Well, it’s been a while. I suppose I only have myself to blame, but work on the game has been on the backburners. That was, until I stumbled across a little gem of a mod, Radiator, a trilogy of vignettes by Robert Yang. Two have been released so far: Polaris, and Handle with Care. Both are most excellent!
While not perfect, the series acts as a proof-of-concept for a different style of game design. First, a short (1-2 hour) story style narrative, one that works well not only by providing a tighter experience for the player, but also more reasonable goals for the creator. Importantly, they exhibit a favourite trait of mine, providing meaning not only through dialogue or cutscenes, but through the gameplay itself. As an example, Handle With Care uses crates as a metaphor for repressed memories, the challenge is to store crates without breaking them thus ‘releasing’ the memories. Although I disagree with relying on NPCs too much to carry the story, those in Radiator are used just enough to evoke sympathy.
A strange half downside for me was a kind of conflict in meaning of Handle With Care. Storing boxes and thus repressing memories was far harder than breaking them, while for me at least, that is usually the easy way out. I say half downside because perhaps that says more about the way I deal with bad experiences, and in any case, the fact that a game is making me think like that should be applauded. Play it please, play it now.
[I thought I posted this a couple of months ago, it seems it got lost in WordPress...]
