shame (Freshman Year)
Freshman Year is a game that is freely available on Steam or playable in browser.
You play as Nina, who is invited by her best friend Jenna to meet up at a local bar for a night out.
As player all you do is pick answer options of your choice, which are in the game represented through mobile phone messages. Like in more recent Telltale games, the choices have no effect on the story what so ever, but they give you just a little bit of room to decide for yourself what kind of person Nina is.
Even though you are obviously very limited in “creating” this character, the fact that you can decide how what she thinks about some things throughout the game, and what she says, makes it easier for players to connect to this Nina person.
As mentioned before the plot of the story itself is very linear. What happens always happens, no matter what you decide. Jenny is very late for the party and you somehow end up talking to a creepy bouncer on. He is getting a bit flirty with you and no matter how much you try not to give him any ideas or not to seem lost, he feels very invited to grab, kiss and dry hump you.
There is no option to get away the first time he says something “nice”.
As a player I felt kind of trapped in this conversation. I couldn't say “no”.
When the inevitable happens: Jenna suddenly appears during a sequence with shaky camera, and switching perspectives, that is audio-visually successfully communicating a feeling of being unsettled and/or anxious. Her presence alone makes the guy let go of you and Jenna takes your hand and drags you up some stairs, seemingly looking angry at you.
You tell her that the bouncer all of a sudden started to make out with you uninvited. Your best friend tells you that he tends to do that and that another “cooping strategy” from some girl last time around was to get over with it and just have a quickie on the public toilet.
Then your best friend disappears again.
The game ends with Nina, alone and unhinged in the toilet, looking at her own reflection in the mirror. She isn't in the mood to party, but also doesn't want to go home alone now, especially not past the bouncer who just bounced her.
The message of the game is kind of clear. No matter what you do: Rapers gonna rape, which makes the game less problematic for a healthy discussion about the topic than if it played like an “Asking For It” simulator 2015.
The game also tells another story. A story about friendship. Jenna magically appears to save you from a dangerous and highly unpleasant situation, but then disappears again, after you already waited for her half of the night. Maybe Nina is not her best friend. Every of her comments to what just happened in the story is kind of cold and unhelpful. Maybe talking the “incident” down is her suggestion of dealing with it. Or maybe she has been through some heavy stuff herself and is not easily impressed by sexual assault. However, I felt stronger the disappointment of being left alone by my best friend, than anything else in the game. As Nina I would reevaluate some life decisions there and find some other girls that had been molested by the bouncer before and go to the police together, which sounds easier as it is, because the victim role is problematic in such matter.
Maybe it is a game about shame, that keeps you silent, when you shouldn't be ashamed or blamed to be a victim of such violence.