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'It Gets Better'-themed RPG could be better.
In the flash game A Closed World, you play a young man/woman from a village entirely closed off from the outside world by a dense forest full of demons. Though you're asked to select your character's gender before beginning, there are no visual indicators of it, nor of that of the character's lover, who, sick of the ridicule and abuse he/she faces due to his/her sexuality, has apparently fled into the wood. Your character sets out into the forest him/herself, and is forced to confront demons representing the people in his/her life. This is the battle system:
Oh, so that's how human conflict works. I will never lose an argument again!
Hit points are "Composure" - the demon loses Composure when you Logic/Passion/Ethics at it appropriately. Take this fight with your sibling:
So this is not precisely Pulitzer material. It's not really consistent with the stated premise, either - I mean, what makes that first statement ethical? I'm also not sure about the logical one. This makes battles a matter of trial and error, given that it's not easy to figure out whether a demon's going for Logical, Ethical, or Passionate when it "tries to force you to believe in lies."
But the game's most noticeable failure isn't with its battle system, but rather with its use of pronouns, and horrors wreaked thereupon by the RNG.
Aside from the protagonist, all the other characters' genders, including that of the protagonist's lover, are randomly-determined. This means that each time you play the game, there's essentially a coin toss as to whether you're being ostracized by homophobes for being gay, or ostracized by heterophobes for being straight.
And I can see what they're going for there. But because of the afore-mentioned Regrettable Prose issue, it doesn't work. The problem is that there's nothing in the dialog to clue you in to the fact that everyone's gender is random, meaning that you've got to play the game at least twice to figure out what's going on. Though it only takes about five minutes to beat, I suspect that most people aren't going to do that. There's not really enough in there to justify a replay.
I played it three times, but it was because I was planning to make this post, and wanted to copy out that text up there. The first two playthroughs, one as a girl and one as a guy, both gave me "protagonist is ostracized for being straight." That led me to assume that the game was going for a simple role-reversal narrative. It came off, though, as a very badly-written role-reversal narrative, because the lover's gender is left ambiguous in some places, but revealed in others. Due to the awkwardness of the writing, I initially assumed that the reveals were somehow screw-ups on the part of the developers. Here's what I wrote before I did the third playthrough:
A narrative choice that makes the player question your competence is probably a bad one. If you're going to randomly generate portions of your game's narrative without clueing the player in, I think you really need to make certain that all the possible results make sense in their own context. This isn't Minecraft; gender is a weighter matter than pig location.
So, today we learn yet again that good intentions aren't enough! Mercedes Lackey probably wasn't involved this time, though.
Oh, so that's how human conflict works. I will never lose an argument again!
Hit points are "Composure" - the demon loses Composure when you Logic/Passion/Ethics at it appropriately. Take this fight with your sibling:
I choose to defy the demon with ethics! "Why can't you just let me be who I am?" She trembled before the power of my ethics!
She stings me with bigoted curses! I lost some composure.
I choose to rattle the demon with passion! "You're not Mom, so stop trying to take her place!" She was stung by my passion!
She stings me with bigoted curses! I lost some composure.
I choose to frustrate the demon with logic! "Don't you judge me when your own 'normal' life is so rocky!" She dismissed my logic.
So this is not precisely Pulitzer material. It's not really consistent with the stated premise, either - I mean, what makes that first statement ethical? I'm also not sure about the logical one. This makes battles a matter of trial and error, given that it's not easy to figure out whether a demon's going for Logical, Ethical, or Passionate when it "tries to force you to believe in lies."
But the game's most noticeable failure isn't with its battle system, but rather with its use of pronouns, and horrors wreaked thereupon by the RNG.
Aside from the protagonist, all the other characters' genders, including that of the protagonist's lover, are randomly-determined. This means that each time you play the game, there's essentially a coin toss as to whether you're being ostracized by homophobes for being gay, or ostracized by heterophobes for being straight.
And I can see what they're going for there. But because of the afore-mentioned Regrettable Prose issue, it doesn't work. The problem is that there's nothing in the dialog to clue you in to the fact that everyone's gender is random, meaning that you've got to play the game at least twice to figure out what's going on. Though it only takes about five minutes to beat, I suspect that most people aren't going to do that. There's not really enough in there to justify a replay.
I played it three times, but it was because I was planning to make this post, and wanted to copy out that text up there. The first two playthroughs, one as a girl and one as a guy, both gave me "protagonist is ostracized for being straight." That led me to assume that the game was going for a simple role-reversal narrative. It came off, though, as a very badly-written role-reversal narrative, because the lover's gender is left ambiguous in some places, but revealed in others. Due to the awkwardness of the writing, I initially assumed that the reveals were somehow screw-ups on the part of the developers. Here's what I wrote before I did the third playthrough:
While the ending seems to think that it's a twist ending, the partner's gender is given away by pronoun usage in the very first cutscene. This can't be an accident - like I said before, you choose your gender at the beginning of the game, meaning that there are male and female "versions" of the story, meaning that someone actually had to write some code determining the gender pronouns for your allegedly-gender-ambiguous partner.
What is the motivation here? I'm even kind of wondering if this is a right-hand-meet-left-hand problem, because the lover's gender is initially mentioned only in the battle sequences and cutscenes. In the early overworld interactions, it's kept carefully ambiguous.
A narrative choice that makes the player question your competence is probably a bad one. If you're going to randomly generate portions of your game's narrative without clueing the player in, I think you really need to make certain that all the possible results make sense in their own context. This isn't Minecraft; gender is a weighter matter than pig location.
So, today we learn yet again that good intentions aren't enough! Mercedes Lackey probably wasn't involved this time, though.