Post by The Phenomenal Sir in The Hospital comments

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I'm gonna have to be "that guy" that goes against the grain here...I originally recorded a fairly decent length review for this game, but after I watched it I realized that I don't feel comfortable sharing it due to the specificity of the protagonist's ailment at the start of the game.

I am lucky to not have lost anyone close to me to the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are millions of people around the world who cannot say the same, and to have the early part of the game focus specifically on the pandemic seems (from the first 15 minutes of the game) not to serve a direct purpose in terms of the story. Based on what I saw, you could have the protagonist just catch a generic illness and get the same effect.

Having them obviously be infected with COVID-19 combined with some of the monologues in the game could serve to cause players to experience an actual sense of fear (outside the confines of the game), and could actually cause them to experience grief and/or mental trauma if they or someone close to them was infected / killed by the virus. Video games should be an escape from reality, not a stark reminder of it.

I am by no means a "snowflake" or someone who believes in hugs and participation trophies for everyone, but even I realize that this game needs (at the VERY least) a trigger warning on the page and/or in the game. I don't know your personal history and this may have just been a game, or it could have been a cathartic experience for you based on things you have experienced, but I would just say, consider how this will affect your players. Again, you want them to be scared by the game, not by the harsh realities of the world we find ourselves in every day.

That being said, you obviously possess a good instinct for how to build an environment, use the assets available to you, and even caught me off guard a couple of times when I thought "X" would happen and instead I got scared by "Y". Fundamentally, you've built a great short horror experience (from what I've seen) with a bit of a Japanese horror movie vibe, and I would have no qualms calling this a good or even phenomenal game were it not for the issue I laid out above.

Sorry to preach, please consider what I've said, and if you were to update the script to be less specific about what I outlined above, I would love to be able to review and share your game in the future.

Stay healthy, and stay safe out there.

Crux Game Studios3 years ago (1 edit)

Hi there, Thank you for your feedback; we appreciate the time you took to play our game and to post your message.

Be assured that we did not frivolously use the premise you take umbrage to; members of our team have lost a much-loved colleague to this disease. It has impacted our lives personally and in many cases brutally. To us, using this premise was not a gimmick but (as all art must) a means of exploring and processing the painful world we live in today:

What goes on in the minds of those caught unexpectedly by this disease as they lie in isolation, struggling to comprehend and come to terms with the idea that they might soon die? The most humane thing we can do, as artists and story-tellers, is to put ourselves in the shoes of those who suffer and try to see through their eyes and render that experience as honestly as we can. We do this out of a sense of our shared humanity; art helps us to 'be the other' and stand with them, sometimes in the only way we can.

We acknowledge and respect your concerns, however, and we appreciate that you expressed it in such a thoughtful and respectful manner. In these difficult times, when there is so much strife and miscommunication, the best we can do is to listen to each other's views, even if we don't always agree. We have added a trigger warning to the game's description.

Thank you again for playing the game; we hope you'll update your rating/review now that you know our intentions behind the premise.

SobakaPeppa3 years ago (1 edit) (+1)(-1)

On top of everything that was listed above, I believe you should have added some sort of an additional illness to the protagonist, like a chronic respiratory disease, heart problems or obesity, probably even made him an elderly male, that would have made the most sense, considering his fear of actually dying from the virus. The majority of people who are supposed to be concerned about actually perishing from it, not just experiencing its minor effects, are those with already existing severe ailments, and the fact that 78% of people who were in need of hospitalization or died from the virus were obese or overweight proves it...

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