A Closed World

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Our first Fringe Buster Critical Screening last night was a complete success, thanks to everybody who came out to discuss A Closed World! The discussion was great, and I can’t wait to do it again next week.

A Closed World is a game from the MIT GAMBIT lab, which is a group trying to explore new directions for the development of video games. Here, they’ve tried to tackle a subject as tricky as homosexuality through the lens of a JRPG-style game.

You begin as a young kid in a JRPG-style fantasy setting and you are told “There are demons in the woods, you must face them … or wander the woods forever.” You are then free to explore the woods, finding artifacts along the way to fight your demons.

The fights themselves are actually arguments with demons that represent the judgement of others about your character’s sexual orientation. You can use Logic, Ethics or Passion to fight back and you either have to wear them down or walk away. You can always take a deep breath and regain your composure, which is what stands in for health in this battle. Otherwise it’s a standard, but very simplified, JRPG battle system.

You can see our playthrough last night captured below. Sorry for the audio issues (you can barely hear my mic). It’s my first time broadcasting this way — I’ll try to get the issues worked out for next time.

[size=20]Play Now[/size]

Speaking of next time, Erik “wordsmythe” Hanson is going to screen Keys of a Gamespace Friday at 10:30pm EST. Check our new Fringe Busters Twitter feed for details on Friday. See you then!

Comments

Not sure if this is happening for anybody else, but I'm getting a "Something went wrong: Error #2048" message from the Justin.TV embed of the video.

Working fine for me, trying to get upload to YouTube working but so far it's not with our Justin.TV account

Going to play now.

Our first Fringe Buster Critical Screening last night was a complete success, thanks to everybody who came out to discuss A Closed World!

I think you mean Super Cult Tycoon?

Minarchist wrote:

Going to play now.

Our first Fringe Buster Critical Screening last night was a complete success, thanks to everybody who came out to discuss A Closed World!

I think you mean Super Cult Tycoon?

Nope, last night we watched and played A Closed World. The next day I posted an archive of the video with a text discussion of it. That's the new format.

For next week, we're going to discuss Keys of a Gamespace with Erik at 10:30EST on Friday. Join us!

Ah, I misunderstood. For some reason I thought that was happening Tuesday nights.

Minarchist wrote:

Ah, I misunderstood. For some reason I thought that was happening Tuesday nights.

If that were the case, I'd never be able to lead discussion.

What we're doing is announcing the next week's game in advance, so we can play the game together before talking about it here.

I'll be using http://www.twitch.tv/gwjcc like last week, but chatting via G+ Hangout.