Bundle of Joy

Really nice narrative that (as a non-parent) helped me understand more about parenting. Short but good! It also felt like the last set of mini-games scaled up the difficulty really well.

A very cute game with a nice personal touch: a taste of parenthood! Writing is very nice, especially the bits between caring for the baby: I felt like I got a glimpse of a someone's world! The Wario Ware-esque games also carried me through the gameplay and were quick and enjoyable!

What a delightful game! As always with Nicholas' works you find yourself utterly vulnerable - and negotiating an intimate dialogue. Except here, instead of grappling with vast and systemic change - you are ensconced in a conversation with the littlest of tasks meant for the smallest of beings - your child. This is a game painted in bold colours and boisterous movement. And yet it is so delicately written that its confines of circular routines become the very sites of care and prospect that bring you back from each inevitable brink. And as the the baby is revealed in small portions - one flailing appendage at a time, you start to piece together in your head this little-person that is the locus of all your efforts. A puzzle built of cyclical counters and intimate conversations, that becomes not just a calendar of your days during COVID and early-parenthood, but the starting notes in the song of an entirely new human being.

while the game is fun, its extremely short, and you cant continue the minigames on the same save to skip the story you have already played through, nor is there a freeplay mode.

I've always said I can't imagine having children. It's probably past my point of being able to do so in real life, but this game is really interesting. First time parents simulator. The stress and anxiety and worry and care and concern. So, selfishly I was glad I could put that down whenever I put the controller down – the narrative design conveyed it well, with animations and sound and colors, in systems. This most reminded me of one of my favorite games, WarioWare – series of mini games, highly stylized. I think a key pillar of that series is you kind of don't know what you're doing. Which seems perfect, echoing the adage – you're never ready to be a parent. The game is very appropriately named, you definitely handle a bundle, your hands are full, and also the joy is there in the writing. The reflections. Full disclosure, I had kind of met the developer before I played, but I also heard enough about the game organically that I was definitely wanting to play for myself just to study the narrative design, and I had already played a previous essay game that I thought the writing was just fantastic.

This was a lot of fun! And stressful! But fun! And stressful! I imagine this is what having a child might be like. Beautiful visuals and touching music. And stressful. And, most importantly, fun. And stressful.