Post by Ian Eborn in What's your gender? comments

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A very interesting exploration, with some fascinating usages of non-standard spatial connections! Very nicely done! ^_^

I was a little sad that "void" didn't get a definition. While perhaps appropriate to the term, I was left still not knowing (albeit being able to guess) quite how it fit into gender-matters.

I liked the use of arrows to suggest the idea of societal pressure towards "cis" identification.

(Although I was a little sad that "cis" didn't get a some feature to spice up its space. Between that and the endless loop, it sort of felt like "cis" identities were being presented as "boring".)

Alas, I encountered a bug: Somehow, I got the "lift" to break, specifically to leave me enough space that I could drop into the curving "lift shaft". And while I could wander around down there, I couldn't quite get up to the lift again, it seemed. ^^;

(At a guess, perhaps I used the lift, then found another route back to to the point at which I entered the lift, leaving the platform elsewhere. But that is just a guess.)

But overall I liked this. ^_^

ente3 years ago(+1)(-2)

Thanks a lot! And glad you enjoyed our game. :)

We are thinking about including the definition of void in a next version, as we are currently reworking some of the definitions anyways. As we have often tried to make text, meaning and environment interact in some ways with each other, some of us thought that it was fitting to not have any definition for void, but we can see how including one could help people understand it better.

As we were mostly thinking about presenting identities that are not the norm, we didn't think much about further features for the cis room but (speaking for myself at least) I don't think any of us would want to say that cis equals being boring. There is such a variety in expressions and ways to live no matter whether you are cis or trans and even though there is the societal pressure to fit into some norms even inside of those norms are a myriad of ways to live it.

Thanks for telling us about that bug. We'll try to look into it!

Ian Eborn3 years ago(+1)(-1)

As much as I'd like to see a concrete definition, I can definitely see the appeal of having no textual description for "void", of having it be conveyed implicitly by the environment.

As to the "cis" section, I do hear you. And indeed, it only makes sense that most of the energy go to the other identities!

I'm glad to read that "cis" wasn't intended to be presented as "boring"--and indeed, that's not unexpected; I don't think that I took it to be the intended reading. I think that the lack of something there felt more like an an area overlooked (understandably), and which omission felt (to me, at least) to carry an unintended half-implication--in my mind, at least.

PurpleSloth3 years ago (1 edit) (-1)

There are definitly rooms in the game that are more elaborat than others. In part this is due to the order they were created in. The cis and trans rooms were the first two rooms we created during the jam and we focused on creating the systems that allowed us to chain them together indefinitely.
Other rooms that were created much later allowed us to focus on more detailed concepts (take the floating cubes in the euphoria/disphoria room for example, that was a relatively late addition ot the postjam release).
This isn't meant to be a value judgement on the terms and the associated identities, but rather a product of having a game start out as a jam project and then expanding on it later =)

Ian Eborn3 years ago(-1)

I know; I'm talking less about the intent than the effect. I really don't think that you intended any value judgements.

However, I worry that this is turning into an argument--I really don't want to press the issue! ^^;

Speaking of the euphoria/dysphoria room, I really liked that one! I thought that the metaphor there worked really well! ^_^

Finally, it's quite interesting to read about how the order of approaching the rooms affected how much detail was given to each. Thank you for explaining that! ^_^

Ian Eborn3 years ago(+1)(-1)

Update!

It's been long enough that I'm not quite sure of what's changed, but:

"Cis" has a green light, and some nice pillars. I don't recall whether it had them before, but if not, then they're a nice addition to it.

(Granted that I happen to be fond of green, so I may be biased as to its impact. :P)

"Void" now has a textual definition! That's very welcome, and was interesting to read. Thank you for that. ^_^

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