A Collegial Conversation

Played: 7/26/24
Playtime: 15min, 5 playthroughs

One word review: MeYOW.

Four-word review: I really dug this.

Multi-word review of uncertain length:
This is a fascinatingly structured choice-select scene. A charged social interaction between four bureaucrats of varying levels of self-importance. There are a few repartees, then things are broken up by the adult in the room. The story is really what each player brings to the exchange, and their interrelationships that drive the prickly encounter. Man is it well conceived and executed. It is short enough that with only a few replays you are assembling a full picture of the dynamics and personalities at play.

It is hard to say what the ‘best’ way to play this is, but I will say, my method just crushed it, and you are welcome to use it. After cycling one each in the first play, I decided to alternate between members of the same ‘faction’, then repeat starting with the opposite lead. This gave me full visibility into one faction’s drives. Then repeated the whole sequence for the other faction.

It helps that the piece gives convincingly varied motivations, personalities and vocal adeptness to each participant, then shows how ALL those pieces lead to the unchanging conversation flow. It is fascinating because it is so well done and organic. In particular, on my first pass of faction A (for ‘a$$hole’, as opposed B for ‘befuddled’) I came away thinking ‘uh, why are these two basically the same person?’ only to have the reversed order put that to the lie in a deeply satisfying and nuanced way.

Will a different order produce different ‘a-ha’ moments of equivalent quality? Did I even get the BEST revelation order? I dunno, maybe to both? But even if not EXACTLY equivalent, the charge of what is revealed about whom in what moment is still really cleverly done and it’s hard to believe some charge won’t be produced regardless of order.

Yeah, this struck me as pretty uncommon use of interactivity, deftly architected for satisfying mini-revelations stitched through a snide exchange of petty rivalries. This is like the whole driving impulse of reality TV. Which I don’t really like. But LOVE here!