Hmm, that’s a tricky one for reasons I’ll explain under a spoiler in a sec, but before that, I’m sorry that you hit that particular trigger unaware >.< As you said, it’s there on the page, but I know a lot of people don’t read game pages before playing and downloading stuff for all sorts of different reasons. Like you, when I’m playing things myself, I never read triggers on game pages cos I don’t want spoilers, and I don’t generally get triggered by the games I choose to play. Still, I want to apologise because the last thing I want is for anyone to come to any harm playing my stuff :( Games are supposed to be a fun form of escapism, not something you wind up experiencing hurt from, so I’m really sorry about that.
I also really appreciate that you’ve played my games, and it means a heck of a lot to know you’ve enjoyed them too :3 So thank you so much for that! Also just noticed by clicking on your page that you're co-writing Invite Me In, which is so cool :3 It's on my long list of stuff to check out at some point! I hope you have a wonderful rest of the year ^-^
SPOILERY MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION
So yeah, man, I find it pretty hard to write up the warnings/triggers for my projects in general because there isn’t anything that tends to get me when I play, so I use this big database that has a huuuuge list of triggers, and then I try to think of whether or not the project features stuff from that list.
That particular one, death of a child, I ended up listing under the [Off-Screen & Mentioned] section because of the conversation that Rhime has with Linnet during the hospital scene, and then when Linnet brings it up again in the final part of the game.
However, I was unsure if I should even include it at all since technically, no children actually died at any point during the game. But the trigger database talks about also listing things that are mentioned even if they’re not actually shown so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to include it there.
The reason I say that no children actually died is because the child Rhime refers to Linnet killing is entirely fictional. The whole pregnancy part is just another one of Rhime’s sick games to taunt poor Linnet with >.< There is no baby, and Linnet never actually killed a child at any point. Admittedly though, all that stuff is ambiguous and left for the player to conclude. Also, whether or not Rhime truly had a child with another deity is up for debate. The character might seem somewhat sincere about it and even appear to be traumatised by it, but Rhime is also a liar x3 Even I don’t know what really happened in Rhime’s past before being imprisoned, and whether or not Rhime can be trusted.
In my head, I think maybe because I knew that none of it was real, that somehow made it less horrific in a sense, but when I sit here and think about the scene, especially the hospital one and how emotionally charged it is, I can see how that conversation alone could be triggering just because of what’s said. So that’s entirely on me >.< I didn’t even think of it as being a particularly triggering subject at the time :(
The general ‘death - human and animal’ trigger was there to cover all the deaths in the game, though technically, again, no one truly died in the traditional sense. I thought it was best to separate the human and animal ones though because the team discussed it and concluded that what can potentially happen to Sorbet could be a significant enough trigger for some players in itself that it was worth mentioning separately.
All of what I’ve written so far though is going on the assumption that it was the mentioned child death stuff that was the triggering part. It also occurs to me that it might have been Simon instead.
I suppose some people might also consider Simon’s death to be the death of a child, though I always saw the character as inhuman since that’s what Rhime chose to make him. Really, the only human in this one is the player because all of the characters within the game are just Rhime’s creations, dreams, and nightmares.
You’re correct that there was no in-game warning about that particular trigger, it is only present in the content warnings dropdown on the page. So yeah, I am sorry about that >.<
Knowing that you were still triggered by that particular subject though makes me wonder how to handle triggers in the future. It’s so hard with horror to not give away spoilers with triggers, which is why I always try my best to put the main big ones in-game and on the page, and then all of them, no matter how small, in the spoilers dropdown on the page.
It’s a fine line to walk because, on one hand, I really don’t want to hurt anyone, but on the other hand, I’ve had some people say they want to play my games, but have chosen not to based on certain triggers they’ve seen mentioned in those dropdowns, or that they went to watch someone play on YouTube, but stopped watching when the triggers screen game up cos they thought the game would be too scary for them. The problem there is that the triggers often make things sound a lot worse than they actually are >.< And on the complete other end of the scale, I’ve had people use the triggers as a barometer for anticipation, hoping that the more there are, the scarier the game will be, and then they're disappointed to find out that it’s not that scary at all >.<
It’s so hard to know what the best thing to do is, and I’ve watched debates from other devs play out on the subject too, haha. Some argue that all triggers should be clear and present in-game regardless of whether or not they contain spoilers of any kind. Others argue back that having them all there where you have no choice but to read them spoils the entire game experience for them because they know what’s coming/what to expect from certain scenes, and it kills any sort of tension, effectively ruining some of the horror aspects of the game.
So yeah, I’m really not sure what the answer is here :( I thought up until now that I had found the best way to handle it by having main triggers in-game and a full list under spoilers on the page, but if something still blindsided you, then clearly there needs to be a different way of doing things in the future. I’m just not sure what it is >.<
If you have any suggestions though, I’d be more than happy to hear them! So please feel free to leave anything like that here in this thread or if you’d prefer, you can always drop me an email to: melancholicmarionette@gmail.com
I feel like it's really hard to get the balance on this sort of stuff right, but I don't get much feedback on content warnings, and it's important so I would like to be able to.