today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games where the PC has a close relationship with technology from the future
The Shyler Project by Bez
Playtime: 23 minutes
The one with: the AI therapist-bot
The UI was cute and helped with immersion. I enjoyed the voice acting, especially for Shyler. I don’t know if the slower speed that necessitated would have grated on me in a longer game, but it was enjoyable at this length. (In a minor note, ideally the first narration would stop if I clicked on to the next sequence early, instead of overlapping.)
Shyler’s dialogue never hit the note of “believable that a future megacorp would release him as a therapist” for me:
But this is actually a highly specific fantasy, and it’s not a fantasy about getting excellent therapy from an AI bot, it’s a fantasy about having the power to help others—even when those others are an AI and your therapist and owned by a (probably) evil mega-corporation. Just that concept did a lot to endear the game to me.
The game may be hit or miss for people. I never got fully immersed in it, I just found it hard to suspend my disbelief and stumbled over a few of the details (certainly not every game has to wade into discussion over disagreements between people who want to “cure” disabilities and people who want more accessibility for disabilities, but the idea of changing Shyler’s entire brain was still treated pretty lightly?).
Front matter | ||
---|---|---|
Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
Overall, a highly sympathetic theme, and a quick experience, but didn’t fully connect emotionally for me
Gameplay tips / typos
- in the blurb and credits, the person using the chatbot is listed as “Juniper,” but in the rest of the text the name is “Jaiden”