Stare Back
STARE BACK
A solo-play RPG, asking the big questions: who are you, and how have you got here?
A 20 page PDF filled with brightly coloured imagery, barely pushing above the 400 word count. Session lasts 5-10 minutes. Quick to pick up, try and then repress!
All donations will be spent on buying Brian some oaty biscuits.
Accessibility: Can be played with a mirror and dry-erase pen, but also with digital drawing apps, or purely by drafting text (for visual impairment). Plain text version of the rules comes with image descriptions; main pdf is untagged.
CW: Introspection
UPDATE 18/04/2024: Added a HTML browser viewer for the whole zine using the EZM viewer and this hack. Also I broke up with my two partners last week. I wrote this zine December 2020, and it was the last thing I made before dating them.
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Stare Back is a single player, 400 word game, about staring head on at your traumas.
It's 20 pages, fully illustrated, and with a layout that reminds me in a good way of children's books.
That said, it definitely has rules that might provoke some pretty strong emotions, so having a switch you can throw to stop the game might be helpful.
Mechanically, you play by sketching your face, adjusting your pose so that you get an incomplete reflection, and then thinking on your traumas and adjusting your drawing based on them.
There's several variant game modes, and the game itself seems like a powerful experience, but it's also solid just as a work of playable poetry or art.
Overall, if you're looking to confront some views about yourself in an intense way, or if you like emotionally intense self-reflective games, this may be worth checking out. If none of those things are your cup of tea, this may not be a game you enjoy.