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So just to be clear, the issue here isn't with objectification and sleaze, it's the objectification and sleaze being one-sided?

Imagine a world where for every game that exists now, a gender-swapped version (with t-strings turning into loincloths, cleavage into abs, and so on) is also available. Is everything ok in that world?

Although even while making it, I realised that although I never played the game (so I can't tell if the nurse's loveliness was played for laughs or whether it was supposed to be subverted when she later turns into an insectoid alien or something), I don't even need to do the change to feel it is offputting and alienating. I mean, what exactly did the developers think of me?

Good one!

Although women tend to be a little more sophisticated when it comes to drooling over medical staff

[imgzoom]https://i.ibb.co/t8RPRwf/clooney.png[/imgzoom]

At the same time, I doubt the creators were unaware of Kimba The White Lion and it could have had a subconscious effect on some choices, but that happens with anything.

Possibly, but after watching the YMS video, even that seems unlikely . The Kimba series spanned decades and has about 3000 minutes of footage covering everything you could possibly think of involving African animals. It would be a real feat to come up with anything that would not be featured on that show in some shape or form, especially if we're talking unrelated single shots plucked from random episodes. It's like the Simpsons "predicting" various events - with this many episodes, it's just inevitable.

Surely they will have to put an "Inspired by the game FNAF" somewhere and pay them something, like The Lion King ended up having to do with the Japanese manga/anime "Simba The White Lion" or risk legal action?

Sorry, a quick off topic: I don't know anything about Five Nights at Freddy's, just noticed the Lion King thing being mentioned, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to spread the word - apparently the Lion King has nothing to do with the anime show, just some very superficial (and most likely coincidental) similarities which have been hugely exaggerated by people who haven't watched the anime series. If you have two hours, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5B1mIfQuo4&t=127s&ab_channel=YourMovieSucksDOTorg

I haven't gotten around to playing this before now, but I noticed the hype...and it was well deserved! Great game that shines in characters, plot, setting, graphics, puzzles, humour, frankly just about everything.  *Reaches for nomination button*

I found one logical inconsistency, which didn't bother me one bit:

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After stealing clothes, the crystal shard was still inside the defence machinery, but our hero would have had to use the lift in the meantime. 

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Congratulations! Your game is fantastic.

Wow, thank you very much!

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Great catch with the faulty logic! I'm always genuinely happy when I see people actually care about this kind of details. It's the same as the thing Guga noticed: believe it or not, it actually did occur to me at one point, but I thought "meh, nobody's going to think about that, why waste time coding it". Next time I'll try not to be so lazy .

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I am stuck quite at the beginning:

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I activated the elevator, got some stuff in my inventory (I don't remember what it is, there is no description for it), use the party horn on another guy, and was able to place, for whatever reason, a broken bottle over the guy in the observatory. I assume I have to wake up or move him with the crystal and later get the ring to cut the glass dome, but I have no idea how.

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Nothing moves in frozen time, you need to unfreeze it for a split-second. This will cause the glass you have placed to fall and the guy to blow the horn.

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For me any adventure game is better without sliders (or mazes, or Towers of Hanoi, or Simons, or tic-tac-toes...), because a good adventure game puzzle has to take part of the story. But when you have to solved a slider, you are not thinking about the story, the characters, the context, the situation... The narration just stops until you solve it. If you extract the slider from your game, anyone can still solve the slider, they don't need to know anything about the story. The other puzzles in your game don't work out of context, they are integrated into the story, they are good adventure game puzzles. In addition, a slider inside the lift console looks totally artificial for me.

Slider aside, it's one of the best short adventure games I have ever played.

I see what you mean. In my mind, the puzzle was supposed to represent you being an engineer and fiddling with the elevator's mechanics. It's like lockpicking minigames - they have nothing to do with picking an actual lock, but by having the player do some strategic thinking combined with fine motor skills, they can make them feel like they are a skilled thief. Or combining diary notes in detective games - you often just click randomly without knowing what the result will be (at least I do ), but it simulates making clever deductions.

Really appreciate the kind words otherwise!

That was brilliant! Had a lot of fun, was cackling at the end. Love the art.

Thanks, glad you found it funny!

I liked it a lot. Clever idea and great execution. Congratulations, Jan. I wrote some lines about the game (in Spanish): https://indiefence.miguelrfervenza.com/2021/01/que-se-cuece-enero-de-2021/#off. Now, I have even higher expectations for Truth be Trolled.

Great, thank you for the review! I don't speak Spanish, but Google Translate did the job. I wonder what others thought of the slider puzzle - would the game have been better off without it? I often see this kind of minigame mentioned as a negative in reviews, but I personally kinda enjoy them . It's not a big deal in any case, just curious.

So has anyone here actually used the Bechdel test or any similar rule? What changes did it bring to your story?

Also when you think of a new character, do they come with a fixed gender right away, or do you sometimes change characters' genders later?

it seems very much agreeable and well reasoned. To me, at least.

It is fairly reasonable on the most part

Is it just me or could there be some common ground emerging?

A different perspective on some evo-bio data:

a feminist biologist discusses gender differences in the animal kingdom

I personally find it quite reasonable.

How nice of you, would it be OK if I put it in my banner?

Sure, go ahead!

I don't think you can compare rape with murder/violence. No one is traumatised by an Agatha Christie, or disturbed by a Jackie Chan film.

I'm not sure if this refers to what I was saying earlier, but I wasn't exactly thinking of Agatha Christie when I mentioned men also being treated badly. If there was a way to somehow quantify characters' suffering (humiliation being a subcategory of that) as a result of violence in movies, would your guess be that women would rank higher per capita? Not that that's even remotely possible, just curious where people's intuitions lie.

Murder can be a subject for light-hearted, lurid fun in a way that sexual crimes can't (at least, responsibly).

Not in general, but men being raped is sometimes played for laughs. You have your soap-dropping jokes, and then there are things like Hangover 2. It's a bizarre one - the guy is raped on his wedding day and the actor plays it more or less straight, no goofiness, you can see he's genuinely devastated. But the whole thing is framed as just one of those craaaaazy shenanigans the guys go through and the main issue ends up being how he's gonna hide it from his bride-to-be. The weird tonal mismatch almost makes the movie interesting . That's one of the reasons I'm not sure I can agree that male rape is seen as a more heinous offense. It might be more viscerally uncomfortable for guys to watch and it definitely takes the titillation aspect out of it, but I don't see a soldier commando rushing to avenge the victim.

So far I find the studies Blondbraid linked to be most compelling here. There are a lot of different assumptions being made about how people interpret and react to scenes of sexual violence, so I'd be curious what actually happens in people's heads, in relation to which aspects of the scene, and all the different factors that play into it. That's also why I find attempts like the Unconsenting Media database potentially misleading - it tries to bundle a vast array of differently framed and executed scenes into a handful of categories, which may not be representative of how people perceive those scenes in context.

But I gotta say that's a pretty awesome illustration! 

Then take it as a peace offering. I see your points, especially this is interesting:

There have even been scientific studies showing rather disturbing connections between watching films with sexist violence on screen, and increased victim-blaming in the audience.

Are there studies post 1984 replicating the results? Metastudies comparing it to the influence of other types of violence in media and desensitization to violence in general? I would never have imagined that a significant number of men (30%?!) get aroused by slashers of all things. I'd also assume that if rape is used for shock value or to make a villain particularly disgusting, it must be because it's seen as horrible, not that it makes it look less horrible.

Years ago, when I first discussed different ideas for a username with my mom, she told me "Blondbraid" was rather feminine and it might risk getting associated with bimbo /barbie stereotypes, so I didn't think of it that way.

Yeah, it seems pretty obvious in hindsight. But I swear, that "arrogant" post, that was you being treated like a man . I guess because it rhymes with Bluebeard? It's a captain's name!

I really hope you didn't mean to come across as so arrogant as you sound like in your reply, but I've literally seen exactly the same arguments coming from different guys almost a hundred times by now, and it's galling to have to explain this over and over again.

Yeah, I see how that could have come across as arrogant - and it was a little bit, but towards anime fans (sorry! ). I genuinely tried to recall any misogynistic rape/torture scenes I've seen and struggled to do so, while scenes of people (mostly men) being murdered in various ways popped up in my head one after another, and so I felt you were exaggerating. Although to be fair, it's pretty much always men committing the violence, regardless of the gender of the victim. Which mirrors real-world statistics I'm afraid.

In any case, I could be wrong. If you want, I can try to list the last 10 movies / TV shows I've watched and you point out the violence against women that you see in those. I'm not saying rape scenes aren't nasty, and yes, when they are there, women are almost exclusively the victims - we can discuss why that is. They just don't seem nearly as ever-present to me... except for anime . And dark crime dramas. And... ok, maybe I'm starting to see your point .

As for Martin, do you disagree with the idea that universal personality traits are more important than the character being male or female? That was my main point. About the other issues with his writing, I read the essay you linked and I'm afraid I can't contribute anything that hasn't been said a thousand times already (objections that came to mind while reading were often mentioned in the following sentence), so I'll spare you further frustration . Maybe just one question: is the implication supposed to be that Martin is a misogynist?

EDIT: This might be hard to believe, but I didn't realize you were a woman until your last post - for some reason, "Blondbraid" made me think of a Viking beard or something . So here's a question: is it wrong if that changes how I read your posts on this topic? Because I have to admit it does a bit, which makes my whole "gender isn't important" spiel sound somewhat hypocritical . I'm conflicted!

I just felt so tired and angry at not being able to just see an exciting story without constantly having to worry about seeing gross and nasty scenes of misogynistic violence

Weird, I don't remember ever having this issue. I feel like there have always been plenty of stories around where men get treated at least as badly as women. Maybe you watch too much anime?

I like George R. R. Martin's take: just write women as if they were people. Controversial, I know.

Thank you, I'll pass it on!

I recently uploaded a Linux version of the game and got this bug report:

The Problem is, that the game only occipies the right 50% of my screen and the left 50% are just Black. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/5If3Hcw

I have a Rzyen 5 1600, 16Gb RAM, a Geforce GTX 960 and am running Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon.

Edit: I have two monitors, maybe that is the issue somehow?

Unfortunately I don't have a Linux computer to test it myself, just compiled it in AGS and hoped for the best. Does anyone Linux-savvy have an idea what the issue could be?

If Trump is the leading Republican candidate in 2024, I will eat a whole tin of surströmming (and probably die).

Ok, I see how you arrived at the numbers (and feel stupid )

I'm still confused by the implications though, so let me go real slow:

- You pick a random college grad. They are more likely to vote for Clinton than for Trump.
- You pick a random non-college grad. They are slightly more likely to vote for Trump than for Clinton.
- Now the part that confuses me: both are equally likely to vote for Trump? So would this mean that as long as you are deciding whether to vote for Trump, education doesn't matter, but once you decide not to vote for him, education influences whether you vote for Hillary instead or don't vote at all?

Also does the 37/63 in the Pew poll compared to your 30/70 change anything about this?