Suggested By:
jfmVIIIOff With Her Head is partly an experiment with an alternative conversation system; partly an exploration of a morally dubious space; and partly the sort of game the purpose of which is to uncover the different endings (ala I Wish I Were the Moon or The Majesty of Colors).
The backstory is that the King has gotten annoyed that no one will marry him, and has decreed that all unmarried women must join his harem, or die. You are the king's executioner, presented with a series of women. You must attempt to persuade them to join the king's harem or, of course, execute them.
Gameplay is in a series of dialogs with these women; rather than entering text, IF-style, when it's your turn to respond, you press one of the arrow keys: Up for Yes, Down for No, Left for "ask question" and Right for "answer." At left top are a series of red light-bulbs for you, and yellow ones for the woman you're talking with; if her row of light bulbs is reduced to zero, she succumbs, and you have saved her life. Contrariwise, if your row declines to zero, you've run out of ideas, and must execute her. Some other dialog choices also lead to her execution (e.g., answering "yes" if she says "You're going to kill me now, aren't you?")
It's actually a somewhat awkward game to play; as you, or the woman, speaks, text appears in a scroll, and the instant she stops talking, your light bulbs start to disappear. Thus, to play effectively, you must be ready to respond instantly. As a result, though the dialog from the woman is often interesting (and pathetic), you wind up ignoring much of it and hammering on a key to avoid losing light-bulbs. A little more time to respond would improve the game, I think.
As the executioner, you are, of course, in a morally repugnant position; neither execution nor slavery is exactly a desirable alternative, of course, but if you fail to do your duty, the king will execute you instead (and call in a new executioner -- game over and restart, in other words). Still, perhaps where there's life, there's hope, so conceivably the least repulsive option is to earnestly try to persuade the women. But of course, some of them are very resistant, and there's certainly a temptation at times to say, hell with it, kill the bitch.
In addition to the clearly undesirable ending (the king kills you), there are at least two others: one in which you have persuaded enough women to satisfy the king, and another in which you execute the king. They're hard to get to, however.
Long Winded and Most Likely Wrong Interpretation.
See, I could go on a limb here and give my interpretation of this game, but I am pretty sure that it wasn't the designer's intent. I'll have to disagree with Costik and say that the game is not mysogynistic. On the contrary, I find that the game sympathizes with women and sufficiently portrays gender dynamics. Not bad for a game made in 48 hours. (The men in the game certainly are mysogynistic, though.)
I read the instructions, played the game, and got annoyed that I couldn't save any of the women. Sure, there was some interesting dialogue, but I enevitably ended up slicing all of their heads off. Slightly peeved, I reread the instructions, and zoned in upon the lines "ask the chicks questions to reduce their lightbulbs." On my next playthrough, I just button mashed the enter button (further conversation) and left arrow key (ask question). In doing so, I skipped the entire conversation, but brought down said lightbulbs. Once "saving" the women, they said things along the line of "oh I am not even a human being, sure I will submit." After a bit, that trick didn't work for me, and a woman got away. The king was a bit annoyed but placated, and I got the "good" ending.
If you look at the dialogue, the sole reason the executioner (i.e. player) is doing this horrendous act is because the system (aka the king) says it to be so. The questioning women are fairly intelligent, and call the player out for their faulty logic. Whenever you ask a question, the women ask the player a similar question. The game says that instead of providing an adequate response, the player should be on the offensive, ignore her question, and ask her another one. Anything else, and you lose your red lightbulbs too quickly, and lose.
So if you extrapolate this into gender dynamics, it shows that: A) _____ (the system, society, whatever) deems women to be inferior. Men are told to perpetuate this unquestionably. B)Having any rational discourse on why we substain patriarchy is bad. C) Men have to be on the offensive towards women until they submit. D) Men win.
What's interesting to note is that when you "save" a woman, she gets completely naked. This furthers the whole "women as objects, not equals" theme. I find that the game sympathizes with women, but by no means is feminist. After all, the women in the game end up headless or the king's whore.
All right, I'll go to bed now.
I don't disagree with you. I
I don't disagree with you. I stole the subhed from the designer's own web page. Just so you know.
KK. I just think it's cool
KK. I just think it's cool that this game (made in such a short timeframe) expressed that topic wonderfully. There totally should be more Game Jams out there. Making games in that timespan works for Cactus, after all.
EDIT: Does anyone know how to get the "kill the king" ending?
I didn't played the game for
I didn't played the game for very long, as it's really annoying to be hurried by the text. It would be even more enjoyable if you lost ideas only when the woman said something more clever than what you were expecting, or something like that. Here it's just...not fun, really.
I must also say I absolutely didn't feel any ethical problems about playing as a crudely drawn executionner taking lives of other lines and colors.
RE: Narushima
"Killing" pixels is nothing new (see: 90% of games), and the executions themselves are actually considered failure (but not to the degree that letting the woman outsmart you is.) As my other post stated, what was more interesting was the gender dynamics the gameplay provided.
So far I've tried this game
So far I've tried this game seven times, and still cannot figure out how to "save" all of the women or kill the king. If anyone has anything resembling a guide to the convoluted logic the game uses, let me know.