Quiet Mouse Loud

TheCakeFlavor's picture
pers.png
Game File (Linux): 
Game File: 

cw: this work briefly touches on:
existential dread,
blood,
death,
organ failure,
radiation poisoning,
skin blemishes,
pedantry

In this game you play as a mouse in a maze. I think the rest of the game speaks for itself.
I'm happy with the way this ended up going. It's like "art" I guess.
Code source can be provided upon request, and I think you could make a mac build with that.

Attached below is a 32 bit windows version of the game, in case you need it.

Made For: 
An event
AttachmentSize
qml_win_32.zip10.8 MB

Comments

spiral's picture

(spoiler alert)

This was really good. I love the distracting element of the random mazes as a false goal to navigate. I had a feeling that was the case after a few "bite" transitions, but I was still very curious to see where the game went next. It's a good setup for giving the player something to do while they try to process the semi-random poetry(?) being increasingly-quickly read out to them.

I suppose the interpretation of intent is pretty open here, but I took it as showing up the decay of criticism in video games culture at large. Every time you are bitten by a giant mouse, it is like experiencing a sort of death that further entraps the player in an ever-larger maze, and the only exit is deeper down into further mazes. I am somewhat just recalling the part of Silent Hill 2 where the only way to progress is to keep jumping down seemingly-bottomless pits that should be fatal.

I like the intermeshing of multiple sources as a way of re-interpreting all of the different voices together, while still having somewhat distinct entities that are in conflict with each other. Looking into the sources file shows that it was started with a deliberate order, but the shuffling of it (as seen in the source code you sent me) confuses the narrative greatly, which makes it much more interesting. I think this is a rare, to me, instance where a large element of randomness with effectively no design constraint is beneficial.

Drambique's picture

"she loved you and she chose you and she's gone"

The narration seemed like nonsense to me so it faded into the background like a white noise. Navigation can be really disorienting in this! The first time I played it, I wasn't sure how it worked and I thought that the rooms just randomized the doors and colors every time you entered one. Even after figuring out how navigation worked, trying to methodically visit every room to find the mouse was hard just because of the sheer amount of rooms there were. It felt like I was trying to navigate a fractal tree with some of the branches cut off. I ended up just randomly picking doors by like the 6th mouse before the game closed itself.

sergiocornaga's picture

This was a good game to play

This was a good game to play after having four wisdom teeth removed.

TheCakeFlavor's picture

I'm glad that this game

I'm glad that this game could keep you company through the pain and the anesthesia. It does seem to me like the kind of game that would be enjoyed in different amounts of lucidity.

quasiotter's picture

gliss

i started playing this in the night, after a long day, ending it while consciousness was fading, and it seemed appropriate

really enjoyed not always being able to process something before the next thing came up

very much into this and i'm happy to have it in woof woof

gisbrecht's picture

Interesting... strange

I think you could interpret the game to be an infinite maze of going through giant rat intestines which have slightly less giant rats inside them... turtles all the way down. Anyway this music reminded me of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRHNTAJoGwY Hecker - Hinge

gisbrecht's picture

Makes me think... here is

Makes me think... here is your award: Scariest Rodents

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