The Gamers Arms

You might know developers Deconstructeam from games like The Red Strings Club, or Gods Will Be Watching, or from that time that they cloned themselves to satisfy Alice B’s burning curiosity about what happens when one meets one’s doppelganger. Anyway, they just released a short little game called Behind Every Great One, which began life as a prototype created for the Ludum Dare game jam, and it’s a bleak but poignant look at everyday sexism.

Behind Every Great One tells the story of Victorine, a housewife married to an artist called Gabriel. “Victorine doesn’t have any personal passions but supports Gabriel,” the game’s description reads. “They love each other.”

While Gabriel is hard at work painting in his studio, Victorine is expressly forbidden to enter. Instead, you control her as she wanders around the house, cooking, cleaning, maybe taking a break to read or smoke.

There’s never enough time in the day to do everything, and on the first day Gabriel showed up for dinner before I’d had a chance to sweep the dining room. He remarked upon how it was dusty, and Victorine promised to get to it tomorrow. “I wasn’t implying you should clean!” Gabriel protests.

Herein lies the core issue with their marriage. He might not have meant to put pressure on her, but he did anyway, because who else was going to clean? If he is worried about the dust, he (hopefully) knows how to tackle it, but he never makes any move to do so. At times he suggests that Victorine should get a hobby, but if she takes a break to read a book there are more complaints about the food not being well prepared, or his shirts not being ironed. He’s busy with his art, but neither is there enough time for her to finish everything alone either, let alone take time for herself.

Medicine Man wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Shakedown: Hawaii the Retro City Rampage follow-up gets a new trailer out of PAX...

Mantis wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:06 pm

Agreed, this chap seems to be complaining that their game wasn't really noticed and yet they didn't make a deal with Devolver Digital to do any promotion for it at all until really late into development. He also seems to think that they deserve far more sales than they got purely because the unique selling point for the game is that it swaps from 8 bit to 16 bit part way through. Regardless of how solid the platforming is and how fun the game is, that is not an especially original idea and also does bugger all to really change how the game itself plays.

I'm sure The Messenger is very fun. But he's kidding himself if he thinks it offers anything at all unique that would draw people in of its own accord. It is exactly that kind of retro nostalgia vibe title that is lost in the white noise of Steam because it doesn't do anything new at all.