I’ve finished judging the comp and will post a few words about some of the entries I found particularly notable (in no particular order).
Creature Such as We
[spoiler]A thinly-veiled allegorical game about a thinly-veiled allegorical game. Cute.
The writing in this game is top-notch, especially the “activity” segments of each day where you, as a “Tour Facilitator”-type host of a moon resort, escort a team of game developers around to different locations around the base and outside on the moon. The game does a fantastic job of conveying the awe and majesty of space and thrill of exploration; these parts of the game are pure joy to play, and are certainly helped by the inspired choice of premise and setting. During these activities you are also interacting and bonding with the guests; I normally loathe dating-sim type games but I must confess that Creature Such as We does a great job of building up a plausible and organic relationship between the player character and their chosen love interest.
The moon activities are punctuated by meals (which are primarily conversations between the PC and the developers) and time spent playing the game they developed. I felt that the former fell rather flat. The first mealtime conversation addresses the deep and interesting philosophical question of whether the arbiter of the meaning of art is the artist or the viewer, but the treatment of this topic felt rushed and glib. I strongly argued for art as commodity and author as Dead, and received surprisingly little pushback from the authors themselves: surely at least one of the developers would more vigorously defend their right to define the meaning of their own work? But I do like that the game attempts to explore this theme and gracefully accommodates whatever the views of the player are.
But if the game developers are ambivalent about who gets to interpret the meaning of a game, the game itself is rather less so, as the second meal degenerates into an author tract on the evils of social inequality, violence in games, trolls in the gaming community, and how Something Must Be Done about it all. I tried occasionally to take the conversation in a different direction than along the rails that had obviously been laid down for me, and was condemned by the entire dev team in chorus. I was left wondering if I would have been allowed a more nuanced conversation had I chosen to sit down with the men instead of the women – I sure hope not. Now, to be sure, any Tour Facilitator worth his salt would have tucked into a triple helping of dessicated Tortelini before allowing themselves to get sucked in to any politically-charged conversation, and if forced to participate would have done their best to smile and nod along – so I suppose it’s not incongruous to expect the player to do the same. Still, it was disappointing and grating to see the game take such a heavy-handed approach after earlier adopting the fluidity of meaning of a game as one of its themes.
The rest of the game also weaves in plenty of subtext about isolation and privilege, but – with the exception of one particularly clumsy quip towards the end, when the base has to be evacuated – I felt the message was communicated quite gracefully and effectively.
The third type of gameplay concerns playing the subgame itself – it’s not easy depicting an FPS in a text adventure, and I must confess I found myself skimming through these parts. Perhaps if I had been more invested in the subgame-world and its plot, I would have enjoyed these segments more… certainly the best experience, though perhaps technically infeasible, would have been if the subgame had been playable as an actual FPS![/spoiler]
TLDR: One of the better entries in the comp; the game’s setting, mood, characters, and writing and all excellent. The game’s attempts at addressing deeper themes are unsubtle and forced, however, and ultimately damage its effectiveness as allegory.
6.