Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

Warning: This contains spoilers for Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor.

The image from the Steam page

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is video game published by Sundae Month for Steam. Published on 2016, it is a self-proclaimed "anti-adventure" game focused on trying to eek out a living by cleaning the titular spaceport. It has been praised for its social commentary on the plight of the working poor.

What is the story? The titular character is an "Alaensee girlbeast" who dreams of being a space adventurer and leaves her home behind. However, the girlbeast gets cursed. This causes her to be followed by a floating skull. Now, she has to figure out how to remove curse while trying to make ends meet.

How does the gameplay? The game is divided into in-game days. During each day, you have a limited amount of time to burn garbage. For each piece of garbage burned, you will get extra money the next day. Items can also be sold to vendors or in certain cases, eaten to decrease hunger. However, your inventory can only carry a limited amount of items at once. To transition to the next day, you need to have the player character go to sleep, which she won't do if she is hungry. Your ultimate goal is finishing quests in order to remove the curse.

I have an issue with the difficulty. Most of the difficulty comes from denying information to the player and forcing them to figure out the hidden rules of the game. The thing is, it doesn't take long for you to basically figure out everything. This can be accomplished by the half-way point of your first play-through. After this, the game becomes an absolute cakewalk. For example, the Red Scarves will try to mug you, but choosing the correct dialogue option will stop them. Whenever are being mugged, you are given the same three choices and the solution never changes. Therefore, you don't need to worry about being mugged when you find the correct option once.

Why is this a problem? There are several reasons. First off, it makes the mechanics feel dull, because nothing is challenging you. In a game that has a very high gameplay to story ratio, that is a major problem. Secondly, the creators are trying to talk about the plight of the working poor. Despite this, the player doesn't feel any struggle since there isn't anything to really struggle against. As such, the message ends up being diluted.

In addition, there was a glitch that forced me to reset. After collecting effigies of the nine gods, you are supposed to go to a specific location. There, the third tablet will be revealed. Due to a glitch, that doesn't always happen. I only figured this out after the game autosaved (which happens during the day-to-day transition). This prevented me from getting the item, thus rendering the game unwinnable. As such, I had to reset and hope the glitch wouldn't happen again. This time, the event worked properly and I managed to get the tablet. This glitch did not happen when I replayed the game for this review. 

Speaking of my second playthrough, I decided to perform an experiment. The player is repeatedly told that increasing the luck stat is important. So, I decided to ignore the luck stat to see how much it affected the experience. I didn't notice any real effect. In fact, I manage to finish faster due to the knowledge I gained from my first playthrough.

I am unsure how to feel about this. The main reason is because I am unsure what the creators were trying to do with the luck stat. The way it is treated within the game and its manual makes it seem like it was supposed to be an important mechanic, but was poorly implemented. On the other hand, it could be an elaborate joke played on the player where they are tricked into wasting their time on increasing a nonsense stat.

Something that I am sure that I like is the art style. The environments are three dimensional. All of the characters (except the skull) are represented by two-dimensional sprites. The character designs are very interesting and manage to convey a sense of otherness. It manages to make the setting feel alien in a way that few other works have. This made me excited to learn more about the world.

As it turned out, the actual worldbuilding is incredibly insubstantial. Most of the "worldbuilding" are unexplained references. For example, an item description might say something like "this item is used by the Gorzon fanatics in their funerals" then the fanatics are never mentioned again. One could argue that this is part of the point: there are exotic worlds of mystery out of grasp of the protagonist. However, I am suspicious of this claim. Why? 

There are things that the protagonist should know things that are never told to the player. For example, who does the janitor work for? Having played the game several times, I still have no idea. This is a really basic question that could be answered easily, such as in an off-hand mention in the info-dump at the beginning. 

You may be wondering about the quality of Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor's story. I have been mostly talking about mechanics. However, some video games have weak gameplay but makes up for it with a good story. In fact, some of my favorite do so, such as Night in the Woods and Stanley Parable. In fact, Night in the Woods manages to talk about similar issues to those brought up in Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, despite lacking gameplay that directly relate to it.

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor barely has any story to it. It is largely limited to interactive story bits at the beginning and end. Even then, we learn nothing about the protagonist's personality. The description on Steam tells you more about the protagonist than the actual game does. As such when the story tries to make you feel bad for her, I can't feel anything for her because she is a non-entity. It's like trying to get the audience feel bad for a non-anthropomorphic brick. 

I know this next thing is minor, but I wanted to bring it up. While replaying the game, the screen became distorted as I was told that the girlbeast needed to gendershift (i.e. change her gender via a pill). When I did so, I was told that the janitor's new gender was "HEALTHCARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT".

Proof that I am not making this up

I groaned when I saw this. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, this is a reference to how (at the time of writing) people are trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act in America. All this does is make the game very dated. It is especially jarring because there is nothing else in the game that is really contemporary. The setting is an alien planet (Xabran's Rock) with no humans. In addition, the themes (e.g. being poor sucks and transgenderism) are fairly universal. So, this reference sticks out like a sore thumb.

Ultimately, I feel like Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor fails at its goal. It tries to talk about serious issues like transgenderism and the plight of the working poor. The themes and message are let down by a weak story and dull gameplay.