Projection

I made another game this week! Click here to play it. Even though the graphics are a rough and the audio is awful and the controls are annoying, I’m still really pleased with what I was able to achieve here. I like the idea of games like Ganbare Gorby where the main character ability is to bark incoherently at people, and for a long time I’ve been wanting to make games with social gaze, where you are unable to do anything beyond what the people around you expect you to be doing. I’d really like to work on this some more one day.

Unnecessary and somewhat self-involved exposition below…

I started work on Projection a couple of months ago, right after my Ludum Dare project made me feel confident making quirky little browser games. Eventually I lost impetus and stopped developing it, but Lydia Neon’s brilliant Creative Conflict Jam gave me an excuse to get back into it.

In Projection, your character’s abilities are determined by the gaze of NPCs. If they project fear onto you, then you will act out of fear by destroying the things that sustain you. If they project joy onto you, then you will act out of joy by sharing our gains with others. If they project hunger, you will move more slowly but everything you pick up will be worth twice as much.

You don’t have a voice of your own to change the way they see you, and if you were acting alone then your only options would be to hide from their gaze or to make the best use of their projections that you can. You have an ally who can speak to the NPCs and convince them to see you differently. They can’t see the world that you are experiencing, so you have to direct their voice to where you need it to go. In order to move on to the next level, you have to collect enough points to sustain not only you, but also your ally.

In the end, even though the game has no physical violence, you will have used a handful of different techniques for solving your problems, including taking time to convince people to see you on the same level as themselves, avoiding people whose projections you don’t want to take on, and running the fuck away from aggressive people who will not listen.