Every once in a while, Gaming is hit with a genuine masterpiece that transcends genre and becomes the new Gold Standard for what a "video game" even is.
Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. The Last of Us for the Playstation 3.
Cuckold Simulator is one such game. Part "life"-simulator, part scatching social satire, the writing is so enjoyable that it could carry the game alone. Which is good because there's not much else to the game anyway.
You play as Cuckold, who is a cuckold. Each day, you go to your wagie desk job at GloboCorp to earn money for your wife and her boyfriend and their kids. What you do on your downtime? Well, that's up to you!
Will you browse your favorite website, Reddit-dot-com through the game's functioning web browser?
Will you explore the world to find your Funky Pops collectibles that your wife's son scattered?
Or will you hit the club and talk to people about Pride and try to hit on real-life anime girls? (A June-only PRIDE side quest gives you some wearable buttons to express your sexuality, and a slanted globohomo flag on your front lawn)
It's been said that Breath of the Wild perfected the open world formula. This couldn't be further from the truth. Cuckold Simulator perfected it. Also BOTW sucks.
You can purchase a Covid-19 face mask for 99 cents, which is extremely important. The only flaw that I can see is that wearing a mask is optional, when it should be mandatory. Thankfully, an in-game message at least recommends that you never take it off.
As of this writing, the game has a short main story that can be completed in, like an hour. Somehow it's so densely-packed with good writing that it'd honestly justify a higher pricetag.
The way that the characters talk-- and there's no voice acting btw, this is all just text. But you can really feel it. Cuckold uses plenty of exclamation marks on his goofy sentences like an absolute dork. Your wife screams at you to get out of your own bedroom. Your wife's son is a cool little asshole who says shit like "U aint my dad, bruh" and "you are dismissed"
Everywhere you go, you're a victim of abuse and disrespect. From your own home, where youe wife's son demands you turn the television on for him, to your job at GloboCorp where your boss builds a cage around your desk. Bouncers call you "freak", cops tell you to get your life together. Many NPCs are just the faceless NPC-meme, which on its own would be pretty funny, but they're also placed with such care-- I saw one just standing in a corner facing the wall. That's just so freaking delightful lmao. The ending is a masterclass of Subverting Expectations, and I very much hope for a continuation.
The game is entirely a meme, and it's not at all enjoyable to actually play. You're doing it for the dialogue, which again, is fantastic. Outside of walking around and pressing the Interact button, there's 2 minigames to play. A Dark Souls parody that is harder than the real Dark Souls because the aiming is terrible, and a cruel and mean-spirited 1st-person anime girl genocide game that offends me greatly.
Oh, and uh you can also buy drugs in Chinatown to try to pick up some girl at a club, but I actually uninstalled the game after getting my ass kicked in "Cuck Souls" so idk how that turns out.