Have you played the visual novel Eliza yet? If not, stop what you re doing and play it pronto. This almost sci-fi visual novel was recently awarded an RPS Bestest Best by Sin, who said, in her review, “if I start talking about how much this game has spoken to me, I don t know if I ll be able to stop.” It’s a fascinating, thought provoking game where you play as Evenlyn, a “proxy” for the titular counselling service software. It measures heart rate and key words and things like that, and then generates a counselling script for Evelyn to read. You can get it from Steam(and it just came out on Switch, but that’s of no concern to us here).
Matthew Seiji Burns was the writer and director on Eliza. Burns is a Seattle-based writer and musician, and in addition to creating Eliza, he also contributes narrative and music to developer Zachtronics’ other games. He’s worked in game development for many years in different roles. You may have played, for example, The Writer Will Do Something. But I had the pleasure of asking him about Eliza.