Canvas Keepsakes by C.T. O’Mahony
Playtime: 26 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
I enjoyed that the very first page offered the significant-feeling choice of how to explain that I paint so many demons (I mashed the button for “Demons are awesome,” perhaps foreshadowing that I was going to end up with a new spider roommate)
The plot kicks off with the magical-realism feeling concept that the player character can enter their own paintings and bring out objects.
I enjoyed the detailed description’s of the player character’s process for painting
I was quite caught up during most of the action sequences—gripping
I enjoyed the themes about the relationship between artists and their creations (in one example from my playthrough, the bad guy group compels their demons to obey them by painting collars on them, whereas we, somewhat, use persuasion with ours)
Notable line:
My one fervent wish:
So, this is more of a quibble, but I thought the pace dragged slightly around when everyone was running around in the gallery. Just maybe 1 too many iterations of “ahah now we have grabbed ____!”
(I think this is probably related to the game design elements—this is definitely more of a story-focused game where I was clicking to see what was going to happen–I felt confident that the game was going to present an obvious button to press to do what I wanted to do and I didn’t feel pressure to try to figure out how to solve any problems myself. That’s totally valid, but I think the fact that I was more or less just waiting until I could click “escape” probably contributed to feeling these sequences were a smidge too long.
Overall, quite engaging and fun story dealing with themes of an adversarial versus collaborative relationship between an artist and their work
Test Subject: Synaptix by mkellygames
Playtime: 10 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
a short game with very of-the-moment concerns (i.e., everyone lives in a post-ai mid-topia, where the bare necessities of living are covered by universal basic income despite human labor rarely having economic value) [tangent, but if it comes to pass that ai makes most human labor value-less, I think everyone ending up able to survive on universal basic income is by far one of the better options. Let’s get to work on ensuring at least that, stat!]
I appreciated the way the game moved fast, made it easy to focus on the choices, and allowed streamlined exploration of the other branches through undo
the writing is clear and effective in telling the story, and there are some very good and specific observations about life (i.e., the line about trying to sign on a touch pad)
Notable line:
[after asking the human doctor a question]
My one fervent wish:
The endings felt a bit sudden, possibly because we first hear about each of the them only at the very end? (i.e., I don’t think we really hear about news media’s role in this world at all until you take the “go to the press” ending). I think if there had been a smidge of foreshadowing earlier (the player character has learned something from the media, the player character laments that some people are turning to nootropics to try to compete with AI, etc.) the endings might have felt more like an extension of the rest of the game.
Overall, a quick-moving story about technology in a not-that-distant future
