This Won’t Make You Happy, by Mike Gillis
This Won’t Make You Happy gives a first impression that makes it appear like it’s going to more than live up to its title: the design is close enough to default Twine to look a bit rough, and the confrontational narrative voice seems like it’s way too in love with the cleverness of a meta premise that’s actually pretty played out (like, have you ever thought about whether hoovering up shiny objects might have some metaphorical resonance with the pursuit of happiness and mental health under late capitalism? If so, approximately six billion indie platformers would like to have a word). Happily, though, the game pulls the good kind of bait and switch, and while its short length limits the scale of the impact it can have, This Won’t Make You Happy actually did bring a smile to my face. If you haven’t played it yet, definitely don’t be put off by its prickly presentation – it’s worth the additional five minutes to see where it’s going.
If you have, here are some final spoilery thoughts: the crux of the game is clearly the moment where, after provoking a fight through its blatant unfairness, the narrator admits that it’s been a rough year all around, and shifts gears to provide opportunities for some reflection and self-care – enforced through timed text that’s actually a good idea, for once! I was confused by the blurb’s characterization of this as a sort of funny, sort of sentimental game, but after finishing it, that totally makes sense.
Highlight : Despite the initially-blah design, there are actually a bunch of neat visual effects as the text transitions from one passage to the next.
Lowlight : In the first chunk of the game, I wound up seeing the narrator make the same dumb “the object seems to say X, but of course because it’s just an object and I am pretending to not understand how metaphors work despite just having deployed one, that doesn’t make sense!” joke like three distinct times in five minutes.
How I failed the author : I played this one-handed on my phone while Henry napped on my shoulder, and again, this wound up being a secret success: if there is a jewel of happiness more efficacious than a sleeping baby, I’ve yet to find it.