How Dare You

This game has you come to your partner’s door only to find that you have been cast out! The relationship has unilaterally been declared to be over.

What can you do? There really aren’t many options, due to the coldheartedness of your partner. Even talking only works once. This ends up being similar to one move games, but you get several chances to figure out what you can do.

This game is polished. I found no bugs and many custom responses, even with obscure commands like “push me” being blocked off to ensure consistent responses. It was fairly descriptive with regards to the people. Interactivity was natural, with many responses being implemented and subtle suggestions pushing you towards new actions.

Emotional impact was dampened a bit. We’re not told why everything happened. Did we cheat? Did our partner get a job in Beirut? Are we 14? I like to suspend disbelief and immerse myself in characters, but I didn’t have much to grab onto here.

The game is short, so I likely wouldn’t play it again. So I’m giving 3 stars. The workmanship is great, and the game seems to accomplish the author’s goals, but every audience member interacts with a work differently, and for me I’m more of a sucker for story and plot than character and personality, and longer or unique interactions over small bites of classic interactions.

How Dare You? has a cringeworthy premise: you show up at the home of our partner, Heron, who communicates very clearly that it’s over and you should leave. Yet…

…No, you can’t. You’ve got to convince em to change eir mind. You just have to show em how much ey means to you. How much you care.

Played: 7/6/24
Playtime: 10min, 4 playthroughs

Hm. This is the latest work that confounds my reductive reviewing approach with another in a seemingly endless series of ‘howmygonnadothis?’ choices to make. When reviewing for Comps, judging is in the mix so I feel compelled to explore the factors that led to a specific rating. That pressure/justification is absent here. While my aim is more towards fellow players and the author, I try to be congizant of the Key Review Question.

The unspoken question is ‘is this worth a player’s time, and if so, what kind of player?’ Single-conceit Jam games are typically so brief that it would be near impossible to fail that test. BUT, they are also so brief that their single is conceit IS THE WHOLE THING. So if, in a review, I tell you the single conceit there is nothing left to experience unspoiled. In a large game, spoilers may not be ideal, but with some surgical precision you can limit the damage while making relevant points. In a small game, there may not be much left after the damage.

Sure, that’s kinda what spoiler tags are for, but also is our global energy system well served by delivering scads of 100% illegible reviews to browsers across the planet?

What I can say is that this work telegraphs a kind of distasteful style of gameplay, but whose central conceit thoroughly and completely redeems it. Even THAT feels spoilery. Is gameplay fun? I wouldn’t say that. Is it engaging? A little too prickly and bare bones for that. But its central message and (Spoiler - click to show)gameplay headfake are well rendered at exactly the right size, exactly the right conciseness to drive its message home. Its prickliness serves that conceit wonderfully. I found this game expertly calibrated and pretty darn cool.