RenPy: Commiseration Trainer
Download and play the test release:
I left class last week thinking a lot about dialog trees and how they’re pervasive in video games. And even more troubling, how I played a lot of video games growing up and how I’ve been raised by those video games.
In earnest, I set out to try and create a game with a more realistic representation of human interactions. But alas, that’s incredibly hard. As it goes, any rules of interaction immediately miss the point. Codifying human interactions is the problem.
Anyway, in an attempt to learn what I want by actually creating what I don’t want, I decided to create a simple dialog tree RenPy that illustrates how to properly commiserate with someone. This proved to be a fascinating exercise and I learned a lot about my own biases. I’m an engineer at heart, and I’ve always been told that I try to problem solve too much, when a lot of times people just want to vent. Commiseration Trainer in a nutshell… is just that!