Hi there. Welcome to Discussion: [indie game] (spoilers!), a series which should really have a generic introduction in italics at the top here but, for some reason, doesn’t.

Today’s game is Emily Is Away Too, a 2017 follow-up to the previous game we covered. Yep, you’re back on Windows XP, exchanging IM messages with someone called Emily again. Although this time, there’s another friend – Evelyn – also vying for your attention, making things a little more complicated.

Otherwise, it’s a similar tale of teenage awkwardness and intense feelings clumsily expressed, with some potential moments of hot shame thrown into the mix too.

Here’s a trailer:

Emily Is Away Too is available fairly cheaply, although its predecessor can be played for free, so that’s probably where you want to start if you’re not sure if these games are for you.

Otherwise, unless you’re sure you’ll never play this game but nevertheless want to read a transcript of two people talking about it, or just don’t care about spoilers, we’d advise you to go no further.

Here’s our ***FINAL SPOILER WARNING***!

(I’ll also add, although it’s not particularly representative of the game, or our discussion, that there’s a brief mention of self-harm below, too).

 

The Name’s Away, Emily Is Away

Rik: So, Emily Is Away Too. Our first direct sequel? Although it’s not very ‘indie game’ to have a series I guess…

Jo: I think this still qualifies as indie…

Rik: Oh yes, but sequels are a bit unusual, or have been so far, at least in our coverage. We’ve had spiritual successors and ‘next game from…’ though.

Jo: Yes, I was just about to say, we’ve done more spiritual successors, but not a direct sequel. This one’s a bit weird though – in one sense it’s a sequel, but in another sense it’s not.

Rik: As we mentioned last time, it isn’t a sequel in a narrative sense. It doesn’t follow the events of the first game.

Jo: Yeah, it’s like none of the events from the first game happened.

Rik: And there is an Emily, but it’s not the same Emily.

Jo: Oh, it’s a different Emily?

Rik: I mean, conceptually, it’s the same Emily. But, to be literal, the Emily of the first game was in high school in 2002. And here it’s 2006 and we’re back in high school again, about to leave for college.

Jo: Ah ok, yeah, so same Emily, different time?

Rik: The character of Emily is the same but been put in a different time and place, that’s how I saw it.

Jo: Yes, me too. Ok, sorry! We’re on the same page then.

Rik: A bit like how Judi Dench gets older but James Bond gets younger.

Jo: Hahaha!

Rik: Emily’s been rebooted as Daniel Craig, or something.
 

Smarter, more aggressive

Rik: So like we said last time, this is a similar kind of thing to Emily Is Away, and based around IM chats. But focuses (wisely) on a shorter timeframe, during the end of school/approaching final summer kind of time period.

Jo: Yes, and I think we did comment on this with the first game, where each conversation seemed to be a year apart, which was a bit strange.

Rik: This makes a lot more sense, I think.

Jo: Agreed.

Rik: It kind of ups the intensity too, along with the other main character, Evelyn, who also chats with you. Those would be the main differences I guess.

Jo: Also, the characters include hyperlinks and downloads in the chats to ‘YooToob’ and ‘Facenook’.

Rik: Yes, there’s more of a suggestion of a wider interweb. Plus, you can download the XP-alike background graphic for your desktop.

Jo: Yeah, admittedly I was like ‘what is wrong with my frickin’ settings’ and then realised that it was running in a window to add to the XP experience… (XPerience?)

Rik: I must again re-emphasise that I was not using IM or Windows XP in 2006, because I was already becoming the dusty old man that I am today.

Jo: Were you still on Win ’98?

Rik: Yeah I still had my 2001-era PC. And at that time quite a few games had problems with XP – from the Win ’95 era, anyway. I only upgrade my OS when forced to!

Jo: I think games generally struggled with Windows for quite some time? You’d see games that excitedly stated ‘RUNS ON WINDOWS!’ on the box as if that was a major selling point.

Rik: Or ‘Does not run on Windows 95’ as my copy of Wipeout had it.

Jo: But didn’t most of them just open in DOS anyway? But from Windows?

Rik: Some worked OK like that. Others just wouldn’t, for whatever reason. Our family PC had a dual boot setup, to cover all bases.

Jo: Ah yes, I remember it fondly. It was split into about 6 different drives, wasn’t it?

Rik: I think a partition was involved, and possibly we had two HDs. The XP era wasn’t as bad for games compatibility as the DOS/Win ’95 crossover period, but budget games did for a while have a checkbox list on the back saying whether they worked with 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP etc.

Jo: I feel like Windows XP was the last version of Windows I could competently use. I genuinely have no idea where anything is on Windows 10, between using that for work and various iterations of OSX, I am completely lost these days (I frequently get mixed up which side of the window to X out of).

Rik: Yeah it keeps showing me pictures of my deceased dog – I don’t know where it’s getting that from.

Jo: What?!

Rik: It wants to link to OneDrive and all sorts automatically, and you can stop it, but eventually you’ll stop paying attention, or give in.

Jo: Ugh, that is very Apple-esque. Sync absolutely everything to everything else.

Rik: Anyway. We’re perhaps getting slightly sidetracked.

Jo: Ok, yes, but let me just say one more thing about our beloved first family PC. Do you remember you put a screenshot on the load screen of some kind of grizzly monster?

Rik: I don’t.

Jo: And underneath it said something like: ‘If you think this is scary, try using Win ’95…’

Rik: What a funny guy I was/am. I think I found out how to change all of those screens in some PC mag or something.

Jo: And the opening/exit windows chime – I think at one point the opening audio was the Purple Tentacle speech from Day of the Tentacle.

Rik: I made a fake Windows ’95 ‘demo’, too. It wasn’t in Klik and Play, but it was in something like that. Every time you tried to do something, you’d get an error message. Like I said, I was a very funny and cool guy.

Jo: Ok, now we’re really getting sidetracked.

 

I’ll like anything you want if you go out with me

Rik: Were you doing any instant messaging in 2006?

Jo: Yes, sort of. 2002 – 2006, I was at uni, so internet was very iffy: non-existent in first year, dial-up in my second and (second) second year (I switched courses) and iffy broadband in third year. But mainly used it when I was home from uni.

Rik: Yeah, that’s the context of the characters here, isn’t it, using home PCs.

Jo: That were SHARED.

Rik: And internet was a bit better in the US perhaps?

Jo: Probably. I don’t think our parents got broadband until relatively late on. Maybe even 2006/2007?

Rik: Did it not come when they got Sky?

Jo: No, the village couldn’t get broadband.

Rik: Ah right.

Jo: But, yeah, I was still using MSN back then. How about you?

Rik: I was, but only very sparingly, i.e. to chat to you or Stoo at a prearranged time. I was never part of a world where I hopped online to see who was around.

Jo: I am sorry to once again admit that some of the conversations in Emily Too were eerily reminiscent.

Rik: Yes, for me too, even though I am officially too old to remember the time it recreates. It’s very evocative of school type stuff.

Jo: Ugh, just everything being a big drama. People spilling their feelings out all over the place… ONLINE FLIRTING! Terrible times. Terrible.

Rik: Well, like we said, the intensity is upped by the fact you have two people talking to you, which is not something I ever had to manage in real life. It’s literally almost Emily Is Away x 2.

Jo: How did you find having IM conversations with both Evelyn and Emily?

Rik: Yeah, the game keeps them fairly separate at first, so your attention isn’t divided, but I guess it’s no surprise when that changes later on. But first of all, you’re given the chance to get to know each of them a bit.

Jo: Yeah, and then later it gets into the meat of dealing with both of them… oh that sounds awful. I meant, getting to the point where you’re having quite intense personal conversations with two people simultaneously.

Rik: We’ll edit the meat comment out. [Liar! – Ed.]

Jo: I didn’t mean to go quite so Jeremy Clarkson there.

Rik: This conversation *vroom* goes like the clappers!

Jo: I found the double conversation so stressful. Even the second time, when I knew it was coming – my typing fingers got the sweats.

Rik: Well, I was on guard slightly after the first game.

Jo: Oh, me too. I was so neutral during my first playthrough.

Rik: Do you know what? I was not careful at all.

Jo: I was so careful I got an ending only 4% of people got.

Rik: Heheheh – hardcore player!

Jo: Every time someone got flirty with me I was like, YES AND I AM FOND OF YOU ALSO, FRIEND!

Rik: Because of what happened in the first game?

Jo: Yeah. I don’t think I had the emotional resilience to deal with the fictional accusations.

Rik: I guess I thought I’d be playing it again in all likelihood and it wouldn’t be doing its job if it didn’t catch me off guard the first time. I thought I was being careful in the ways that mattered, i.e. not pretending to like both girls in a romantic way. But I was a bit free and easy in terms of saying I liked the same things as both of them, which is how it gets you!

Jo: ‘Mmm yeah Snow Patrol, they’re great!’

Rik: I mean, who hasn’t told a lie to impress/not offend someone?

Jo: As a people pleaser I found it quite liberating to be like ‘hm, not my thing…’

Rik: When I was a teenager, I was like: I’ll like anything you want, if you go out with me. (Which is how I ended up at a Gomez concert in 1998).

Jo: Yeah, I mean I’ve politely been saying yes to things until this past year, when the penny has finally dropped that you can have a different opinion to someone else and nothing bad will happen as a result. That being said, I’ve also been through phases of deliberately not liking things in order to appear cool.

Rik: I would say that pretending to like something out of politeness isn’t so bad, I would have thought it was part of teenage life really.

Jo: Yeah, I agree.

Rik: I guess this game takes the perspective that if you’re trying to be all things to all people just to get close to them that’s a different thing.

Jo: I think naturally I warmed to Evelyn more than Emily.

Rik: Appropriately enough, Evelyn is the person you don’t know so well, while Emily is more like an old friend.

Jo: I just found it easier to talk to her for some reason, while also being chatty with Emily.

Rik: I mean it seems fairly obvious there’ll be a choice to make at some stage… which manifests itself in a stressful chapter 3.

Jo: Yeah, in that mid-point where you’ve got to reply to both IM chats within a certain time is where things fall apart. I upset Emily both times.

Rik: I figured I could keep up with the typing.

Jo: Me too, but my answers kept getting longer and I just ran out of time! And Emily was like ‘ARE YOU EVEN FUCKING LISTENING?’ or something.

Rik: Yeah, there’s no avoiding that. I think I was keeping up with time on one go, but eventually it makes you say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Like, telling Emily to not worry about Steve, and that’s Evelyn’s problem… or something like that.

Jo: Ah ok, so it pretty much rails you into messing up?

Rik: Yeah.

 

Hot shame callout

Rik: So you kind of think at that point, that’s the main crux of the game… like, who do you pick? And can you still be friends with the other person?

Jo: What did you do on your first playthrough?

Rik: I talked to Emily. But! There’s a sucker punch, when Evelyn and Emily become friends. I had said all kinds of stuff about what I liked and what I didn’t, and Emily gets a copy of the chat logs, of course.

Jo: Oh crikey! You fell down a right rabbit hole! So did you say different things to each of them?

Rik: Yeah, I think maybe about films and music, and about whether I wanted to settle down with someone or not.

Jo: Ah, ok yeah.

Rik: It all felt fairly harmless as I was doing it, but then you get in some deep shit at the end. Due to TEENAGE INTENSITY.

Jo: But then in the court of Emily, she proved you didn’t really like Snow Patrol after all.

Rik: Something like that.

Jo: I think both my playthroughs were fairly amicable. Maybe I was too neutral both times, even though second time I was more flirty with Evelyn.

Rik: Ah so you did manage to avoid the hot shame of the first game then. I got whacked with shame… did Emily send you that copy of her chat with [boyfriend/ex-boyfriend] Jeff, or do you only get that if you talk to her instead of Evelyn?

Jo: Yeah I got a copy of the Jeff chat. Where Jeff has a strop because she didn’t want to go over…

Rik: Yeah, so if you haven’t been honest, the two get talking, and the friend you ignored warns you off the person you chose.

Jo: Ah ok, I did wonder. Because they do make friends at the end and I thought uh oh, this is where things could get messy, but actually they were like ‘everything is fine, we’re all good friends’.

Rik: Evelyn sends chat logs to Emily (and vice-versa) when you’re pretending to like different things. It made me feel sick quite honestly.

Jo: I’m not surprised! I think I was too badly bitten by the first game.

Rik: Yeah, it’s all, ‘How could you say you didn’t want to settle down after College, when you told Evelyn you do?’ I mean, it’s all really stupid stuff really isn’t it.

Jo: I mean who really knows at that age?

Rik: But teenagers do (or did) talk like that with some certainty about their imagined adult lives – I remember it well!

Jo: Oh yeah, definitely. Even after uni, I was fairly sure I was going to become a columnist and live in a trendy flat or something (instead of working in admin, and not being able to afford toilet paper).

Rik: I had some weird conversations with someone about breaking up before university just days after starting to go out with them. I was like, why are we talking about this now?

Jo: I mean, I watched a lot of American TV, I wonder if I just mimicked that a lot of the time? As though I thought ‘this how adult relationships are’ and ‘this is what adults do’ so that’s how I should behave. I remember always wanting to go on a real date with someone like they did on TV.

Rik: Except adults don’t actually express themselves in terms of ‘you’re the best person in the world/you’re the worst person in the world’ based on whether you lied about liking Snow Patrol, or ignored them in a chat.

Jo: Hahaha! No, I just mean in terms of making everything really serious and dramatic.

Rik: Yeah, that’s the thing, on the one hand it’s all trying to be adult, but on the other there are emotions flying all over the place, based on very little.

Jo: It’s all completely juvenile – you think you’re being really mature at the time, but in reality you’re arguing over nothing.

Rik: You don’t get a divorce because you disagreed about a film you watched.

Jo: ‘You told me you liked horror films, but it turns out you’ve loved comedy all along!’

Rik: Yeah, right. There’s that bit where either Evelyn or Emily (depending on who you choose) say like, ‘I thought we were incompatible…’

Jo: Oh, yeah, I remember.

Rik: ‘Because you drink and I don’t’ or ‘you’re a virgin and I’m not’ or whatever.

Jo: I wondered if the incompatibility thing was because I was being so bland and neutral. I did get embarrassed when both asked me if I was a virgin. I was like, for goodness sake Jo, it’s not even real.

Rik: It is quite embarrassing. I just chose the answers that were true for me at that age, which were obviously the ‘not cool’ ones.

Jo: I would have done, but there wasn’t an option for ‘I only drink Archers and lemonade…’

Rik: Haha, yes! ‘I make one Budweiser last all evening because I don’t really like beer and resent spending computer game money on it…’

 

Chat log police

Rik: I agonised most about the advice you give re: ‘the bad situation’ that whoever you speak to is dealing with. But I think maybe whatever you suggest just works?

Jo: I think I told Evelyn to avoid Steve and tell her friends the truth. And that if they were really her friends, they’d stick by her. I can’t remember what I told Emily. Is it after she shares the Jeff chat log and asks if you think she was unreasonable by not wanting to go round??

Rik: It’s a prelude I think. That’s an obvious, ‘is my boyfriend horny and wanting sex as his parents are out?’ type thing. I think later, he refuses to be dumped by Emily and threatens to hurt himself.

Jo: Oh god, really?

Rik: Yeah.

Jo: That took a dark turn.

Rik: And your options for advice are like, tell his parents, tell his friends, tell the police…

Jo: What? I feel like I played a different game!

Rik: Well, if you don’t talk to her then she obviously sorts it out herself.

Jo: I suppose it’s interesting what the different avenues are depending on how you answer. One of the more frustrating elements of the first game is that whatever you do, you end up being frozen out by Emily.

Rik: Yeah, absolutely. And you can avoid that fate here.

Jo: Is there an option where you and Emily can get together?

Rik: Yes, I think so, as long as you haven’t told too many porky-pies about liking Snow Patrol, or settling down after college, or whatever. In which case, Evelyn will dob you in.

Jo: I was like, sorry love. I’m not a fan.

Rik: I was slightly prejudiced against Emily from the first game, which I know is unfair.

Jo: Yeah, me too. I was like, ‘I’m not going there again’. I think that was why I was *so* careful on my first playthough.

Rik: I was only careful after my first go, where I got called out by her and dumped again! But it’s good to know there are good outcomes. You can see it more as a game this time, where honesty is generally rewarded.

Jo: Yeah, exactly.

Rik: And you can even explain to the person you don’t speak to, ‘look I was busy, I’m sorry’, even if you have to swallow a bit of the old ‘you’re not the person I thought you were’ teen speak first.

Jo: I was slightly worried that it would be similar to the first one and that you’d end up pissing off both characters somehow.

Rik: I think that is possible, but you’d have to seek it out I think. The emotional punch if you mess up is bigger here, but more avoidable also.

Jo: Yeah, I think so too.

 

If I lay here, if I just lay here

Rik: Did the constant Snow Patrol references put you off Emily? To be totally honest, I don’t think I liked any of the music really.

Jo: Well, I think I had my weight on the back foot after the first game, which I shouldn’t have really but found it hard to shake off. But I generally get a bit prickly whenever anyone is like ‘listen to/watch/read this – isn’t it amazing?’ and you feel obliged to like it. So even when both characters were like ‘hey let’s listen to this together’ I was bit like *groan* do I have to?

Rik: It’s funny how they can tell if you don’t click on the music links: ‘Oh yeah, this Snow Patrol song is really good’; ‘Er, Rik, you haven’t even clicked on the link!’

Jo: If I’m being completely honest – yes, it was mainly the Snow Patrol thing. I don’t have anything against Snow Patrol per se, I don’t think they’re bad, I just find it hard to believe anyone could be *that* into Snow Patrol.

Rik: In my mind, they’re the Coldplay of 5 years later. In that the received wisdom is that they’re really bland, but I actually don’t mind the early Coldplay stuff which came out when I was 18-19. I could imagine Snow Patrol being that slightly later generation’s equivalent.

Jo: There was a certain type of person who was really into Snow Patrol at that time. People who hadn’t heard other music.

Rik: Ooof! Hahaha! Well, I quite liked Chocolate, and Spitting Games.

Jo: Don’t get me wrong, there are Snow Patrol songs I like, but when someone’s like ‘OMG I’d love to see them live’ it’s hard to understand that excitement. Perhaps I was bringing my own prejudices/music snobbery into the mix.

Rik: I was already losing touch with music by this point. Although I did enjoy the pixel cover art for Year Zero by NIN which you can have as an avatar. There’s an LCD Soundsystem song [All My Friends] at the end, too, live from Later… with Jools Holland (although there’s sadly/happily no Jools cameo).

Jo: I will be accompanying LCD Soundsystem on the piano.

Rik: *Plinky plonky plinky plonk*

Jo: I did quite like the addition of links though, it felt very of the moment I think.

Rik: Yeah, it definitely felt more internetty, with the links to fake YouTube and Facebook. Although not ever having had Facebook I felt slightly old looking at profile pages.

Jo: It reminded me that when Facebook was first a thing it was a bit more interesting, unlike the ramshackle junk shop of adverts and clickbait that it is now. I was pretty late to it, but in the early days it was quite streamlined, and, admittedly, a good/easy way to keep in touch with people.

Rik: Well as I understand it the next game is based entirely on ‘Facenook’, so I had better get with the programme.

Jo: I did wonder, why they went with Facebook and not MySpace – not that I was ever on MySpace, but that was the big thing around that time. Facebook was a bit more underground at first.

Rik: I did wonder about MySpace. Maybe it has a more limited resonance since it’s defunct?

Jo: Possibly.

Rik: Like, maybe most people would recognise the IM format or Facebook, but you’d probably have to have been into MySpace maybe to get the references?

Jo: Yeah, you’re probably right. Facebook and YouTube are still around, not in the same format as they were back then, but recognisable enough. Weird though, that MySpace has sort of faded into nothingness considering EVERYONE (except you and I, apparently) had it.

Rik: Hm, apparently it’s still going.

Jo: What?? Really??

 

Meatballs is away

Jo: Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Rik: I don’t think so.

Jo: I had a little trouble with some of the screen names on the left-hand side. I can’t think of what the two different names were, but I kept reading them as ‘meatballs’ every time they caught my eye.

Rik: It puts people from your Steam list in sometimes…

Jo: I’ll have to check… Matatat and Kellsbells. Somehow my brain just kept converting those two into ‘meatballs’. ‘Meatballs is away.’

Rik: Kelly is Evelyn’s friend I think, and Mat gets a mention somewhere.

Jo: So – to sum up, I feel like this is a more rounded, maybe even more refined version of the first game.

Rik: Yeah. Except different things happen in them, so it’s probably worth checking out both rather than skipping straight to this. Equally, you won’t miss out on anything, plot-wise, if you do. But the first one is free, so probably a worthwhile starting point.

Jo: Oh yeah, it’s not a revamp of the first one or anything. It sets it up well, and even though this isn’t a continuation of that story, it does still build on the first one.

Rik: Yeah, it’s like, how do we add more layers to it. And it’s a bit more intense, but does give you more options to negotiate the things that happen.

Jo: Yeah, there are different places you can go with it, and you have the opportunity to explain your actions/choices.

Rik: You don’t have control taken away like in the first game. Unless you refuse to accept that you can’t speak to both friends at once no matter how quickly you hit the keys!

Jo: I’m intrigued by where the third one will take things.

Rik: If it increases the awkwardness too much, I don’t know if I’ll cope. But I’m looking forward to it, assuming it’ll be our next game?

Jo: Yeah, it would make sense. Our last discussion of the year, probably? If we can squeeze it in?

Rik: Should be possible I’m sure. Are we done with Emily Too?

Jo: I think so.

Rik: Ok, cool. Thanks for making time for this, enjoyed it as always.

Jo: Me too!

Rik: Until next time!

—
Emily Is Away Too is available on Steam and itch.io for about £4.