Warning: This article contains mentions of racism, racial slurs, racist violence, abuse, sexual assault, alcohol and drug use, and suicide, as well as mild spoilers for Jessika. 

Jessika, by Tritrie Games, is self-described as a “full motion video mystery adventure”. Throughout the story, you take the role of a private investigator who has been hired to investigate a young woman’s digital footprint for any explanations as to why she might have committed suicide. You progress through the narrative by reading documents, listening to audio files, and watching video clips that piece together the titular Jessika’s story, uncovering new aspects as you search keywords from what you’ve read and heard. I’d encourage having a notebook — digital or otherwise — closeby to keep track of what you’ve searched already, and future possible search terms.

The subject matter of Jessika’s central story is dark, heavy, and undeniably confronting. As best I can, I’ll try to address Jessika’s narrative experience with as few detailed spoilers as possible, but suffice it to say I wanted to take a shower or three after playing. Jessika does tell a powerfully acted and ultimately very critical story of radicalization, manipulation, and abuse. It also avoids a common tendency among white/Western writers to distance ourselves from racist characters by reducing them to two-dimensional cartoonish bigots that don’t resemble real people.

However, my stomach definitely turned at the use of racial slurs that didn’t really add anything to the story. I understood what was going on with Jessika well before the script had her say the n-word, or any of the several slurs targeted at Central and South Asian immigrants that appear in her video clips. Their inclusion struck me as at best unnecessary and at worst dangerously close to hurtful, as the voices and lived experiences of these minority characters are almost completely absent from the game otherwise.

The central mechanic (while interesting) may start to feel repetitive or confusing after some time. There isn’t much other than trial and error to guide you from one keyword to the next. Perhaps more frustrating were the instances where Jessika would freeze up, requiring me to quit and restart in order to continue entering search terms into its interface. Another issue came up when more deliberately built-in glitches on the in-game laptop would minimize a video I was in the middle of watching. These seem to be relatively minor bugs that don’t enormously affect gameplay overall, and are presumably easy enough to fix, but they stand out enough from a first-impressions standpoint to be worth mentioning.

Beyond the mechanics, Jessika isn’t a narrative experience that will offer any kind of escapism, which is probably a good thing given its subject matter. However, I feel it would be disingenuous not to highlight the racist violence and themes of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual assault, manipulation, and psychological abuse for players who will be safer not engaging with this kind of content. The game has received a mature content description on Steam, and while I understand wanting to avoid significant spoilers in these kinds of warnings, I don’t think it adequately covers Jessika’s bases.

Despite that, I do think the developers sought to tell this story carefully, as far as they were able. It’s to their credit that they crafted the character of Jessika as a believable person and not a caricature that white players can comfortably distance themselves from, insisting that we’d never behave that way, when that’s clearly not the case. I also appreciated that they steered clear of callous approaches to gamification that I’ve discussed previously. While Jessika does involve some Steam achievements, none of them are directly related to the game’s violent or unsettling content, instead strictly being tied to the number of documents or story elements you’re able to discover before the game’s end.

Despite what I feel are inadequate content warnings, the developers do provide some support resources at the game’s end for players who need them. The acting is unerringly and indeed unnervingly convincing, though there are definitely moments where I felt the script should have been reined in. I felt this way specifically in the use of racial slurs that don’t add anything to the story, and may detract from it through being needlessly harmful.

Talking positively about an experience like Jessika is a challenge with how dark it is. I can say that I am overall thankful that my initial concerns about its subject matter being treated flippantly have been put to rest. Yet I also think it would have benefited from a more discerning eye at the level of script-writing to strike the right balance between telling its story believably and avoiding hurtful language. That said, if you’re planning on picking Jessika up, I’d recommend doing so with the lights on, and I suggest you call a friend or family member when you’re done.

A PC review copy of Jessika was provided by Tritrie Games for this preview.

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Jessika

0.00

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Powerful acting
• A mostly carefully balanced script
• Interesting central mechanic

Cons

• Some minor but significant bugs
• Racial slurs
• Inadequate content warnings