a dialect for two
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
CONTENT WARNINGS
robot sex trauma and consequent rehabilitation, implied abuse and exploitation - one early depiction of non-explicit nudity - one late explicit sex scene (no images)
"The footage depicts two women.
They eat together. If it's dessert, they will share the spoon back and forth. One eats, the other waits politely for their turn. When they're down to the last mouthful, the one whose turn it is will halve it and pass it back.
They have mastered handholding in all its forms, but their favourites are to intertwine fingers, and to clasp their little fingers together.
Most recently, they began to finish each other's sentences.
As we understand it, the two are "lovers".
They document their lives in film, as follows."
A Dialect for Two is a visual novel where two androids try to discover the meaning of love and sex for themselves. They aim to learn how to articulate their desires, and understand which ones are truly theirs.
Made in Ren'Py for RoRo Jam '25.
The game is around 10,000 words long. There is some adult content.
Further credits and a download mirror will soon be available at lacunova.xyz.
Thank you to Noelle Amelie Aman for providing such beautiful bespoke music for the game. Thank you to Kastel for helping guide me through writing the game. Thank you to Codex, Emery, Jak, Katherine, Mike and Nocti for your help with playtesting the game!
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pola's swimsuit is so cute i love it...
i really enjoyed this, i love the kind of ambient and meandering mood it takes? my fav scene was probably the one where tetra talks about the various things she wants to do with pola, before wondering whether these desires are actually hers or if she's repeating something she heard elsewhere. it felt very quiet and understated but there was something very relatable about it...
i love the filtered photo backgrounds, the ui, and the character art, it's very soft. it all blends together really nicely to make a cohesive mood, and the music is very dreamy and atmospheric. thank you for making it!
Thank you so much for reading and vibing with it! I knew instantly that a little retro swimsuit would be perfect for her... And that part definitely came from a very real place, it can be hard to know how much of our wants genuinely come from within and how much is what seems "right" or "correct" to do. It's all very confusing..!
an incredibly visually impressive game, with a lot of discussion regarding love and freedom. taking place in the future, "a dialect for two" seems to raise the questions, "what happens once humans are gone? will love still exist?"
rather than giving answers to either of these questions, it presents the player with various thought experiments, conducted through pola and tetra. masterfully put together. thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for playing, I'm also touched that you found it visually impressive!!
This was such a beautiful game. I loved slowly uncovering the layers behind Pola's and Tetra's "past lives" if that makes sense, and seeing how they're both trying to move on and heal in different ways. I love that they're both open about their desires and fantasies. The scene at the end with the jewelry box was really poignant.
I loved this reading this, thank you!
Yes, that totally makes sense! I thought a lot about how robots might communicate differently about these things than we do - at least that they may be able to be clearer about what does and doesn't gratify them as they encounter it, with an honesty that I truly envy. Writing the scenes with the jewellery box was when I started to understand why I made this game, I think. Thank you so much for playing!
What does it mean to be free? As of the game's present, both of the two leads are "free" from previous owners. They live their lives in peace, love each other dearly and seem to have an extended social circle. Still, the game's writing makes it clear that this freedom is built on a past of opression. Dark pasts lurk just under the surface, stemming from both their individual histories as well as the larger contexts in which they were created. The marks of such on their bodies, on the way they think and both in what is said and what isn't. Can you truly find freedom in those circumstances? Can you find what you want and what you need?
Those are the question the game, and the characters in it want to wrangle with. What I liked the most about the game's writing is the way that it asks you (in a clever meta framing this is also the purpose of the tape in game) to question things that you might take for granted. What is love? What is sex? What is desire? What does it mean to be influenced by something? What does it mean to control or be controlled? Freedom is to understand yourself and your relationship to these things. To be free is to understand what you want, or at least make active efforts towards doing so.
This is no straightforward process, it involves trial and error, doubt and uncertainity but it's one that's worth doing. It comes in steps, and maybe some things are impossible to truly convey but as long as you question you will find something. Something beyond the purpose for which you were made, someone besides who you were made to be. That's good enough. Especially in a world that's actively trying to destroy spaces to do such a thing. A game for queer perverts of all knds.
The art and music are also very well done, all enhancing the unique atmosphere. The almost detatched nature of the narration enhancing the framing device and ideas surounding voyureism.
Thank you so much Katherine!! A whole essay down here for me... I'm happy the game is understood. It is quite personal, but I want Pola and Tetra to find freedom as much as I want myself (and others) to find freedom.