Taria & Como
Taria & Como is about a lot of things. It’s about having a disability. It’s about the failure of the American medical system. It’s about finding your own agency, and taking it back when it was stolen from you. It’s about… misunderstanding animals. (People are still scared of snakes despite them being way nicer pets than cats or dogs!) The final game of Season Two is one of those rare games that’s really about something, and it uses the interactive medium in a way that made it resonate with me in a way that Celeste never quite managed.
You know how in some of the Metroid games, you’ll start off with all your suit powers then there will be something or other that happens and drops you down to the basic abilities? Taria & Como does that at the beginning. Instead of some magical sci-fi reasoning, though, protagonist Taria has her leg prosthetic – which allowed her to walk, run, and jump – replaced with a leg prosthetic that’s “approved” by the in-game health insurance stand-in. Your actually useful robot companion is likewise replaced with a healthbot that treats you like a child and pretends it has your best interests at heart. It is NOT subtle. And it shouldn’t be.
Despite living in the most technologically advanced time in history, the big money-holders in America have never been more anti-human than now. Insurance companies deny life-saving surgeries to cut costs. Prisons are privatized. The post office – which delivers mail to every single address in the county as a public service – is defunded. Schools are in shambles. Rights that were guaranteed are dissolving. Ten people have unimaginably blessed lives while millions suffer. The people at the bottom do their best. Could be doing better!
After your good prosthetic leg is replaced by the “approved” one, you can no longer jump as you once could. Even small steps are now insurmountable, but you are able to swing through levels if you can find appropriate points where you can latch on. The swinging mechanic takes some getting used to, but it feels like that’s kind of the point, also. Robbed of full mobility, you make do with the tools available to you, and you get way better with it than the people holding you down ever intended. You have to rescue your sister Como, and you won’t let a little thing like the inability to jump stop you.
The story is told with Panels-based cutscenes, but there are also your sister’s diary pages as well as company secrets strewn about the levels to collect. These are optional, but they are really necessary to fully understand the world and the story. There are no actual enemies or health bars or lives to be lost. If you miss a jump, you can always just try again. Persistence, like in life, always pays off.
Created by disabled artist Kip Henderson in association with Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions, Taria & Como is one of those games that, given the opportunity, could change the world. It has an earnestness and a sharpness that we need in today’s society, where insurance plans are one-size-fits-all and humans are treated as “products,” or “consumers,” or “assets.” We’re more than that, and every one of us has so much to offer. Putting this game in particular at the end of Season Two, after building six weeks of goodwill on a platform that always seems like it’s trying its best to do right by the players, is inspired. It will make you think not just about the perfect swinging angle to get to the next platform and complete the level, but about how so much out there is placed in direct opposition to us succeeding as individuals.
We won’t let them stop us. We are stronger than they are.
(Released July 3, 2025, as part of Season Two.)