Cibele explores a place well trodden by literature, but often neglected in video games: the coming of age story about first love. A staple in English lit with titles like Alice Munro's How I Met My Husband and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Winter Dreams, few games explore this murky, confounding experience. And so it is that Nina Freeman's supposedly autobiographical retelling of her first romantic dalliance is a video game about a boy she once met through a video game.
If it sounds too meta, rest assured that this is not The Beginner's Guide, another recent indie autobiography. Freeman's tale is far more straightforward: boy meets girl. Girl likes boy. Lots of texting and panty pics are sent. It's a true modern romance
Set in 2009, when Freeman was 19, Cibele is split up into three roughly 30-minute acts. Each begins with the player exploring files on Nina's computer. (For purposes of discussion, I'll refer to the in-game character as Nina and the developer as Freeman.) These consist of profile bios, pics, poems, drawings, homework assignments and text messages. Then you jump into a fictitious MMO called Valtameri and play some co-op with your crush, a boy named Blake.
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