Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos is a modern take on noir. It clearly draws on classic hardboiled crime stories, but it also contains variations that fit more in the present. Like noir, Jay Schilling features a detective PC, hired by a mysterious guy to find a woman but not provided much to go on. The PC is given to sardonic commentary on himself and everything around him. He has money troubles. Over the course of the investigation events spiral out of control, there’s a plot twist, and the PC is personally threated. Yet there are some un-noir like features, too — mainly centered around the character of the PC. In his 20s, he’s too young for a noir protagonist. He’s rather weak physically, which affects a few game events. He stutters, and he’s kind of clumsy. He belongs in our age more than does a classic noir protagonist, whose traditional masculinity is out of fashion. The game is also set in the near future, rather than in the 1940s, and it features modern technology in several places. Some of the events near the end of the game, as well as the ending itself, don’t fit the noir genre, either.
Gameplay-wise, Jay Schilling is rather directed. It consists of a sequence of self-contained locations, each with a few puzzles to solve. In most it’s pretty easy to figure out what you need to do, as long as you examine everything carefully (like the good investigator you are!). At times the game gives some rather pointed hints to its puzzles, which I very much appreciated in one instance involving a particular piece of 80s technology. Some of the jumps in the story felt rather abrupt to me, though; in a few cases I hadn’t quite processed what had just happened before I found myself in the next scene.
The writing is distinctive. With that and first-person narration, the character of the PC comes out clearly. However, I didn’t like the PC, and so the primary effect of the strong writing was to increase my dislike. Because of this it took me at least a third of the game to settle into playing as Jay.
Jay Schilling is well-implemented. It also contains some quality artwork that’s displayed in response to examining certain characters and for one scene in the game. However, the art style is reminiscent of Japanese animation, which doesn’t really fit the game’s tone. I also thought it made the PC look even younger than he is — too young, really.
Overall, I prefer my games to be less directed, both in terms of narrative and puzzles, than you see in Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos. But the writing, the implementation, and the characterization of the PC are strong. If that’s what you’re looking for in a game, and you like stories that play with the noir genre, then you’ll probably enjoy spending some time as Jay.
An Exercise for the Reader 