The Breakup Game
At first sight, The Breakup Game is somebody’s misguided attempt to console the heart-broken by letting them talk to a Twine piece. This Twine piece first makes sympathetic noises, then makes encouraging noises, and it ends up by forcing The Power of Positive Thinking down the throat of the reader. I’m fairly certain that it will be of no help to anyone who is going through an actual breakup. There is too transparently nobody who is actually listening to you – a website cannot take the place of a friend. Nor does it harness the power of experience sharing or fiction; there are no other people here whose lives and thoughts can illuminate your own. There are only abstract consolations, many of them as obviously false as this one:
If you believe that you are the sole writer, director and actor of your life, then I’ve got some theories about why you ended up with a breakup; but you clearly have no business being sad about it, given that you wrote, directed and authored it! The doctrine of ‘manifestation’ is a hard taskmistress; you pay for the illusion of total control with the terror of total responsibility and the pain of total isolation.
But look, The Breakup Game is not somebody’s misguided attempt to console the heart-broken by letting them talk to a Twine piece. This should be obvious from the title, which proclaims the piece to be a game. It should be obvious from the fact that it was entered into a fiction competition. And if you have any doubts, what about this message from the blurb:
This is deliciously absurd. Why would the heart-broken need achievements? How could achievements be relevant if you are experiencing something that is personal to you? (Only you.) As you play through the game, supposedly sharing your grief and trauma, achievements will continue to pop up. You state that your partner fell out of love, and the game does, bling:
Spoiler alert from somebody who wrote their MSc thesis on entropy: love and entropy do not, in fact, have an obvious conceptual connection. But more importantly, can you imagine talking to somebody about your breakup and while they give you sympathetic responses and tell you that your situation is totally unique and personal, they also hold up little signs with humorous messages classifying your experiences in pre-made categories? The entire game is an insane performance, an absurd parody of sympathy. Good thing it offered me infinity infinities of tears. But then it forced me to click
and man, I felt dirty expressing such a boastful lie.
Still, the game doesn’t forget to dispense the best general advice one can give to other human beings given that one knows absolutely nothing about them and has not been able to make the slightest amount of personal contact:
Achievement unlocked: Wise as Solon.