RELATION HUMAINE by MiniSK8 Studios
You play as an employee just trying to survive another workday. People come to talk to you, and you must pick a response from different types of attitudes.
Game Rules
You play as an employee just trying to survive another workday.
People come to talk to you, and you must pick a response from different types of attitudes.
How it works
Each answer belongs to a category, for example:
- Humour
- Work
- Small talk
- Invasive
- Aggressive
Different people react differently to each category. Their reaction is what changes your internal state.
Your gauges
Inside your head, you have three emotional gauges:
- SAD
- ANGRY
- STRESS
After each answer, your interlocutor’s reaction will push one or more of these gauges up or down.
If one of them gets too high, your mental stability starts to fall apart.
Your interlocutor also has a Satisfaction bar.
If their satisfaction drops too low, the conversation goes badly. If you keep it high enough, you get through the encounter.
“Under the Surface” theme
Everything happens under the surface, inside the character’s mind.
The categories you choose are not exact sentences, but the tone you are about to use in real life.
The game explores what is going on in your head while, on the outside, you are just having a “normal” chat at work.
Comments (6)
yo!
I'm gonna be honest - even after getting to the credits I have no idea how the game works.
I clicked on the bubbles and sometimes my character said them, sometimes they would fall down and get stuck, sometimes they would dash away.
I've reread the page description over and over, but didn't get it. Also the only bar that update over the game was the one on the left - the three emotional gauges never changed at all (?)
However the vibe is immaculate. I like the droning music and the art is top notch!
Especially the character design is great. The weird esoteric lines coming from the character and the speech bubble design all meshed very well together.
Nice entry, with need for severe improvements on the UX front. :P
Thanks a lot for the feedback, really appreciate it!
the UX didn’t totally survive the jam sprint, he’s fired.
A bit of context: the balancing was only half-finished in the build you played. The first character (the wife) was meant to be a soft tutorial where almost anything you pick fills her satisfaction bar. The second character was the first real test: he secretly likes one communication style and hates another, so you need to try different tones until you find what makes his satisfaction go up.
We also planned more characters, proper intro/outro lines, and the emotional gauges reacting to your choices, but no more money for that.
The general vibe of the game is that your character deals with intrusive thoughts and emotions that sometimes burst out in the wrong way, like it happens to all of us. Some thoughts fall out, some rush away, some feel too intense to keep in… and he’s trying to survive the day, keep his job, and hide his real self behind whatever acceptable answer he can pick. https://www.reddit.com/r/A24/comments/1gu7o1h/i_saw_the_tv_glow_birthday_party_scene/ one of our reference is this scene. Guess lots of ppl can relate.
Really happy the atmosphere and art still landed for you despite all the messy wires underneath. Thanks again for playing and taking the time to write such a detailed comment!!! <3
Cool stuff