![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Judith - a game about control
May. 31st, 2010 11:46 amContinuing the promise to talk about independent games, this is one that I was linked to by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kjorteo a few weeks ago. I had heard that it wasn't exactly a light and airy game and had to check that playing it while alone in the evening was a good idea at all, but in the end I got through it mostly unscathed.
Judith, by Stephen Lavelle and Terry Cavanagh, is one of the most unsettling things I've played in a while - perhaps an unusual thing to say for something that looks quite so crude, but the unnatural look of it really does a lot to increase the oppressive mood. Even the idea that I was "playing" it is up for debate, because you don't really make any decisions - the story just plays out in front of you as you wander through it, and the dread comes from opening the next door or seeing what's around the next corner. It's never frightening, exactly, but there's a constant uncomfortable feeling there and you always feel that something's waiting in the background...
Beyond that it's rather difficult to say anything about it that doesn't count as a spoiler - I hadn't realized that it was a retelling of another story until I searched around on the Internet for it, but perhaps more literary-minded people will recognize it more quickly. It only takes about half an hour from start to finish, so it's well worth giving it a try.
The source is also available, and as ever, digging through it yields some wonderful insights into the authors' minds - my favourite part was this comment, placed just before a switch that lasted three thousand lines and controlled every triggered event in the game by a numerical ID:
//i'm so sorry
//this is awful
//i promise never to code like this again
That certainly beats anything I've ever uploaded.
I'm going to give a blanket warning that the comments (on LJ) will contain spoilers, so that people can say things without having to blank them out themselves - because there's really nothing that you can say about this game that won't spoil one surprise or another, because the exploration is such a... well, the only part of it.
kjorteo a few weeks ago. I had heard that it wasn't exactly a light and airy game and had to check that playing it while alone in the evening was a good idea at all, but in the end I got through it mostly unscathed.Judith, by Stephen Lavelle and Terry Cavanagh, is one of the most unsettling things I've played in a while - perhaps an unusual thing to say for something that looks quite so crude, but the unnatural look of it really does a lot to increase the oppressive mood. Even the idea that I was "playing" it is up for debate, because you don't really make any decisions - the story just plays out in front of you as you wander through it, and the dread comes from opening the next door or seeing what's around the next corner. It's never frightening, exactly, but there's a constant uncomfortable feeling there and you always feel that something's waiting in the background...
Beyond that it's rather difficult to say anything about it that doesn't count as a spoiler - I hadn't realized that it was a retelling of another story until I searched around on the Internet for it, but perhaps more literary-minded people will recognize it more quickly. It only takes about half an hour from start to finish, so it's well worth giving it a try.
The source is also available, and as ever, digging through it yields some wonderful insights into the authors' minds - my favourite part was this comment, placed just before a switch that lasted three thousand lines and controlled every triggered event in the game by a numerical ID:
//i'm so sorry
//this is awful
//i promise never to code like this again
That certainly beats anything I've ever uploaded.
I'm going to give a blanket warning that the comments (on LJ) will contain spoilers, so that people can say things without having to blank them out themselves - because there's really nothing that you can say about this game that won't spoil one surprise or another, because the exploration is such a... well, the only part of it.
