J T wrote: When you live in poverty you face non-stop problems that feed into each other.
The problem I have is that most of the problems presented in the game do not feed on each other and are based on pure luck. I feel that such a degree of bad luck will ruin anyone, poor or not.
What are the chances of God hating you so much that he gives you such a month? It's hard to get out of poverty but not because lady luck slaps you in the face twenty times a day.
This month is not representative of a poor's person month.
Look, this game's not perfect. But I like it because it highlights how a person in poverty has to make tough decisions and make sacrifices to stay afloat.
I dislike it because I think it doesn't highlight those decisions. I think it tries to, but fails.
In my opinion, the message the game transmits is that poor people can't improve their situations because they have horrible luck. That's a very bad message to send and is not the one that the creators wanted.
This is what makes the game fall into pathos (narm, for you tropers). There's no luck in the game, everything that happens is not due to chance but because the creators wanted to put it in. "The frame is the most important part of the picture", so as to speak.
It's very important to realize how big the gap between fiction and reality is. Take my avatar for example. In that short Woody does nothing but annoy, harm and torture people who didn't deserve it, just for the lulz. What's funny about such cruelty? Nothing in real life but it's hilarious in fiction.
This would have been more effective as written text with a couple of interviews. As a game it's not very effective since there's no feedback mechanism.
If you were to add a feedback system like a happines rating that affects how much money you can earn and remove the cheap difficulty it would turn to be a much more tool.
The game overwhelms you with impossible odds instead of having each decision matter. I don't know what I did wrong, I didn't learn anything. More focused choices would greatly improve the game because people will think "Man, I couldn't make it because X thing is hard when you don't have money". I can't apreciate each situation because they don't have weight.
I also think it's better to give just a couple of examples of things that can go wrong and ruin someone's life. There's no need for dozens of examples, since they just add clutter and require more effort from the reader.
Limewater wrote:These are things that are difficult to relate in any medium, but I find it to be particularly alienating in the case of Spent.
I agree. I think that many artists make the mistake of thinking that a character is symphathetic and relatable just for being a victim and that this link between the character and the audience is strong enough to support the morals of the work in question.
