I played and gave feedback on Tunnels, The Company, and The Cat and The Lacquerware. See below (and my comments on the reflections!):
TUNNELS
What values you see in the game, and how they are reflected in the choices made by the game designer (This is what we’ll grade you, the reviewer, on for this “Values at Play” assignment.)
Although it wasn’t necessarily the main value, I liked the focus on the relationship between Carpon and Talpa – it helped emphasize that even in these extreme, deprived circumstances, human connection was still valuable, and important. This also felt echoed in the encounter with Stega.
It felt like there was value placed on genuine exploration, and trying to break out of established cycles – i.e., when you have the choice to sit in one place or explore, and the latter is rewarded whereas the former just brings you right back into the fold.
I think one of the main values is the importance of environmental conservation – a la, the experience with Stega – and avoiding repeating the same exploitative interactions with the land. I expected it to be one of those stories where people actually have to go find some promised land, but the twist that, actually, the land was already capable of supporting them if only they listened, was a great subversion of that expectation and really landed well. This also kind of fed back into the exploration/open-mindedness value mentioned above!
Thoughts on your experience relevant to the objectives in the rubric:
How well did the game get you to care about the given topic or cause?
It’s something I was already conscious of, but I think the game did a great job of illustrating it!
How well did the game’s use of the medium fit the story?
The medium was used exceptionally well – I talked about it in the next section, but the presentation really helped bring the story to life, and made it feel much more dynamic.
Did it have choices that were interesting and consequential to you? (Did any make you really stop and think?)
The first choice – to stay or explore – felt the most consequential (and was, I found out – staying led to an immediate ending). After that, I tended to just choose whatever felt more adventurous – i.e., learning from Stega was a pretty clear one to me – but I think the different paths they suggested still got across the message well. They didn’t all have to have the same impact of that first choice, though: I think giving each one the possibility of being the point where the player learned the value of striving a little more was great. Either way, they still made me stop and think, and consider the values!
Things I liked
Aside from the reveal with Stega, which was great, I also liked the dialogue in the beginning a lot. More generally, there were a lot of little UI/presentation things that were excellent: clicking anywhere on the screen to advance is great, I wish I’d done that. Also liked how dialogue came in a line at a time, felt like a conversation – or the slight delay after an ellipsis, and then the rest of the line appearing. Really great, made it feel like it was flowing very naturally. Also the different font sizes as you’re yelling in the cavern – excellent. Basically, incredibly well-polished!
Return to previous choice was a great alternative to just ending.
Loved the ‘Fight or Fight’ choice with the mole cricket.
Things to improve
I asked Stega to teach me, and then it just ended – I think it might be a bug, or just an ending that isn’t as clearly an ending?
I think I might have preferred having some non-dialogue portions lumped together more, like introducing the dinner and then also having its description in the same line, but I think it largely worked very well.
I did end up feeling like there was a pretty clear path after the first choice to leave – i.e., accompany Stega – but that wasn’t so much because I didn’t think the choices would be consequential, but because I did and I wanted to make sure I kept on the right trajectory. So I don’t know if they actually need to be more difficult choices; I think they do work well as-is.
THE COMPANY
What values you see in the game, and how they are reflected in the choices made by the game designer (This is what we’ll grade you, the reviewer, on for this “Values at Play” assignment.)
It feels anti-capitalist, anti-wealth inequality/worker exploitation, and the direction it feels like tech is going (i.e., the company scrip of ‘Bezos Pesos’, the fact that it’s called ‘The Company’, etc. I mean, the reference to the tornado is just literally what Amazon did to their warehouse workers.
It also makes you wrestle somewhat with being complicit in exploitative systems. Someone actually being named Ed Snowden really dovetailed with this nicely – it made it very clear that it was important to consider the consequences, and obligation to, whistleblow. I liked the final decision to either reveal the USB, or not – and how the former ending, where you just say you don’t believe, just has you quietly sucked back into the system, whereas the latter hints at a much larger narrative just beginning.
I thought it was interesting how it tied the types of skills that let you participate in exploitation, and be a part of the upper class in this messed up society, to the option to break out of it – i.e., knowing how to break encryption on the USB. It made it feel like you were actually taking pro-active action yourself, which was great.
Thoughts on your experience relevant to the objectives in the rubric:
How well did the game get you to care about the given topic or cause?
Well! The mix of actual events and very plausible extensions of current policies really hit home, and I thought it got across the message very well.
How well did the game’s use of the medium fit the story?
It was great! It genuinely made me feel like I was the one navigating through the file, and the different colors of text etc. all contributed to that. I also liked that there were hints throughout – I think that was definitely worth including, even if it has a bit less verisimilitude, since it really reduced the friction.
Did it have choices that were interesting and consequential to you? (Did any make you really stop and think?)
They all felt consequential – especially deciding whether or not to bring the USB to your boss, or stop early. It was very clear from playing through it that there would be consequences if I made a mistake, and the way that the game slowly revealed how high the stakes actually were – with the greyed out names, and then the exterminations and actual killings – really helped contribute to that.
Things I liked
The Wordle puzzle is great, love it. Actually all of the puzzles were cool – really like how it ties together the plot and the puzzling, and puts you in the protagonist’s position very directly. In general I though that the puzzles were a great way to reveal the secrets of the document, and made for a very smooth transition/background to the various choices that the player had to make. It was very well-done, and made me want to play whatever the follow up is, once you head off to Bridge St!
Things to improve
A few little typos, i.e. on the first page – woudldn’t instead of wouldn’t, ‘rest assured with’ instead of ‘rest assured that’.
The Worlde prompt only accepts upper case ‘SMILE’ – couldn’t hurt to make it case-insensitive, but a very minor thing.
The image for the ‘roxi’ puzzle was a little small and hard to read.
If you do expand it, I’d love to see what comes next – although it does work very well in its current form, and that would probably be a lot of additional scope.
THE CAT AND THE LACQUERWARE
What values you see in the game, and how they are reflected in the choices made by the game designer (This is what we’ll grade you, the reviewer, on for this “Values at Play” assignment.)
Tension between, if not filial piety exactly, at least respect for your family’s explicit wishes – and providing for the day to day – versus honoring tradition and craft.
How art is valued in society – i.e., TeleArts only honoring the protagonist’s grandmother after she’s dead (not that the patronage is nothing!). Helps build on the tension between saying that you value art versus materially supporting it, and further explores the tensions inherent to making art while also trying to make a living.
Talking to the different funeral attendees, and getting a sense of their own personal opinions, and relationship to Telearts, your grandmother, and art in general also helped to complicate this picture, and really flesh out the nuance therein. Having the conversations with your grandmother’s friend and the man in gold, in particular, were a good way of making the various tensions feel more material and explicit.
More broadly, the game set up different value systems, and explored how they related to art. Is art valuable because it can be sold? How do you value more people seeing your art, if that means giving up creative control? How can you evaluate the original intent of the artist? It felt particularly relevant, given everything going on with NFTs etc. at the moment.
I think the final choice, and the description of what happens after you make it, really helped to flesh out these tensions.
Thoughts on your experience relevant to the objectives in the rubric:
How well did the game get you to care about the given topic or cause?
Very well. It got me invested in the character and her grandmother, as well as her various relatives. It never felt didactic, which helped make the final choice itself feel genuinely complicated and affecting.
How well did the game’s use of the medium fit the story?
I thought it fit well. I think that there could have been a few more breaks in the text – i.e., splitting up dialogue across multiple lines, or adding more prompts to continue – but I also didn’t mind the long stretches of text. It ended up making it feel like the initial dream sequence was a bit disconnected from the actual ceremony, since the form differed, which I actually really liked, and thought worked well.
Did it have choices that were interesting and consequential to you? (Did any make you really stop and think?)
I liked that the decisions were foreshadowed – and presented in a nuanced way – as you approached the ceremony. Being aware of the possible choices I’d have to make meant that when that choice finally did come, I’d already invested a lot into thinking about it. It helped it feel more like it was the culmination of the story as a whole.
The other ones didn’t feel as consequential, but I think that actually worked very well. The rest of the story, and various conversations, were all necessary to set up that last choice, and I don’t think it needed other big decisions. It fit the scale of the story really well, and was genuinely difficult, which I think reflected the complexity of the types of values the game was dealing with very well.
Things I liked
I loved the atmosphere in the opening sequence, at the studio. It was really evocative, and set the scene wonderfully. I want to visit a cozy studio like that!
All in all was very well-written. Even though we didn’t spend that much time with any of her interlocutors, they still felt very deftly realized (i.e., the man dressing in gold at a funeral alone told so much about who he was as a person) and they really worked very well. It felt like a complex, lovely little short story.
I also liked the little hints at the world as a whole – things like the ‘outercity’ and ‘neighboring outercities’, or the ‘Resolutor’ title all really helped contribute to the suggestion that there was a complex, larger world out there.
Things to improve
There were a couple little typos, and it might have been good to separate more of the long passages into multiple ones. Very small changes, basically!
