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A jam submission

Apolitical Magical Girl GameView game page

An apolitical magic girl in an apolitical world
Submitted by Stanwixbuster (@stanwixbuster) — 26 days, 13 hours before the deadline
Rated by 26 people so far
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How does your game fit the Magical Girl genre?
You are the magical girl, with the power of the undefinable! The power of effective nothing! The power to keep this world under your thumb, static, unchanging, and apolitical.

Which theme(s) do you pick?
1,2,3,4,5,6

How does your game fit those theme(s)?
I am Legion, for We are Many: In such an apolitical world, all beings must be the same! A legion of the indistinct! Every person you speak to is the same. Every building you see is the same. Every object. Every day you exist through. | Identification: Friend or Foe: You must find an adversary to defeat! You must find who could be on your side or not! I could not further press on how the consequences of this resolve; barely the thought of it again makes me light-headed. | A fleeting idea, that death could be a solution to your woes. Oh, no. You know better than to bring an end to your own life. Your pride in being better than everyone else could never let you. | Under pressure: Does everyone else know how much pressure you exist under, in such a world as this? I will not repeat these resolutions; the words speak for themselves. | Life's but a walking shadow: You know how people exist as "things", changing, giving consequence. You, however, are the shadow. You affect nothing. You exist between the cracks and slip in and out of their lives while not a single thought is spent. This is how you live, and always will. | We'll meet again: If one would play through this game, their emotions untapped, unmoved, and unchanging, you would find yourself on the wonderful course of repeating the same beats over and over and over and over! You meet your friend-you-may-not-refer-to-for-the-sake-of-politeness-and-ettiqutte once more! As many times as you wish! You may meet your days again, forever!

Were the assets for your game made during the jam? Elaborate as you see fit.
Yes.

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Comments

Submitted

To much apolitical for me

Maybe I'm too much of a philistine to enjoy this, but, well, I didn't. It feels like it's supposed to be high art, but it also comes across as pretentious.

I clicked through it a while, reached a point where I went "yeah, okay, I see what you're getting at", clicked a bit more to see if there was anything more to it, and then checked out.

I don't know if I'd even call this a game rather than an interactive art piece. It's harder to critique art, and like I alluded to at the beginning, I'm not an art expert. At the end of the day, though, this was submitted to a game jam as a game, so that's how I'll approach it.

The thesis seems to be, more or less, that everything is inherently political to some degree or another and that an "apolitical" world is conceptually absurd. I think an argument could be made that the minimalistic styling, linearity, extremely dense prose, and total lack of audio or graphics help drive that point home. It's monotonous, it's boring, it's lifeless, and that's the point.

Unfortunately, that doesn't change that it's a (completely?) linear sequence of dense, hard-to-read prose with no graphics or sound to go with it. It's monotonous, it's boring, it's lifeless. It's not enjoyable, engaging, or even particularly interesting.

And that's the crux of it. It makes its argument, and it might even be convincing for some, but it could have made that argument in a much more interesting way. Making a point doesn't preclude making a fun game. Exploring a theme can be much more nuanced than bashing the audience over the head with it. This feel very utilitarian in a way, very minimal, and there was an opportunity to do so much more with the idea.

Finally, yes, I do realize this could be trolling, or a shitpost. I feel it's better to give the benefit of the doubt rather than make the wrong assumption about someone's earnest work.

Submitted

It felt like play Nier Replicant Forest of Myth, but what is a Myth if not a widely held but false belief or idea. In fact, the act of playing itself raises questions about my own nature, as it involves engaging in activities for enjoyment and recreation rather than for serious or practical purposes. It's fascinating how such a simple act can reveal so much about oneself... f*ck, I've been infec-