I've heard many complaints about RPG fetch quests. Complaints like “they're annoying”, “ they're unnecessary” or “ they're totally unrealistic”. I've heard many of these complaints from my own mouth when yelling at my monitor at 2am. Yet if you stop to think, how much of your day involves doing equally mundane tasks for others? Go fetch the groceries, go fetch the kids, go fetch the copies for Johnson on the 3rd floor. It's kind of depressing to stop and think about how many of our relationships depend on glorified fetch quests.

Din is a game about relationships. You are an average guy, walking down the street. As you walk, you meet other people who begin talking to you. Occasionally an exclamation point will appear above their head, World of Warcraft style, and they will ask you to hit a certain key for them. If you hit the key, they are satisfied and continue talking. If you do not, they eventually become frustrated by your inability to meet their simple needs and leave you.

This sounds fairly simple, however as you walk down the street you meet more people who want to talk to you. None of them seem to be very polite, as they all begin talking over each other. The more effort you put into maintaining friends, the more friends you accumulate, and the harder it becomes to actually maintain those friends. Pretty soon you're struggling to hear even one or two requests out of the crowd following you spouting off requests. The only way to end the game is to ignore any requests and let your friends fall by the wayside.

Of course speakers are necessary to play the game. You cannot hear or understand the commands at all without sound. As such, the only way to pull out the various requests from the crowd is to listen to everyone and try to hear the key each friend requires. It's stressful, demanding and in the end it's all going to fall apart anyway. It highlights exactly what other games are doing less explicitly, only modeling relationships in terms of what you give others and what you get in return. Not exactly an affirmation of the human spirit, huh?

Why You Should Check This Out: Din is a game about relationships where you struggle to listen to the voices of your friends while trying to manage their needs so that they don't walk away. Sound is required as the only way to find out what they need is to listen to them, which becomes difficult as you get more friends that are constantly talking over each other. The only way to end it is ignore everyone and let them all stop following you. A cynical and somewhat depressing statement about how we relate to each other.