Commentary

This game explores the façade of idyllic suburban life in the 1950s, where secrets and scandal lurk beneath the surface. The game delves into the complexities of trust, loyalty, and the struggle to escape one's past. The game unfolds through dialogue, focusing entirely on the interactions among friends and family at the gathering. As a BBQ's cheerful atmosphere contrasts with the simmering conflicts, the characters' dialogues reveal the hidden turmoil that threatens to irrevocably unravel their seemingly perfect lives.

Setting: A sunny afternoon in the 1950s, a perfectly manicured suburban backyard with a BBQ grill, picnic tables, and a sprinkler in the background. A group of friends and family members are gathered for a backyard BBQ. The atmosphere is jovial and idyllic. In the background a baseball game is playing over the radio and several of the attendees seem to be very intent on the game while others are more indifferent.

As characters engage in seemingly ordinary conversations, a web of strife, scandal, and betrayal is revealed. The individual names and the relationships between them become clearer as the game progresses.

You control absolutely none of this. Instead, you control the live sports broadcaster providing quick reactions and live commentary to the unseen baseball game. As both the family BBQ and the baseball game progress, you can make various choices of what next comes out of the announcer’s mouth, basically dictating not only the events and course of the baseball game, but, indirectly, the comments and reaction and interactions of the family listening to it, subtly nudging the conversation in different ways. 

This game would be choice based game, with the player given a variety of choices of what next comes out of the sports announcer’s mouth. Some would be rather plain, while others would be more fanciful or unusual. Perhaps one side starts to lose badly, upsetting the neighbor Roger who is major fan. Perhaps a player is hit by a ball, giving him a black eye, the words "a real shiner" causing Suzanne to start and drop her lemonade from a passing moment of clumsiness. Perhaps if the other team makes a surprise comeback, Paul, the host, is put into a bad mood and begins to bicker with Evelyn, the hostess. Maybe one of the players makes a homerun, which elicits a lewd comment from one of the imbibing guests, along with the chiding and backlash from others. Perhaps the ballpark has a power outage and the announcer is stuck trying to stretch for time. Etc., etc. 

This game would be meant to be replayed to apply knowledge learned in prior attempts to try to influence the conversation in different ways to reveal new information. There’s a web of secrets and deceit to be gleaned from this otherwise serene setting.

I was thinking this would be done in Twine, but would include a text input box. The game works just fine without using it, providing a standard web of choices that could be lawnmowered through. However, this only gives part of the story. To find out more, the player will need to use the text input box. The text input box is paired with a hidden word bank that ties into words that have to do with various hints and topics brought up during the BBQ. If the player tries to type in a word and hit enter, if the word was part of the word bank, it is accepted. If the word is not in the word bank, it doesn’t get accepted, leaving the player to backspace it out and try something else. Perhaps typing in the word "shiner" for example unlocks an option for an altercation to break out between the pitcher and the struck player. 

Each time the player manages to find a word in the word bank, one or more related new options become available to the sports announcer during the BBQ. Using these new Sports announcer quips effects the events of the BBQ, revealing more and potentially clueing the player into more things to try in the text input box.

To be clear, the text input box is NOT a parser. It simply either accepts a word or doesn’t. It does add more interactivity and agency for the player in their investigation.

And that's the idea. I really enjoy the idea of indirect impact and discovery and keeping up appearances while things are ugly underneath rhymes with my childhood. I enjoy the clean Twine linking allowing for an easier on-ramp for players and smoother playthrough experience, while still taking inspiration from parsers and maybe Her by Sam Barlow by keeping some of the pieces and options unseen.