Indiecade 2019 ended yesterday. The convention revealed a number of games that are in development as well as a few that have for the most part been finished. One of the games that were featured at Indiecade 2019 is the Dialogue Choice game We Should Talk. We Should Talk was created by a group of students from NYU Tisch Institute with the narrative being created by Carol Mertz and Jordan Jones Brewster. The art was created by Francesca Carletto-Leon, Kat Aguiar and Nobo Bhowmik, and the code and audio credit goes to Jack Schlesinger.
We Should Talk is a beautifully crafted narrative that focuses on the protagonist as they have to navigate both their on the rocks relationship and the Brooklyn Bar Scene all in one night. The game focuses on the relationship of the player and avoids transactional interactions and standard one dimensional responses. As stated on their webpage, the game’s goal is to “exhibit the nuance of communication by allowing the player to choose between small but meaningful differences in realistic conversations.” I was able to experience this firsthand throughout my playthrough of the game.
During my playthrough of the game, I was presented with several obstacles such as a possible romance with the bartender, a creep hitting on me and not understanding that no means no, as well as an old friend who I was seemingly having an affair with. The game offered two to four dialogue options per sentence allowing for a number of different ways to convey a similar message that really hammered home how many ways a person can convey the same message with different connotations. The game has a number of endings that the player can achieve through the different dialogue options some good and some bad. It all depends on how well the player can convey a message through the varied dialogue options. There is no known release date or what console it will be on as of yet.