High School Reunion
High School Reunion is a short Texture game about a man attending his 10th high school reunion. While standing outside feeling anxious about facing his peers, he encounters an old classmate who made it big in cryptocurrency, and events take a wild turn.
I get the impression that the author of High School Reunion is quite young; most people who are themselves out of high school wouldn’t consider the 28-year-old PC an “old man”. With expectations calibrated accordingly, High School Reunion is a reasonably amusing jaunt, showing a writer with a promising eye for a comic situation. I can definitely imagine a protagonist stealing the identity of his douchey crypto millionaire ex-classmate, going to his reunion as that classmate, charming the girl of his dreams and taking her on a date to Wendy’s of all places, and then getting beat up by the guy whose identity he stole in a Wendy’s parking lot as an episode plot for a certain kind of sitcom.
But the difference between High School Reunion and an episode of something like Arrested Development or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, other than at least ten years of writing experience, is that High School Reunion is just a smidge too sympathetic to its protagonist; this guy is taking some pretty outrageous actions and ultimately getting hoist by his own petard, but the game doesn’t quite shake the feeling that he’s an underdog you should be rooting for and you should cheer when/if he gets the girl (even if he does also gets beat up in a Wendy’s parking lot after winning her over). And I feel that undercuts this style of comedy. (Though there’s perhaps a discussion to be had about how well “watch unlikeable guy get hoist by his own petard” comedy works to begin with in an interactive medium that tends to identify the audience more closely with the main character, also!)
So I would not say High School Reunion is an especially successful piece, but I do hope the writer keeps at it and continues honing their skills!