Take it from me, raising a young daughter is hard. You bring her into this world, set her up in her own private quarters, read to her, play with her, take her to the city, and even lavish her with expensive gifts but does she appreciate it? Not at all. All you can expect for your efforts are these little passive aggressive letters slid into the hall from underneath her bedroom door, expressing her dissatisfaction and demanding more, more, more until one day you’ve had enough.
So you take her forcefully by the hand and lead her somewhere quiet where you chop her to bits to dismember her, strap her into an electric chair to fry her or maybe toss her in the furnace to incinerate her until all that remains is low quality wood and iron that even the local Huntsman won’t take off your hands. At that point what more can you do but cut your losses, gather up the left over parts, clean up the blood trail staining the hallway and start anew with, what you hope will be, a better daughter who will earn you more gold per hour at the grist mill.
If your stomach turned reading that last part, good. My Lovely Daughter, a ghoulish new indies resource management sim, now available on Steam, is wretched but, and I’m ashamed to admit it, also kind of fascinating. In the game you play as Faust, a mad, amnesiac doctor with an expressive but feature-lite face that is a harbinger of the low budget graphics to come. In the wake of losing his family, Faust has turned to the dark side of alchemy in an attempt to resurrect his daughter, Arhea. This is accomplished via the forging of homunculi, surrogate daughters cobbled together from loose bits of clay, iron ingots, bundles of wood and other elements. Your makeshift girls are then loaned out for work to the local townspeople who offer all manner of unpleasant labor at rock bottom pay. Through working odd jobs and some gentle nurturing, the homunculi gain experience and, when they’ve matured, can be brutally slaughtered for their precious souls.
Each homunculus is different and the type of homunculus you create is determined by the objects you use in the alchemic ritual. For instance, three low quality meats will generate a homunculus without skin called “Meat” though the game will cruelly force you to name her something adorable like Natalie even knowing the gristly fate that awaits. Experimenting with various materials of differing qualities will yield different kind of homunculus like one of pure fire or ice, another that looks like a living doll or an insect. They’re born into the game world with one of four dispositions (fear, joy, anger or sadness) that will determine what kinds of jobs they will excel at and what kind of affinity they will add to the soul smorgasbord you’re preparing to wedge back into your daughter’s rotting body. A rotting body which, by the way, must be treated with a special balm to keep it fresh enough to return from the grave. Ick.
At no point do Faust or any of the people who hire on these pitiful creatures ever question the morality of their behavior. That’s where the game starts to muddy the waters. I’ve already described in graphic detail how the core gameplay loop of child labor and daughter murdering works, but what I haven’t told you is how truly horrible it feels to play through these parts. I wasn’t lying. I really do have a daughter not far from the age of the girls in this game. So imagine my shock when rather than going gently into that good night, the homunculi beg for their lives or react with utmost shock that I would want them dead. Part of the game, you see, is making the girls love you by spending time with them or offering them gifts both mundane (chocolates, almonds) and very special (a picture book, a hobby horse). You must make them love you so you get better swag when you butcher them.
I’ll pause here for you to go catch a shower to wash away the filth.
I want to discuss mild thematic spoilers that you may want to discover on your own so if you’d like to remain spoiler free, please skip to the IN CONCLUSION section.
THEY ARE ALL OUR DAUGHTERS
Without giving away the game’s secrets (although you’ll wish I had when you hear how convoluted its final ending is) I did start to get the impression that I wasn’t supposed to be having mindless fun. This is a game that requires some thought. It’s simultaneously about a father’s grief and, believe it or not, sweatshops. Really? It says as much in the warning from the developers that pops up to poop on your potential fun before you play but it’s not in the way you think.
My daughter has grown up in comfort and health with all her basic needs met. She’s been fed and clothed and wants for nothing. What I started thinking about as played through My Lovely Daughter was at whose grace does she live in comfort? Are there not little girls in sweatshops making her clothes, her toys? Perhaps Faust’s quest is just a method the developers use to make the player aware that our little girl only has a soul because others help put it there through their misery and sacrifice. That, in fact, the “lovely daughter” of the title is not Arhea alone, it’s all the daughters who make her possible. In that way, My Lovely Daughter reminds me of Bioshock and the Little Sisters whose life blood was the source of all the cool super powers we used to wreak havoc in Rapture.
IN CONCLUSION
This isn’t a game for the weak of heart. Its unflinching portrayal of one selfish man’s quest to raise his daughter at the expense of everyone else, is disgusting and heartbreaking. It’s also more than a little bit of a grind to get through, though the game makers have wisely made it possible to fast forward time during working hours. I can’t recommend My Lovely Daughter to just anyone, but those willing to endure its cruelties will find an interesting resource management challenge and a story not afraid to be ugly, packed with inventive homunculi and dripping with macabre gothic atmosphere. You also might find guilt. A whole lotta guilt.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to go hug my daughter now.
My Lovely Daughter was provided to the reviewer by the developers, but this did not impact the reviewer’s opinion or experience.
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