Any game I finished in one single session is one I have to like, immediately and passionately write about.

What a game. I mean, I don't have the full language to describe it. I suppose if I had to I would say it's a 'Tarot-Based Game That's About Grief, Loneliness And Connection' or something like that, but it's also about love and sisterhood and the end of reality and electioneering and sacrifice and also having tea with your friends.

Sometimes when the curtain falls on a game that ends up feeling this powerfully personal to my experience with it, I'm even more in awe than I was before, because of how wonderful the magic trick it played on me was done. I don't know how complex or how simple the branching choices and dialogues were, but I now simply cannot imagine the game playing out any differently.

I love this so much.

It's a genuinely affecting and beautiful game, and I'm begging you to play it.

it's not very often the developers of a game earnestly wish of the player "hope you didn't enjoy it!". i'm shocked to find Presenter Slides™ has such a small presence here on backloggd given its introspective, game-analysis meta nature as a thesis indie available free of charge on steam.

the scope of interest is "abusive game design", or as student developers Mathias and Brin prefer to put it, "counter game design"; audial, visual, emotional, and physical gameplay elements which are directly counteractive to player contentment, which admittedly i've never given much thought aside from surface level sentiments of "Wow This Sucks" as a player myself. these span from eye strain, frustrating control schemes, the breach of taboo topics, busy sound design, or "attrition abuse" (that being requesting the player to do the same thing over and over again).

i learned closely of the above information upon fulfilling the tedious conditions of its unlock, in which Mathias and Brin themselves will present their thesis to you personally across 45 slides the player controls the pace of. it's quite novel and bold to stash their well spoken treatise behind the torturous gameplay they critique and were inspired by. an interesting range of topics are explored across the slides aside from the main focus, citing the concepts of daily video gaming as ritual and the player/game relationship and how they might "bleed" into one another. both of which spoke to me personally as someone who strives to play something at least once a day to log onto this very site, as well as the friendships i've made across the online games i play and pondering the significance of having never known that person unless i played that game!

while i have pedantically divested a lot of the thesis within this review i have intentionally omitted much, as i really do implore you to give Presenter Slides™ a try yourself. as yet another person who someday aspires to produce a game of my own [the crowd boos] i appreciated the window into choices i should absolutely not make.

thank you, and have a good boss fight.