Daily Thread : The Sewing of Discontent was a pleasant surprise, a historical sewing simulator might not sound rivetting but when an accidental rip on a jacket because you were rushing to meet the quota in the incredibly tight schedule of your work day means you can't afford to pay medicine, well, there are few games which have made me more tense (in a good way).
The controls are a bit awkward at first, especially as you're thrown right into it, but I think you just have to accept that your first run is a wash and learn the basics before the real runs begin.
If you've played Paper's Please or the like the structure will seem familiar - during the day you try to sew as many pieces as possible to meet or even exceed the quota without sewing outside of the lines, each "rip" deducting 1p from your daily wages and 3 meaning game over. This of course creates a tense dilemma between going fast to meet the quota and going slow and making sure you don't mess up. It's super stressful especially at first, and I found it very compelling. I'm not even the biggest fan of the sort of "player antagonism" type of design but here I couldnt help but enjoy it, given the context and also the fact that I was actually not that bad at the sewing.
At the end of each day the budgeting portion requires you to choose how to spend your money, with rent being mandatory to not get an inmediate game over, as well as food, doctor visits if anyone is sick and finally a newspaper which progresses the story. Importantly, the Main Character, Henrietta is the only essential character, if she starves or dies of illness the game is over, but not so much the other members. You will lose the money the adults earn in their jobs but the children do not contribute, which does lead to a grim calculus when money is scarce to only feed those who provide, left to die, there is more money to go around. Of course this is where this sort of simulation of real life tragedy falls short, when it cannot account for simulation of y'know, not wanting your 3 year old child to starve even if they cannot help you out currently.
Importantly for me, Daily Thread avoids the unrelenting grim pessimism by actually having a clear goal beyond surviving as long as possible or whatever it is that happened in the Papers Please endings (I could never be assed to finish it, I think you overthrow the government or something). By buying newspapers with what little extra cash you can muster, the wave of labour organizing and reform arrives in England, and you progress from going to meetings, to paying union fees to finally organizing the world's first general strike. The satire in these newspapers is admittedly about as subtle as being punched in the jaw, but the humour helps add some levity to an otherwise grim game, and it reminded me of Imperialism(1997) so it's fine by me.
I have a couple nitpicks, the music is too loud but the only option is to turn it off, which feels like overcorrecting. Also for all the educational value the game has (I've already started to look more into chartism and the 1842 strike) there is no Bibliography! Which seems like a massive wasted opportunity, especially given that the game was developed by 3 people, 2 of which have PHDs.
Daily Thread was a pleasant surprise, and its currently on sale on steam, where as per the game's own store page "Half of all revenue from the game will be donated to Labour Behind the Label, a UK-based non-profit co-operative organisation which campaigns for workers' rights in the clothing industry". So if being put in the shoes of a victorian seamstress being crushed under the bootheel of industrial capitalism sounds like your thing, check it out
The controls are a bit awkward at first, especially as you're thrown right into it, but I think you just have to accept that your first run is a wash and learn the basics before the real runs begin.
If you've played Paper's Please or the like the structure will seem familiar - during the day you try to sew as many pieces as possible to meet or even exceed the quota without sewing outside of the lines, each "rip" deducting 1p from your daily wages and 3 meaning game over. This of course creates a tense dilemma between going fast to meet the quota and going slow and making sure you don't mess up. It's super stressful especially at first, and I found it very compelling. I'm not even the biggest fan of the sort of "player antagonism" type of design but here I couldnt help but enjoy it, given the context and also the fact that I was actually not that bad at the sewing.
At the end of each day the budgeting portion requires you to choose how to spend your money, with rent being mandatory to not get an inmediate game over, as well as food, doctor visits if anyone is sick and finally a newspaper which progresses the story. Importantly, the Main Character, Henrietta is the only essential character, if she starves or dies of illness the game is over, but not so much the other members. You will lose the money the adults earn in their jobs but the children do not contribute, which does lead to a grim calculus when money is scarce to only feed those who provide, left to die, there is more money to go around. Of course this is where this sort of simulation of real life tragedy falls short, when it cannot account for simulation of y'know, not wanting your 3 year old child to starve even if they cannot help you out currently.
Importantly for me, Daily Thread avoids the unrelenting grim pessimism by actually having a clear goal beyond surviving as long as possible or whatever it is that happened in the Papers Please endings (I could never be assed to finish it, I think you overthrow the government or something). By buying newspapers with what little extra cash you can muster, the wave of labour organizing and reform arrives in England, and you progress from going to meetings, to paying union fees to finally organizing the world's first general strike. The satire in these newspapers is admittedly about as subtle as being punched in the jaw, but the humour helps add some levity to an otherwise grim game, and it reminded me of Imperialism(1997) so it's fine by me.
I have a couple nitpicks, the music is too loud but the only option is to turn it off, which feels like overcorrecting. Also for all the educational value the game has (I've already started to look more into chartism and the 1842 strike) there is no Bibliography! Which seems like a massive wasted opportunity, especially given that the game was developed by 3 people, 2 of which have PHDs.
Daily Thread was a pleasant surprise, and its currently on sale on steam, where as per the game's own store page "Half of all revenue from the game will be donated to Labour Behind the Label, a UK-based non-profit co-operative organisation which campaigns for workers' rights in the clothing industry". So if being put in the shoes of a victorian seamstress being crushed under the bootheel of industrial capitalism sounds like your thing, check it out