Analogue: A Hate Story

Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel featuring semi-static manga-style character images, and focused on reading text logs. Using the mouse and keyboard, the player interacts with the Mugunghwas main computer to read log entries, communicate with the AIs, and occasionally enter commands directly into the vessel's computer system. At any time in the game, the player can save their game, adjust options, etc. The main user interface allows the player to read through various diaries and letters that reveal the game's backstory and insight into its many (deceased) characters. For the most part, navigating this interface is similar to navigating a basic e-mail system, in that messages are chronologically arranged and searchable. They are grouped in usually numbered "blocks", released to the player by *Hyun-ae or *Mute throughout the game. For the most part, the AIs release blocks "out of order", or do not release all entries in a block, forcing the player to assemble the timeline of events out of what clues they have, and draw certain conclusions independently until (or if) the AIs can be convinced to be more forthcoming. In most cases, the player can, after reading a log entry, show its content to the currently active AI. This is the primary process by which additional information and message blocks are revealed. Players can also type in an entry's alphanumeric ID in the main log menu to obtain it directly, as long as its corresponding block is decrypted. Communication with *Hyun-ae and *Mute is limited to choosing responses to yes–no questions. In the game, *Hyun-ae explains that the ship's disrepair may have led to the language parsing systems to malfunction, forcing her to put the interface together from scratch. Though *Hyun-ae and *Mute almost never communicate directly, the player can act as a go-between, taking a list of direct questions from *Mute to *Hyun-ae. This is a major turning point in the game, as the player not only receives answers to the questions, but has occasional opportunities to voice a third opinion on the events that led to the ''Mugunghwa's current state. The player can also access the Mugunghwa's'' override terminal, which can be used to decrypt data log blocks, switch between AI, change costumes for *Hyun-ae, adjust the behavior of some ship systems (a key aspect for the meltdown sequence), and more. The override terminal works like a basic text parser system similar to Unix shell commands, accepting only a very limited vocabulary of instructions that must be typed directly and correctly. Due to the branching nature of the story, the game must be played more than once to unlock all logs to complete the game, as it is impossible to reveal all log entries and information from the AIs in one playthrough. A log system separate from the game's save files displays all discovered logs from all playthroughs, effectively tracking the player's overall completion. ==Plot==

Setting and characters Set several thousand years in the future, Analogue revolves around the Mugunghwa (), a generation ship that lost contact with Earth some 600 years prior to the events of the game. For reasons initially unclear, society aboard the ship had degraded from that of modern, 21st Century South Korea, to the intensely patriarchal culture of the medieval Joseon Dynasty. In the process, the ship's clocks were reset to year 1, and the colonists began using Hanja characters to read and write. The reasons for why such a cultural shift has occurred is lost to time, leaving the player to formulate the cause on their own. Over the three centuries after the shift, the ship's birth rates began to gradually decline, to below the "replacement rate" of noble families. By year 322, the ship inexplicably went dark, falling into a state of severe disrepair. In Analogues present, 622 years later, the Mugunghwa is discovered in orbit above Antares B, a star system en route to its destination. A friend of the protagonist's, a dispatch officer, is the one who discovers the ship on their radar; this catches the attention of the Saeju Colony Historical Society (which suggests that humans have established planetary colonies beyond Earth), who sponsors the recovery of any remaining text logs that can explain the ship's disappearance. or by the "bad priorities" ending, which occurs when the player downloads the logs during the meltdown sequence, which takes too much time, killing them in the explosion. ==Development and release==

When looking for a setting to place Analogue, Christine Love settled on Korea's Joseon Dynasty, saying that it had "always fascinated me the most for a number of reasons, not all of them negative." Among those reasons was how women were dehumanizingly treated when compared to the Goryeo Dynasty. "The plot is moved mostly by the Pale Bride, the modern girl who can't understand what's going on…but the crux of it, really, was trying to get into the heads of everyone else[:] the men and women who have internalized all these awful misogynist ideals and take them completely for granted as the way things are. So the story really just formed itself around that question: what would it be like to be a woman in that society? History didn't care about the answer, but I do. The rest—the modern-thinking woman who can't possibly survive [*Hyun-ae], the women who are forced to navigate family politics, the men who are complicit in this whole system but can't just be dismissed as bad people [Smith]—all came naturally in that attempt to answer it." Love had mixed feelings about the AI characters during development. For instance, *Hyun-ae, as the Pale Bride, underwent almost no change from being a girl of modern times who couldn't understand the society she was thrust into. *Mute, apart from her position as the ship's security AI, was an unknown with, as Love stated, "how she'd end up turning out." On April 13, 2012, Dischan Media announced that it would distribute Analogue: A Hate Story, along with Juniper's Knot, through its online store. An update for the game containing a Japanese localization was released on December 4, 2014. The game is also being localized by volunteers into Spanish and German. Analogue's soundtrack was composed by Isaac Schankler. It contains eighteen tracks, with three of them included as bonus tracks. On May 4, 2013, the Ren'Py-based source code for the game was released by Love. The Python portions are available without any restrictions or requirements. The script is included in the release for context, but remains under a proprietary license and cannot be used freely. ==Reception==

Analogue was highly praised on both plot and interface, with the former being more noted than the latter. Eurogamer and JayIsGames praised the dark and emotional themes, pointing to how the mechanics interact with the thematic plot. Several bloggers and gaming media sites noted the mechanics and interface of the game as well as the plot, such as 2chan.us and Killscreen, with 2chan labelling it as a "literary and intellectual delight." Matthew Sakey of Tap-Repeatedly remarked that "the thing about Christine Love is that she is a really, really good writer, one capable of astonishing deftness in her work." PC Gamer UK gave Analogue 76 out of a 100, noting in particular to the skilfulness of the author's structural talent. Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun said the brightness of the art was contradictory to the gloomy themes. As of August 26, 2013, Analogue holds a Metascore of 62 on Metacritic. ==Sequel==

Christine Love announced a sequel to Analogue titled Hate Plus. Following Endings 1, 2, 4, and/or 5, Hate Plus reveals the events that took place aboard the Mugunghwa, prior to the shift into the Joseon-like society depicted in the original Analogue. ==References==