there didn't used to be birds here: waste eaters
Radicals work towards their own obsolescence, but few have to answer the question of what to do when they succeed.
Buying charity game bundles leads to acquiring a great deal of what a friend of mine refers to as "itch.io trash." However, combing through said bundles unearths gems from time to time. I'd count Waste Eaters, a work of interactive ecofiction by Cain Maddox. among them.
Many years ago, scientists and dreamers looked around at the polluted surface of earth and decided there was nothing for it but to modify human volunteers into monstrous waste-eating beings. The game is a portrait of the last of the waste eaters on the day they consume the last drop of humanity's biochemical sin.
Waste Eaters will particularly resonate with fans of the more melancholy and downbeat flavours of solarpunk. Radicals work towards their own obsolescence, but few ever have to answer the question of what to do when they succeed, and the game suggests that the last task—coming to terms with everything you've given up for the cause—may be the most challenging.
As a work of IF, Waste Eaters is short but punchy. It doesn't overplay its hand with melodrama or overly detailed sci-fi worldbuilding, focusing instead on the bittersweetness of having accomplished a great and noble goal for which the world will neither remember nor thank you. The incorporation of music and visual cues bolsters the narrative's peaks and valleys, all of which are delivered with an matter-of-fact attitude. The limited palette recalls the blaring primary colours of hazard symbols while steering in a more autumnal direction, in keeping with its themes of inevitable decay and return to the earth.
Pick up Waste Eaters at itch.io.
