Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘The Political Compass: Devil’s Labyrinth’ and ‘Peace of Mind’
Lotta shorts
The Political Compass: Devil’s Labyrinth is a satirical narrative game created by majestic12. Players have somehow gotten themselves stuck with The Angel of Death who really wants to go on a date with a goat, so they offload their problems and force the player to make decisions for them.
As a snap-decision narrative game, players will be given individuals to learn about and eventually judge if they are ‘worthy’ or ‘damned’. Certain individuals will have choices prior to these final 2, which can help uncover new dialogue and understand who these people are.
Some may notice that the characters are drawn in one of four colours; for those familiar with the ‘political compass’, this is an indicator of which quadrant the person falls in to, from authoritarian right to libertarian left. Once players have learned enough — or not — they are given the choice to send them to heaven, or damn them to hell.
It becomes quite obvious that the four quadrants of people are a gross exaggeration of a singular trait, almost to the point of being a stereotype. These people do not have personalities more than they are personas of what people assume that they are, from the actual Nazi to the hippy constantly on drugs.
The satire aspect here is that the decision that the player is making is who goes to hell based on no information about them outside of their political compass leanings and whatever small bits of stereotypical information that they give.
This is further compounded by the idea that if you do attempt to send someone to hell, they are ‘saved’ from this fate and the player is given a strange epiphany. I only sent the actual Nazi because… I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain this — and even they were ‘saved’.
The art style is interesting due to the lovely line-drawings and shifting images, and it does not take long to play, but it may still leave people with a bizarre aftertaste.
Does it work as a satire? I’m not entirely sure. The issue at stake here is that players are sending people to a moral place found in few religions based on a political compass meme with barely any information.
Is it funny? That is 100% based on your own viewpoints and humour, especially those who enjoy this style of meme or ‘centrist’ style-humor, if that is such a thing.
At the end of the day, you’ll have to check it yourself and make your own judgements, because I’m still scratching my head a bit.
Peace of Mind is a small ‘puzzle’ game created for 2020’s Global Game Jam by Joe, Eric, and Josh — a trio of indie devs. Players have just bought their dream home, but unfortunately there appears to be residences within it still. Hopefully players can appease these unintentional guests so that they don’t evict them from their lives.
The house is eerily furnished upon arrival due to its haunting, and a ghost will exist in the garage. Players will be given a profile of the current ghost — specifically their likes and dislikes.
What players need to do is then search the house for items that are ‘likes’ and bring them to the ghost to increase their happiness bar on the bottom right. Grabbing a disliked item will have the ghost attack the player’s health; if this bar is reduced to empty, then the game is over.
The trick is to infer what a ghost might mean by their dislike of ‘homework’, so avoiding things that may be related to the act of performing school work such as pencils or books.
This is a game jam game, so it’s brevity is expected due to the shortened timeframe. However what is here is quite fun, the idea of searching an unfamiliar house to find items that may keep you alive longer than you may expect.
Like with all vertical slices expanding the game could be amazing, but the core of finding and delivering is solid nonetheless. If you like playing concepts, you’d be wise to check out this game. While you’re at it, go ham playing game jam games too.
Do be aware that it is about a 1 GB download which may be a lot for such a title.
