There has been a lot of games developed lately that go with adorable fluffy pastel aesthetic. My Time at Portia, Summer in Mara, Little Witch in the Woods, Deiland, Yokai Inn, Mineko's Night Market, to name just a few.

What you might notice when watching the linked trailers, is that all of them, despite the cutesy aesthetic, include murdering animals as a part of the gameplay.

I'm really, really tired of it. I also can't help but notice that some of these games seem to have the philosophy of "land animals are your friends, sea animals are ok to kill".

Is anyone else bothered by that as much as I am? It doesn't bother me that much in realistic or typical fantasy settings, since farming, fishing, hunting, etc. have always been a part of our history. But to put murder in an otherwise lovely, pacifist game, a game that oftens explicitely ramps up the "cuteness factor" of the animals, sometimes even makes actual characters out of the same species you'll be murdering, feels really jarring to me.

The problem for me is not violence in itself, because sure, it's just a game and nobody actually gets hurt. The problem is the framing of violence, specific for this "wholesome" genre, that presents it as something cute and lovely, censors any intrinsic suffering, and keeps the player away from thinking about the fact that they have just murdered someone.