About the game:
It is 1969 in Paris, and you're a waiter at a well-established bistro because you're short on cash, but the head chef is a bit suspicious...
The game is an RPG Maker Horror Game with Diner Dash-like mechanics where serving customers day in and day out progresses and unfolds the story in a visual novel-style narrative. You can play the game here!
I have one of the weirdest love-hate relationships with this game – on one hand, I do like the characters & analyzing the story for what it is, there are many interesting themes and how they play out; but some of the aspects of this game absolutely boil my blood where I can rant about it for hours, both as a writer and (someone who tries to become) a game developer. Don't worry, there is going to be a balance between the two, a lot of my essays will be rehashed versions of my conversations with my writing partners. And despite my criticism, I still love this game and replay it from time to time because it genuinely has fun dialogue & character interactions.
The funniest part about Dead Plate is that I have followed RachelDrawsThis for a very long time (since around 2021, he had a different username back then) but only started playing his games after I saw a lot of fanart for Dead Plate posted by YTTD fans I followed at the time (another game I want to write about). I added Eloquent Countenance to my 'to play' list the day it came out, and ironically didn't play any Studio Investigrave games until late 2023 - and I will write about all of them in due time (spoiler alert: Elevator Hitch is my favourite).
Manon Vacher – The Fridged Woman of Indie Video Games (spoilers)
The term 'fridging' refers to the phenomenon writing a character (usually female), where they're being maimed or killed for the sake of moving the plot forward or to motivate the male lead – and Manon is exactly that to a T.
There is a difference between a character who is actually a person within the story with agency, and being a plot device purely to further the actions of the two male main characters – and yes, I did find it pretty weird that her creator Rachel literally referred to her as the 'catalyst' to the story, considering how everything we know about her comes in form of harm done to her (Rody being an obsessive boyfriend to the point of being a creep, and Vincent who actually murders her and stuffs her in a fridge). I wouldn't have as much of a problem with any of that – if Manon wasn't the only named female character in the game and the second female character in the studio's games ever (Studio Investigrave games didn't pass the Bechtel test up until Rot in Paradise came out, which is the sixth game by the main creator and fourth game made by this entire team. Married in Red doesn't count because all conversations between the named women involve a man in one form or another).
I understand that the story is short and having more female characters would not have fixed it, but it's the way everything surrounding her is dehumanizing in the way a lot of women actually experience - and reading in the official artbook that Manon wasn't a 'real character' when they first worked on the story and her creation was 'accidental' makes so much more sense, considering any information we have about her outside the game in the official material is how she's connected to Rody & Vincent. Not to mention, at some point in the artbook she's stripped down to either being a needy girlfriend to Vincent who forces him to marry her in one universe or being the mother of Rody's kids in another. The story may be set in the 1960's, but it doesn't mean women didn't have personalities outside of romantic pursuits.
Moreover, fridging is a literary trope that has been very criticized over the years as it is a crutch for inexperienced writers who cannot move the plot forward without some big resolve (harm, death) to an 'unimportant' expandable character to create tension in the story, which is why I call some parts of the writing in Studio Investigrave games to be amateur most of the time as the writers do not fully comprehend how their writing comes across - and I wish they learn from their mistakes and maybe stop getting defensive whenever someone criticizes their games, considering they're a studio who earns money from their fans and none of their creations are in a vacuum. I do think the writing in their games improved since Dead Plate, thankfully, and I wish them nothing but to grow as creators and be open to reviews.