This is the two hundred forty-fourth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred forty-fourth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality wants to talk about tennis. It’s falling is not the same thing as dying, by Sisi, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

cute high school game about jv girls tennis

Having played it, I’m not so sure about the “cute” part.

Falling is not the same thing as dying is a short interactive fiction (or, more accurately, hypertext fiction) piece made with Twine. We’ve had a few Twine games come up in Scratching That Itch before, but in case you are unfamiliar: Twine is a game-making tool that creates interactive text-based stories in .html format, played via a web browser. At their simplest, Twine games just ask players to click on certain bits of text to advance to the next paragraph of the story, but some games go further, offering choices with branching narratives, or other mechanics like resource management. Sisi has opted for the simple approach here, with players clicking on text to advance the story, or to view optional asides before returning to the main narrative.

That narrative is, indeed, about JV girls tennis, but it is also about much more. It’s about the weight of parental and societal expectations, about struggling within a system that was not made for you. “You” being a Chinese girl in an American high school. And a lesbian. It’s about struggling within that system because you lack the courage to defy it; or rather, you haven’t worked up the courage yet. “Sometimes that kid ends up going to a state university and railing for immigrant justice and making video games about blood and death and living a homosexual lifestyle and fighting god with their bare fists”, Sisi writes partway through. But this is a story about the time before that, about being young and uncertain, but beginning to realize just how unfair the whole system is.

Falling is not the same thing as dying is only a few minutes long, so I won’t say too much more about it, except that I enjoyed it a lot. And that its structure is highly satisfying. Simple bits of design, like some words appearing on screen one by one with a specific rhythm, do wonders for communicating tone. The asides are excellent, whisking me away to private thoughts triggered by what might seem, to another, as an innocent remark or detail, before pulling me back into the current scene to continue the story. Sometimes, I clicked on a word expecting an aside, only to find that word replaced with another, as the protagonist self-censors her thoughts. Her initial, rebellious reaction is swiftly suppressed, because the system doesn’t allow for it.

Hating high school is such a common trope that I sometimes forget how much worse it could be, for someone from a marginalized group. I wasn’t a fan of high school either, but it wasn’t until years after that I truly learned about the systemic injustice that’s central to our capitalist society. Falling is not the same thing as dying is a reminder that many people must face this at a much younger age, and come to some sort of reckoning.

If any of that sounds intriguing to you, and you missed it in the bundle, falling is not the same thing as dying is sold for a minimum price of $5. On the itch.io page, Sisi claims inspiration from Bahiyya Khan’s Blood Under The Bridge, which is not included in the bundle but is offered for any price you wish to pay, including free. So that might be worth a look too.

That’s 244 down, and only 1497 to go!