The things we carry by arctic_allosaurus


Decided to make a simpler game this time. You are just a crow flying home. Sacrificing material things, your bitter life source, you gain a small speed boost and shield for a short while.
| HTML5 (web) | https://arcticallosaurus.itch.io/the-things-we-carry |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/the-things-we-carry |
Ratings
| Given | 4🗳️ | 5🗨️ |
I enjoyed the aesthetics. The gameplay left me feeling a little bit numb when it resorted to abstracting away life's slings and arrows as literal sawblades and axes, because with such general imagery, it cuts off the possibility of further exploring the themes. An infant figures out pretty quickly that sharp objects are dangerous, and learns to avoid them. But in later life, some of the most distressing acts look very ordinary and only later, when reviewed, can be seen for what they are. People get traumatized, and they push it away in their mind, only for it to intrude on them over and over like an angry scar. Even real violence, when filmed, tends to look banal and less impactful than what is portrayed in media.
I think the game is close to being really good, it just needs to resolve this metaphorical issue of how to "unknowingly sacrifice" things, and to turn that into a burden on one's conscience. As it is, when I reached the end, I felt like I had played any other game about resource management, and it was doing some tell-not-show to declare that it was about sacrifice.