48 | YOU
48 | YOU
by: Carter X Gwertzman
Progress:
- I completed this game without the use of a walkthrough in about 26 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
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This is a short but clever game, whose mechanics build on themselves in an intuitive way. The puzzles weren’t trivial to solve, I did have to think about some of them, but I found that each had some kind of clue or hint built into the game that I was able to figure out. This made navigating to the end a satisfying experience. I went from being annoyed at text that was the same color as the background, to laughing at how brilliant it was when I realized why it was like that.
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The game is weird, but approachable and charming. I liked the fey setting and the way that collecting and eating random mushrooms became an essential game mechanic.
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I really liked the detail that the snake escaped the moment I had acquired a snakeskin in the correct color for the puzzle. That was just good feedback from the game that I had done the correct thing and made me sure that I’d made the right call there.
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I thought the game has a straightforward meaning in terms of gender transition (I mean, you are literally changing pronouns… to different colors and styles and sizes, but still!), and it approaches that in a very kind and empathetic way. At the end, you can work on fitting better into the old you, pick out the exact you that you want from a random set of yous, or accept the you that you’ve been given as a gift from them (this sentence probably sounds quite vague if you haven’t played this, but I promise it makes more sense than not). The concept of the game is flexible enough that you could apply its theme of self-actualization or self-becoming in terms of many different aspects if you so chose.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
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This is a game that heavily uses color, and the background colors are important. Most of the screens were fine, but some screens are just really bright or clashing and unpleasant to look at as a result of the color combination. Perhaps this goes against the spirit of the game, but there were times that I would’ve appreciated a more muted color palette to reduce eye strain. Ultimately, though, it didn’t bother me enough to really hinder my experience much.
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A minor moment of confusion I had in the game was, after exploring most of the map, I had never encountered anything resembling a key. I went back to talk to the crow and goat, which told me that I needed various gifts, most of which I had already found without realizing it. I guess I made a mistake by not talking to them enough times right at the beginning? This didn’t affect my progress much, but I remember feeling surprised that I was supposed to look for four items rather than a key or “good luck charm”. (I mean the game does run on fairy logic, so the fact that this was the only mildly unintuitive thing that happened is really not that big a deal.)
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Oh I finally thought of a specific recommendation that might be fun, for the compost pile at the end. Instead of asking the player to rerandomize a bunch of times by clicking the same link, could the “compost pile” be visualized as a cloud of clickable “yous” in different colors/fonts/styles to be selected from instead? I guess you’d run into an issue of players insisting on clicking every single one, but I’d hope people would get the gist of it after one or two attempts.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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This is the first game that I’ve seen that I can recall making background and text color central to its puzzles. The use of font styling to convey the game state is something that feels really creative and interesting (and no doubt, tricky to implement given the accessibility concerns that arise from color-based puzzles). I just appreciated the brilliance to think of color beyond just setting a mood and to make the background itself part of gameplay.
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I appreciated the efficacy of this description: “Silver bark and pink-hued clouds.” In context, this short sentence communicates exactly the type of setting that you are going to be playing in: a fae/fairy/Alice-style world. This is a description that could exist in the real world (clouds at sunset, gray bark on trees), but it takes on an ethereal quality. With not a lot of text in the prologue, the premise and setting are communicated quickly and the player is ushered into a world whose strangeness is familiar and accessible.
Quote:
- “Some discarded pronouns are scattered in the grass around them.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
- When I became blue, and the “you” became unreadable on the blue background, just like the snake had been earlier. It felt satisfying to feel like I was gaining fluency in the game’s puzzle logic.