World End Syndrome

World End Syndrome is a visual novel about a small seaside town with dark secrets. It’s structured like a dating sim, and you have to romance the five datable characters in a specific order if you want to unlock the “true ending” that answers all the questions about the overarching mystery. That being said, the dating sim elements are relatively undemanding. There aren’t a lot of dialog choices, and the gameplay mainly involves choosing which location to visit on each day during the month of August.

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I was on the fence about World End Syndrome, as I was dubious about a game that wants you to play the same story six or seven times, but I’m glad I gave it a chance. If you’re only interested in one playthrough, that’s perfectly fine. It takes about ten hours to get from the beginning to the first character-specific “good ending,” and it’s a lot of fun to walk around town, go to club activities, and fall in love while there are dead people and possibly a cult wandering around and killing people in the background.

Re: World End Syndrome

I was telling my husband that I want to go on a class trip like the kids in World End Syndrome, and he said that, when he was in high school, they took a class trip to go hiking to see Roman ruins. Unfortunately, the ruins were in contested territory, and the trip was canceled because war broke out in the middle of the night.

Two years later, they took a class trip to the desert to hike along a ravine to see a giant meteor crater, and that trip was canceled because it coincided with the biannual rainfall. There was a flash flood in the ravine, and everyone had to spend the night running back to the buses.

My husband told me that, while they were running for their lives, their servants were carrying their bags behind them. I was like, “Servants, you say.” He was like, “The people who work for the bus company.” I was like, “Porters? The bus drivers?” He was like, “Yes, the servants.”

A friend recently recommended the essay collection Funny in Farsi, which I just started reading this past weekend. The author talks about how her mother had a servant when they lived in Iran, by which I think she meant a woman whom her mother paid to work part-time as a babysitter. I mean, I guess technically that’s what a “servant” is, but still. I find the term amusing.

Funny in Farsi is great, by the way. The tone is very close to David Sedaris, and the essays are chill and relatable (and not about tragedy and suffering). The collection opens with what’s probably the best essay about Disneyland I’ve ever read, and that’s saying something, given that I’ve read all sorts of stories about Disneyland murders and gangs and urban legends.

My husband tells me he went to Disney World in Orlando with his family when he was a kid. His father, who used to be a journalist, used his press credentials to get free passes, and their family didn’t have to pay for anything. Unfortunately, my husband’s father snapped on the second day in the park and made everyone go back to the hotel so that he could sit alone next to the pool and eat a bucket of KFC, which is uncannily close to the ending of the Disneyland essay in Funny in Farsi.

I keep telling my husband that he should write autobiographical essays, but he always answers that he hates writing. Which is fair. I kind of hate writing too.