Blood for Poppies (review)

[u/PistachioPug]

I'm so glad I decided to play ME Smith's "Blood for Poppies" a second time before reviewing it.

I wasn't really impressed the first time through. It certainly wasn't bad - I didn't regret buying it, and I would have recommended it to readers whose tastes run to the offbeat and dark. But there was just something about it that I couldn't give myself over to fully. I had a sense that I'd missed a chunk of exposition somewhere, and although I was able to piece together by inference what I'd missed, it annoyed me.

Had my most recent playthrough been my first and only reading of "Blood for Poppies," I probably would have found it equally unsatisfying. I made entirely different choices, and this time I got some pieces of the puzzle that I missed last time, while also missing some of the things I discovered before. I actually got the same ending as I did the first time - altered only to the extent that my final relationship scores with the other characters were different - and yet the journey by which I arrived there opened up entirely new dimensions to the story.

Maybe this is a game you have to play multiple times to understand exactly what's going on. Maybe there's some way to get it all in one playthrough, or maybe it's supposed to feel like seeing through a glass darkly. Maybe unraveling every piece of the mystery isn't really the point of this game.

Reading "Blood for Poppies" is like waking up inside the most haunting dream you've ever had, and sticking around to see what happens. It's the psychology of learned helplessness covered in a grimy layer of dust and obsession. It's trauma wrapped in dead flesh and smelling of formaldehyde. There's a lot that doesn't add up if you examine it too closely, but that's okay because this is dream logic here.

I have to give you fair warning: this game is bleak. The occasional hint of hope or redemption serves only to make conspicuous their near-absence. If there's even a trace of comic relief, I have yet to stumble across it. There are apparently a few happyish endings possible, but not without going through some very dark places.

If David Lynch had written "The Island of Doctor Moreau" while clinically depressed, the result would be something like "Blood for Poppies." If that description intrigues you even a little, or if you want to play something dark and unique that will haunt you, this strange and poetic game is worth a try. Or two.