7 comments
  1. This is amazing. You made really wonderful use of the videos — this feels a lot more complete and like it contains a lot more material than the mode. The visuals are coherent and lend themselves incredibly well to the time period / theme / storyline. The first time playing, I accidentally quit. Interestingly, then, the second time through the game I find myself agreeing with everything he says just so I can get to the point I left off at. If that isn’t analogous for how this conversation series would go down in real life, I don’t know what is. Congratulations on an very successful game in every way.

    (There is one scene where the mother and brother characters are piled on top of each other — I’m under the impression it isn’t intentional but I’m not sure? In any case it doesn’t detract from the game.)

  2. The use of old video footage is great in this piece, and really sets the tone and mood. I thought that the style of your characters really matched the live action footage as well. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but if you click on the videos you can skip them entirely. I sometimes accidentally clicked through the videos when I didn’t want to, so that’s something to consider. However, you could also consider making that a game mechanic in itself: if the player doesn’t click away from the videos and instead watches them to the end, they could get more “good wife points” for allowing themselves to be indoctrinated by the mainstream media. If they click through the videos impatiently, “good wife points” could be detracted since they’re ignoring society’s brainwashing.

    1. Ooh, I second that idea.

  3. The atmosphere is spot on. The visuals encapsulate the weird 60s housewife attitude, and show how surreal it is in contemporary light. The video footage was a great aid to this fake-ness, like your game was showing real product placement, even though you weren’t, but you were, but you weren’t. The Good Wife Score is an interesting mechanic. I got 100 points, and was told I deserve a happy ending, though I didn’t feel as though the ending I got was good or bad. This could be a comment on how a wife and mother is never appreciated; that she deserves better but will never get it. However, I don’t feel like there was enough narrative information building up that conclusion for me to feel solid on it, so I’m a little lost. Right now it just feels like I’m being sarcastically punished for answering the way a stereotypical middle class American white lady would. I think the game is trying to function critically against this stereotype, but doesn’t quite push hard enough for me to feel bad that was selfless in service to my family.

  4. OMG I love it. The embedded videos are perfect and every playthrough is different and differently interesting. I like how the wife’s lines can be read as sincere/brainwashed or sarcastic. While I really like the background style I’m not 100% sure about the main characters. The outlines are a bit too soft and they don’t work that well with the photographic and video material. I’d suggest to match the photoshopped style of the background and add a minimal soundscape (maybe birds chirping) for the non video parts.

  5. I really enjoyed this game although the point system seems a bit redundant. It seemed like you were trying to make it abundantly clear that you were in fact incrementing the variable, but maybe something more subtle would have sufficed. I think that your standing with your husband was very clear based on the responses you made. Also the point system was a bit out of sync with the dialogue. As opposed to decrementing or incementing the counter by 15 points as the dialogue would suggest, you only did it by 10.

  6. I became aware of the “good wife points” scoreboard the moment I started the game, so even if the game didn’t say in the main dialogue box when I gained or lost points, I think I still would have felt it silently judging me. Certainly up to you what kind of effect you want to get from presenting the information the way you do, but I’m not of the opinion that you have to make that info so prominent for it to be noticed and effective.

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