The Season of Spooky: We Know the Devil · 1:13am Apr 5th, 2017
It's summer again.
Maybe it's my decade-long love affair with Japanese horror tropes, but summer is forever in my mind the season to talk about the things that scare me. All Hallow's Eve might be the point when the barrier between the living and dead is at its weakest, but there's just something about the whine of a cicada and the first chirps of crickets that feels ominous. Maybe it's my eternal association with a certain sound novel. Maybe it's just pleasant to be scared.
And so, as is my ritual, it's time to turn to horror. Time to explore the things in it that make me happiest. Time to frighten.
In April.
Because the ghost of summer is in the state early. And because I think I may have just found perfection. Or rather, perfection found me.
We Know the Devil is my new favorite visual novel ever.
Actually it might be my new favorite novel, period.
Actually it just gets a little corner all its own in my mind.
I wouldn't know about it today if it weren't for Mr. Numbers, who was kind enough to just buy me a copy when he realized I hadn't read it. I read it. And I understood.
It's perfect.
It's gorgeous.
It's terrifying.
It's... it's three girls at summer camp and the inherent imbalance of a three-person group as a dynamic.
Terror!
I'm actually not kidding. We Know the Devil isn't really focused on getting you to jump or even feel existential dread, but it will scare you. And the way it specifically scares you is by highlighting the inherent fragility of friendships.
Created by VN circle "Date Nighto" and written by Aevee Bee, who I'm sad I haven't heard of before and am very glad I have now, We Know the Devil is more aptly described as a visual novella rather than a full-blown visual novel. By their very nature, most visual novels are sprawling messes. Even before you examine the fantasy worldbuilding or plot or dynamics, they tend to demand your full attention for days to mine through every detail in a given 'route'. We Know the Devil demands maybe three to four hours to see all of the potential endings. Even the 'mechanics', as it were, are stripped down. Most visual novels read like choose your own adventure stories - make choice X, see scene Y. Make choice Y, see scene Z. We Know the Devil reduces choices X, Y, and Z into a simple formula. Over the seven hours the story takes place in, you're forced to choose which two members of a group of three will participate in some activity - from getting drunk to looking around a cabin to patrolling the woods to make sure the devil's not out there. By the very nature of these choices, each one you make excludes some member of the trio for an hour or so.
This is a bit of a problem. As the game's tagline asserts "in any group of three, two are closer than one". Which means the more you push one member of the group to the outside, the more likely it is that things will not end well for them.
I should probably mention at this point that We Know the Devil is also about three kids at an evangelical summer camp fighting the devil with crystal radios. Yes, that devil. Yes, crystal radios. They also talk to God on their radios at one point. He's on station 109.8 and sounds like every boy you're scared of talking at once.
(I am tempted to do an entire separate post praising the prose, because it's pretty amazing).
The thing about our group of hapless heroes - stuck in what seems like a really crappy Jesus camp, told they aren't even allowed transformation sequences (no, really) and wrapped up in their own insecurities and issues - is that they all care about each other. They really do. It's evident in their interactions. They never really exclude anyone on purpose - and neither do you. It just sort of happens. You don't notice you've been sidelining somebody until it's too late. Until you've drifted apart. Until the devil has them.
And that's kind of terrifying because that's what having friends is like. Minus the devil.
How many of you still know all your childhood friends? All of them? Even if you still keep touch with one or two, think back to when you were part of a group of three - or more. Wasn't there always someone you just spent more time with? Always? And it wasn't even necessarily something you did because you didn't like your other friends. You just spent time with this person because it worked out that way. And then a few years down the line, stuff happens, you lose touch, and... and sometimes you lose it. Sometimes friendship is transient.
And sometimes that transience is frightening, particularly when the friends you lose touch with may not always be stable people.
This story's about more that, though. More than that.
We Know the Devil is currently available on Steam for $7.99 and is worth it. If you don't already have a copy, go buy it, read it, and be ready.
Because next time, I'm going into spoiler territory as I discuss demons, rebellion, and the sub-genre of Biblical Horror.
Now, now, it's okay to use my name, Scarlet.
*goes back to my corner*4484087 You madam, win alll my internets.
Also, I'd like to point out how Scarlet goes on and on about how scary this game is. Yet she thought I should read it.
Ugh but there's so much entertainment demanding my attention already.
Maybe I can get this working on Android somehow, so I can read it at work...
It's pretty good. I'm playing it at a coffee house between cigarettes in the yawning urban darkness so A+ or whatever
Venus is referred to as he and she throughout. I noticed that earlier. Not sure if it was typo or not, with the other typos and quirky punctuation
That sounds really good but I have no money and no time right now BLEH
Dammit early Virginian summer, not only are you inconvenient for Scarlet, you're inconvenient for me by way of being inconvenient for Scarlet!
Seriously though this sounds great and I super wanna play it. I'm sad that I'll have to not read your blogs about it until later, but c'est la vie.
4484087 Mono I thought it was understood that you are the best living being.
4484115 It's existential scary! That's different!
4484126 Intentional, for those wondering.
I can't help but think of Joy Electric's "Song for All Time":
That's a thing? We have a horror genre?
...I'll rephrase. Christians have a good horror genre?
4484151
Awwwwwwww <3
4484179 I mean, unless you don't count The Exorcist.
Though debatable whether it belongs more to Christians or apostates. It's kind of a 'both' thing.
4484213
I never thought of that, but The Exorcist could be called a Christian movie.
...My new mission in life is to get it played at a church movie night.
This may be good but I shall invoke the 'I HAVE NO TIME' caveat to ignore it!!
I am kind of terrible about hanging on to friends. The ones from middle school moved away. The ones from high school I lost touch with. The ones from college... well, it's hard to stay friends with someone when you have this nasty habit of not spending enough time in class to actually follow them to the next year. Even the current batch, the ones who got me into pony, aren't exactly what I'd call bosom buddies. The group's dwindled over the years, and some people stopped coming before I could pin down their names.
I get the distinct feeling that this game is going to shake me on a very deep level.
I'd like to throw my theory on the pile;
The first two characters you choose the most are thus: The one that most resonates with you, and the one you most admire.
I do have my question here about it - is it a Christian horror VN, or does it subvert the conclusions of that genre?
4484151
As the person who got Numbers into WKTD in the first place*, I wanted to let you know (just in case you hadn't already seen): There's now a 'We Know the Demo' available, and it's all new content. Definitely worth your time if you want to spend a little longer and dig a little deeper on these characters and this world before Heaven Will Be Mine comes out.
*- God I am so happy this game is spreading the way it does. Every person I show it to ends up showing it to still-more people in a cascade chain.
4485080 Christian Horror VNs so far as I know don't exist. I used the term "Biblical Horror" for a reason, in that using Biblical and Evangelical Christian imagery isn't a trope that's exclusively the property of practicing Christians.
Finally got around to reading this. Good stuff.