I made myself take time last night and play "When We Were Kids". I did enjoy playing through it, and finding the four solutions (don't think there's more.) I enjoyed it more than I do playing "And Then There Were None" which is a chore. It's important to see what other people are doing, but I find it difficult to tear myself from my own projects.
I know the feeling, and I'm overjoyed that you managed to play and enjoy the game, regardless. And yes, I believe you did find all the solutions.
Don't think there's any risk of my saying something original here. Did think about doing a website review. I have written website reviews from time to time but they want a rating for the game. How can one rate "When We Were Kids" fairly? I have big reservations about ratings on websites.
Yeah, I know what you mean. One would have to take into account that it's a very short game made in less than a month, after all, and was meant to be more of an experiment than anything else.
Technically the game ran OK on a Safari browser under Mac OSX. Kept trying to right-click, and getting a browser menu. This was often because I was trying to drop objects which I found difficult. The circle of options (see talk get) was a little small.
Yeah, the interface is basically the defaults that come with the Lassie engine, seeing as I was too lazy and unmotivated to make my own graphics. If I knew how, I would change the interface to a single-click one instead of having the verb coin. Also, I do the right-clicking thing myself on occasion, and it bugs me too. That's what I get for using a Flash-based engine, I suppose.
The art was perfectly adequate. I thought Morgan was a boy to start with but I can't draw. Liked the dialogue which felt just right.
Morgan's a tomboy, actually, and she's loosely based on one of my grade three classmates, who was also often mistaken for a boy.
The four solutions were easy enough and logical enough to find. If it was me I would have had a convoluted off the wall solution - perhaps there was one and I failed to find it!
Haha! No, there sadly aren't any convoluted solutions in this case, particularly since I myself don't like overly convoluted solutions unless they help convey the story's message, which I didn't believe was the case. (You'll never believe some of the puzzles I've scrapped in the middle of designing previous games of mine, precisely because they were so asinine that I later realised that no one in their right mind would enjoy them, myself included.)
But by the end I was beginning not to see the game as a story with characters, but more just as a puzzle, a maze to go through. It was a little tedious to explore all the dialogue options. I like story and characters in a game but how do you keep them to the fore if the player is spending ages trying to solve a puzzle?
That's a good question, and I think it all depends on how the player approaches the game. It sounds like your goal, above all else, was to find
all of the solutions (read: not just one of them), and yes, that is very much a puzzle. Admittedly, I've likely failed in this regard, but what I really wanted to do was have the player's goal be to explore the characters and their motivations, and for dialogue to be one of the ways to get closer to such a goal. I admit that I could have created a better system for this, if it weren't for Lassie's limitations. Hopefully
Chivalry is Not Dead will be an improvement in this regard.
Not sure if the game was meant to carry a moral, or just as anything we produce it reflects our worldviews. I think there is room for games which try to get people to think about ethical issues and morality - they might have applications in school class-rooms or for psychotherapy. Generally it's difficult - either choosing to be nice or nasty is like choosing a colour scheme, or you're not offering the player a genuine choice.
This game was indeed meant to make a point, though not a didactic one, and certainly not one meant to be a teaching tool in classrooms! Mainly, it was a cynical mockery of how adults generally teach kids to deal with bullies, i.e. by ignoring them, being nice, or telling an authority figure what's going on. When I was younger and nerdier (hence, a very blatant target for bullying), I quickly discovered that none of these approaches actually worked, and you'll notice that they don't work in the game as well. Talking to the teacher only results in her getting annoyed, trying to suck up to Morgan backfires, and not doing anything, well, accomplishes nothing*. The only valid options are either to use your wits to outsmart Morgan somehow or (gasp!) threaten her.
Not that I'm trying to give the message that being nasty to people is something one should do; it's more that I wanted to explore situations where it seems to be the only kind of behaviour that will yield obviously meaningful results, and in a sense, ask my audience how it made them feel in turn. When we play games, it is common for us to suspend our morals for the sake of winning, usually because we have no choice but to do so. I wanted to turn that tendency on its head a bit, by offering choices (but not always ideal ones), and framing a real-life situation as a game. How far are you willing to go to take back what is rightfully yours? These are things I dealt with on a regular basis when I was a kid, and I wanted to illustrate that to people.
Of course, one of the challenges I face as a designer is how to convey personal views in my art clearly and effectively without beating people over the head with them. Since you've outlined that there's some ambiguity in this regard, perhaps it means I have yet to find this balance. In any case, I hope I get better at it with practice.
Thanks Squinky. I haven't done justice to the effort I can see went into your game.
You're very welcome, and thank you for actually playing it.
* Actually, to be honest, I wanted to make it so that doing nothing for ten minutes would result in Morgan getting bored and dropping the GameBot, leaving it there for you to pick up, hence portraying ignoring bullies as a valid solution, though one that requires a ridiculous amount of patience. I just couldn't figure out how to properly code it into the Lassie engine.
