning sending a slight shiver down the back of my neck. This phrase is, after an initial faux-dos boot screen, the very first thing I’m greeted with when I launch Ghostware: Arena of the Dead. Before any menus, any settings, any gameplay, this is the first impression the game wants to leave. Upon actually playing the game and gathering the basics of the plot—you’re some sort of spirit who has been summoned to participate in a necromancer/computer nerd’s experiment—it’s reasonable to assume the message the game greets us with is referring to the player character, Molly. Her spirit, presumably unable to pass on to the afterlife, finds herself unconsciously roaming the spiritual plane before waking up here with no memories. While I do think that’s true, I think there’s a significant reason the game displays this message before we know even a shred of information about the game.
The game is not just talking about Molly. The developers are speaking to me. I do enjoy retro games. And I do that at least partially out of nostalgia; a nostalgia that stems from a past I simply wasn’t alive for. A time where you and your friends would pile up on snacks from the local convenience store, buckle down at whatever computer lab you had access to, and have a LAN party. Maybe it was Quake, maybe Unreal, maybe something else entirely. But the important part was that you were all there. Sat down on a cheap plastic chair, whipping my mouse around in every direction, the sound of keys clicking filling the air, the entire room palpable with the excitement and passion of collective love for a hobby.
After that, I’m greeted by a desktop interface. It has a classic Windows 98 aesthetic, complete with a dreamy pink-and-blue screensaver and desktop icons for the various options. I mess with the settings for a bit and boot into the game, where I’m greeted with the basic story. As alluded to earlier, Ghostware is about a woman named Molly who finds herself stuck in a fictional arena shooter. She’s not alone, though. I quickly meet a man who goes by the tag Major Commando. The game instructs me to shoot at him, and I comply. He’s dispersed with no resistance, but immediately respawns. This is the moment Ghostware comes to life. The pieces click together, and suddenly I’m somewhere else.

! The rest of this essay is available on my website: https://kazukogiegue.com/?page_id=890 !