watdowtal 2018-08-13 19:25
Hey, nice work! It was fun talking to all the people, although I don't have social anxiety.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Just Talk to People
By lyxil and Colm Eccles
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 836 | 3.15 | 24 | |
| Fun | 1234 | 2.33 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 936 | 2.84 | 24 | |
| Theme | 915 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 828 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Humor | 393 | 2.97 | 21 | |
| Mood | 252 | 3.52 | 24 |
Hey, nice work! It was fun talking to all the people, although I don't have social anxiety.
I got bored pretty soon and went straight home and locked my door, think the intent of the game showed itself. Great job
I like how the room got smaller and smaller and how it got more crowded and how you had to zigzag around all of the people to get out.
It is also interesting how in jrgps most npc have something interesting to tell you, but here they are just telling you uninteresting things.
It feels a little unsatisfying to experience but I guess that's what you were aiming for.
@oskarolausson and @ristoretto: Did you try talking to each partygoer more than once? I added a hint to the description in case it wasn't clear enough. Their stories do become slightly more complex if you continue to talk to them. Thanks for your feedback! The overall idea was to capture that dreadful vibe of awkward social interactions at a party.
Yes, until they said the same thing over and over :D
@lyxil I think I read all the text. Nice tool btw, might use it in the future. I used Twine in one of my first game jams.
I think the game is interesting but it feels kind of unsatisfying, but in a good way :) Like the person that thinks you are someone they know but then turns out to not be.These awkward moments happens at every party. It happened to me, but it's not the things I remember afterwards. I remember something like how I met a old childhood friend who I haven’t seen in 10 years, that now play in a band and has songs on spotify. It feels unsatisfying that you never get that kind of moment in the game.
@ristoretto The game is not intended to be a fun adventure or realistic party experience with a diversity of social interactions. It is also not meant to be satisfying, since social anxiety never is and does not have a satisfying conclusion for most. I'm glad that you acknowledged this!
The intention is that dialog (especially in the beginning) may seem innocuous to most, but those who tend to overthink social interactions may read them as malicious or humiliating. These get more obvious later on, to the point where you don't know if these hostile comments are all in your head or veiled threats.
Take the "Were you the one who..." --> "Oh, it was definitely not you!" comment. To someone without anxiety, the person made a simple mistake thinking you were someone else. To someone with anxiety, they definitely were talking about you, probably referencing something humiliating you did, and are keeping it from you and laughing behind your back.
Comments on topics that some consider sensitive or personal (weight, physical appearance, relationship status, etc) can be dreadful to bear for someone with social anxiety.
I understand that these are not universal experiences or thoughts, so the overall feel may not resonate with everyone. Thank you for giving my game a try!
really subtle, but smart take on the theme. great dialogue, im definitely the person hovering at the food table.
@lisa Thank you! Haha, the person at the food table is the most blatant self-insert I've done in a game :P
@lisa I got the vibes but not in its fullest extent. This makes the game even more unsettling... :) If you plan to continue developing it, it might be worth adding more hints so it's clear that the game is about social anxiety.
Social anxiety is a hard thing to understand when you are told about it, but really hit you when you experience it in a game like this. Great job :)
@ristoretto Thanks for taking the time to read my reply and understand the game. I really appreciate it! I think it's tough for me as a creator to know exactly how overt/subtle my meanings are in a game, so it's good to get feedback that perhaps I was being too subtle. If we worked on this further, I'd love to add internal monologue to further drive the point, but the Bitsy engine is really limited for sometime like that.
This is what we can call a serious game, or interactive meditation. For me this kind of product is very interesting. In some way it waked my social phobia xD. I don't like to play this kind of serious game because I use games to get fun and forget problems. Real life is so rude for me that I don't want it also in my "free" time. But I think maybe is good that social succes people play it so maybe can understand. Congrats.
Ok, I talked to few guys and ran away - too many people. I like it, nice funny experience.
a nice illustration of how crowded spaces can make you feel extremely lonely and how frustrating it is to interact with indifferent people... it was interesting to play a game about experiences similar to my own but with a different flavor. thanks <3
I talked to everyone. I like how it depicted the realities of crappy highschool/college parties. It felt like it was building up to a big moment, but I think it ended really realistically. Well done!
Good game! You did an excellent job with the dialog. I can really feel for the main character's experience, and the sort of emptiness of the "party conversation" and people pointing out the social anxiety.
Great, I like seeing a serious game on Ludum Dare! It's interesting that you modelled the conversations after real-life conversations. Since you're asking, I think I "missed" the point about how some of the conversations can be unsettling. Probably because I did not take some of the conversations/people seriously. An "internal dialog" may solve this problem, maybe it can be as simple as texts shown at particular points of the conversation.