Essays on Empathy

Essays of Empathy is a fascinating collection of short, narrative-driven experiments. I genuinely enjoyed my time with it overall, and the sheer variety of concepts kept me intrigued enough to see the package through to the near-end. (Finished most, but gave up on 3 games) However, it’s nothing to write home about and leaves me neutral. A handful of the games suffer from clunky controls, and the collection defaults to an annoying windowed screen mode. Pro Tip: If the windowed mode bothers you, press ALT + ENTER on your keyboard to force everything into full screen. Ultimately, your enjoyment of this bundle will completely depend on what you pay for it. For the €2,50 sale price I picked it up for, I have absolutely nothing to complain about, it's worth a couple of bucks just to see what they were trying to do. Plus the pixel art is pretty! However, if I had paid the full standard price of around €13, I would seriously be questioning my life decisions right now. A decent bundle of quirky slice-of-life stories, but wait for a deep discount.

Been on my wish list for a while now. Got it on the Summer Sale for $2.59 so I thought I would give it a whirl cuz it looks cool. Main screen is cool with the sounds, but like - no options or settings? First Story Pretty hard, really not fun...the controls are weird. Can't get out of windowed mode which really sucks so I quit. Second Story Can't even expand the screen never mind get out of windowed mode, dealing with a small window sucks. Got completely stuck in the office, couldn't figure it out, quit. Third Story Can't max my screen in windowed mode. The player and walking is clunky, getting into the rooms sucks...quit. Going to heard over to Discussions to see what's in there. But 95% right now I'm going to return for my $2.59 which is extremely sad because it's such a small amount of money. I want to like this game, but man...it really sucks.

It's a collection of small games so it's bound to be unequal, but almost all of them have interesting theme executed with much poetry and sensitivity to the h u m a n c o n d i t i o n . And then, there's 3 or four very solid ones. Just smart and thoughtful games, showing what the medium can also be.

Bought Essays on Empathy. Recieved lessons in empathy.

I wish I could give this a thumbs up, but it has a weird problem. Any time you leave the main window where you pick games and play them, etc, the window automatically leaves full-screen mode and becomes uninteractable. If I want to leave a game or look at anything else in Essays on Empathy, it requires a full exit and restart. And, considering that playing games will cause this issue, it is an unbelievable pain in the ass. The couple games I played were fine (not great, just eh), but forcing the game to shut down every time I want to try a different game or check commentary is bad. :(

I mostly only watched the documentary that was also presented alongside the games and the art involved to make said games, but so far I enjoyed it. I can't easily pinpoint why I would recommend it (although I will try), especially since I can believe people think this is too much to pay for a collection of games that are (mostly) free elsewhere. I guess, in the end, the simplest way to explain why is to say that the documentary pulled at my heartstrings. The conversations the devs have together aren't very structured (there is a structure, somewhere, but it's loose to say the least lmao), but they're real. I kinda sat there, listening, wondering why I was so touched. Why I kept playing the videos, one after the other, within one day, knowing that I could have spread it out, or rather, tried maybe experiencing the games they were talking about more than just opening them for a few seconds for the achievements. But I think it's probably because the stories themselves show me that there are people out there that create games and live off of it despite everything else around them. There's people out there - people who are willing to put their own stories forward in such a collection. I…