Interactive Empathy

第一次启动的时候可以选择内容：1. 关于作者所在的游戏workshop（交流研讨会）的人员和项目介绍册，2.一个关于共情的游戏Empathy path，3. 一个关于不知道啥的游戏There Is No Cure。 但是不知道为什么这个选项只有第一次启动才出现，后面再选运行游戏就直接进介绍册了。 两个游戏的可执行程序都在游戏目录里，一个是empathypath.exe一个是tinc.exe。 我玩完的感觉是，你非要说这俩是游戏倒也可以算，可能也有一些学术内容在里面，但是各方面真的达不到Steam上免费游戏的一般水平。基本上属于圈地自萌的范畴。普通玩家可以不用尝试了。 I encountered a problem that the option to choose from the games never showed up since the second time I started the time, so I have to run the .exe file from the game directory manually. Although it is obvious that the author devoted much into making these games, the games are unappealing in acoustic and visual aspects and very unimpressive and unexciting to play. The qualities of these games are generally below the average level of Free-to-play Steam games.

The game is quite interesting but the technical quality is so incredibly low, that while I did enjoy my time with it, I can't in good conscience recommend it. As this game consists of 3 parts, I'll review them seperately. [b]The project documentary and brochure[/b] In this state it's technically severly lacking. The brochure is quite hard to read as there is no way to zoom in and the video only has options for pausing or going back to the menu. That's simply not acceptable. Browsing the files it is quite easily possible to find the png files and watch the video as a webm. This is far more comfortable. [b]There Is No Cure[/b] I would describe this as a point-and-click simulation of the life of someone with mental problems in regards to self-hate, anxiety and hallucinations. I'm not sure the character is depressive as they seem to not be as lacking in energy compared to what is often considered of people with depression but I can't say for certain. The enviroments are what I assume photos with a filter but it overall looks interesting. There is sound as well but it's kind of weird. There is just music in some parts and sometimes the loop is really short. I assume this is an artistic way of representing repeating noise or in contrast silence that only leaves self hating thoughts to dominate. Story wise there isn't much going on and there really isn't too much gameplay but it's an interesting experience. Sadly, I did get softlocked, so I'm not sure how long this really is or maybe that was intended but it's overall a very short experience from what I've played. Lastly, switching from fullscreen to windowed took several clicks and then the graphics broke. [b] Empathy path[/b] This is quite the long one and probably the most interesting one. In this point-and-click-adventure the goal is apparently as the tutorial says to be empathetic. I'm not sure if it's actually neccessary to reach a good ending if there are more than one or if there is a failure state. In any case, it's quite a confusing story overall. From what I can tell the heroine awakens captured in a storage room. There is a butcher who seems to be working there hinting that this might be the back of a butchery. There seems to be a sad clown that finds her and searches for help. And lastly there is a computer that is referred to as she who can call for help. There are some other props here and there and it's a bit hard to tell what is really real and not and what's going on. When interacting with the entities the point of view seems to switch between them but sometimes it doesn't if they aren't sentient or something. It's extremely railroaded and there is no free movement to take in the surroundings but rather it's more of a visual novel with one or possibly more optional interactions via clicking on objects rather than just on text boxes like usually in visual novels. I can really only guess what's going on but being so surreal is probably the goal and as such the limited story is more of a plot device to show a progression of time between acting with empathy. A cool feature is that at the end it generates a PDF (and puts it on the desktop instead of in the game folder which I found quite bothersome, also it doesn't even ask if I wanted a PDF but just generates one by itself) of all the choices taken and with a timestamp. There is also a field for the name but that one didn't get filled out for me, so I assume it's just bugged. For that matter, the PDF itself is pretty buggy with a lot of white spaces, choices seemingly going too far below and even getting cut off at the bottom in the middle of the text. The game itself has in my opinion some very strange wording at the start and gets better after that. I tried it in German as well and the wording was in one text far better in German but then there was an option in english but the text it created was German again and then after that there was a sentence that I can only assume is either a part of some old German quote I'm not familiar with or a misspelling that I couldn't decipher. I didn't continue after that and I assume it's worse than the English version. There is another option for French, but I didn't try that one. The window the game is played in is very small and unlike the previous game, there is no way to go into full-screen. Overall, the experience was quite interesting if short (writing this took me several times longer than playing them and I assuming reading would as well) but is hampered by bad decisions and low quality in the technical aspect. Small edit: I unisntalled the game afterwards but it didn't completely uninstall. For one, the data folder remained while empty, in the "thereisnocure" folder the splash7.png was still there and in the folder above it the comic.pdf was still there as well. It overall only took up 215kB but is not appropriate for a released product in my opinion.