Judith - a game about control

[davidn]

Continuing the promise to talk about independent games, this is one that I was linked to by 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.

Comments

[davidn]

And here's the first spoiler - that part where you find the forest, and he's suddenly... there, behind you, was a positively massive jump for me. It came at the perfect moment - all throughout the story you've just been waiting for something to jump out at you, looking away every time you open a door (if you're like me), and it happens just at the point where you've begun to accept that nothing's going to happen (and just after another relief at opening a door, too). That was well placed.

I wasn't really sure what to think about the ending - Judith's ending was good, because of the hesitance that you have when walking up to that final door and then just letting your imagination do the rest. But to just have her pop out of the room when you're playing as Jeff... that felt a little anti-climactic. I'm not sure what I was expecting in its place, though.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I think they should have offered you *some* choice, honestly.. even if it just wound up leading the same place in the end. I love the idea of playing through someone else's story, and I'm not expecting it to turn into a Choose Your Own Adventure, but when you come to a moment where you think you're responding normally, and then the whole game just sits there doing nothing until you realise you were acting wrong... it ruined the illusion for me.

The source is available? I'm surprised more people haven't made other stories in the same engine... For that matter, am I the only one who's tempted to comment out the events and locks, so I can just explode freely? I played it months ago, but as soon as you mentioned it, I flashed back to how much I still wonder what else was in that crazy underground room that you couldn't see the far end of. I can't stand not being allowed to see things :P (Which worked rather well in the context of the story! But now I want what my character couldn't have, appropriately enough ;) )

Now I'm wondering what the story was like! I felt like I didn't quite understand the point of everything that was going on, maybe a more fleshed-out version would make more sense.

[davidn]

The story it comes from is Bluebeard's Castle (the source makes it more obvious, with one of the sprites even being called BLUEBEARD) - compare the list of rooms under "Synposis" and "Staging" to the ones that you find in the game.

I don't actually remember the "wrong" choice moment, perhaps because I may have recognized a potential eternal conversation loop when I saw it and just went to the answer the game was expecting immediately, but I do remember the question "Do you want to see the last room?" which had a menu only consisting of "Yes" - I liked that, I thought it was... clearly not offering a choice but still feeling that you had to trigger this yourself. Cobbling in some free exploration might be a good idea, too - I didn't see anything in the source (linked to on the download page, without the resources from the full game) that I hadn't seen in the game, but who knows.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

One I can remember for sure is deciding whether or not to kill the prisoner... and also that I wasn't given the option to simply run away in that ending, although having a prompt with only one option is kind of cute, I'll admit ;)

[starfishchris.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I had such a horrid feeling as I went to open the final door...

I don't know how I feel about this game. I don't regret playing it, at least.

[davidn]

Me too! It's a long cycle of tension and relief... and is one of those games where I'm not sure if it's a brilliant take on game expectations, or just agonizingly pretentious while not really having anything in it. It made me incredibly nervous, I know that much - and I can respect it for that!

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

The Judith bit made sense to me.

The Emily bit...not so much.

[davidn]

Yes, I'm not really sure what they were trying to say with Emily's ending especially... although like I said above, I'm not sure what I was actually expecting, or even whether it was saying anything that I'm completely missing or just being an ending for the sake of it.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

An interesting piece of work - I liked the writing, but the "present day" ending just didn't work. I was expecting something a little more... well, in-tune with the "past" story.

Cavanagh's got a great way of actually managing to work a great story into his "games". I put it in quotes since really, they're very straightforward, and that's where we start to hit the problem of being able to divert from the story to explore the world, and sometimes the game isn't designed to do that.

It was worth the play, though, if only to learn about the Bluebeard story.