Samanthuel's Lovely Home

[SDHawk]

Samanthuel's Lovely Home can best be described as a "get mad and you lose" game, I suppose. It's set up as a walk through of the author's house with little bits of flavor text for just about everything in the game. The atmosphere around it all is set up to be as peaceful and perfect as possible- they have a happy, contended life.

Throughout all this peacefulness there's a slow build up of "revelations" about the author: she's a woman, she's a transsexual, she's in a relationship with another woman and that makes them gay, she's been bullied for being a transsexual, etc. Most of these revelations happen with a certain suddenness to them due to being mixed in with all the incidental text. "You got a problem with this?!", the subtext shouts.

The intent might have been to present the author's lifestyle as something that just happens to be part of an every day life, but the frustration behind it makes it come off as something else. When put against the backdrop of a perfect life it seems like the author is challenging anyone who has a problem with her lifestyle to get mad, and then positioning them feel like a jerk for being mad in the midst of so much peace. I'd be curious to see the reaction of the intended audience for this game. I'm not sure it works, but it's an interesting approach.