Freeware Game Pick: Signifier (increpare)
Here's your dose of crazy for the day ahead. Signifier depicts the life of a guy growing up from a baby to an adult, walking through all the stages of his life, from first baby steps to getting his first job. Using a combination of the keyboard and (ironically) Black and White style mouse movements, it's all about growing up to be a polite individual.
Earlier levels see you learning the names of objects, with everything on the screen being represented as words rather than pictures. It all gets extremely odd after a few minutes and I couldn't help smiling at some of the dialogue. Give it a try and see what I mean.









Comments
This game rebooted my computer when I tried to play it :)
Posted by: cactus | February 27, 2009 11:35 AM
cactus: that's not good!
I'll do my best to track down what might have caused it, but without details it will be haaard :'(
Posted by: increpare | February 27, 2009 1:06 PM
I enjoyed the game; the core concept of growing up in a world where you need to signify what you're going to do struck me as pretty interesting and fun to think about, especially the way you presented it.
Some criticism: I thought that the way you incorporated sexuality into the game was a bit incongruous (COCK lol?) and that the concept could have been taken a bit further (though I know it was just a short little project). It would have been cool to have a scene where you got chased, for example, and the only way to escape was to ditch your signifiers and make a run for it.
Posted by: Malefact | February 27, 2009 2:30 PM
interesting concept, but does the game force you to be gay??
Posted by: Anonymous | February 27, 2009 2:41 PM
Some kind of blue loading screen came up that said something like "Building Crash Buffer: 15%" and once it reached a hundred my computer... Crashed. Well, rebooted.
Posted by: cactus | February 27, 2009 3:52 PM
Pretty good game, but the sounds are annoyng, almost made me stop playing, but i played til the end and enjoyed, good job
Posted by: jack_in_the_dark | February 27, 2009 4:31 PM
same as cactus, blue screen of death as soon as I execute the game :(
Posted by: coco | February 27, 2009 8:41 PM
Blue screen'ed on me, too.
I'm curious how this game "forces you to be gay". Should be interesting, given that 99% of all games force you to be straight...
Posted by: Anonymous | February 28, 2009 12:00 AM
Interesting idea. I felt as though the protagonist had autism or some other serious social/perception disorder.
Posted by: Nels | February 28, 2009 12:27 AM
it's interesting how uncomfortable more than a few of you were at not having a choice whether or not to be gay...
Posted by: Anonymous | February 28, 2009 12:46 AM
A message for any of those people who are getting nasty crashes with this:
If you would be willing to suffer the crash again, I would very very very much appreciate it if you would get in touch with me (analytic@gmail.com), and I can get a test build to you to try find out exactly where it is crashing.
Posted by: increpare | February 28, 2009 3:53 AM
@anon - no more interesting if a homosexual felt uncomfortable while forced to play a straight character.
unless you're a christ-fag or something
well then.. time to play it i guess..
Posted by: TSO | February 28, 2009 5:52 AM
Damn, no Mac PPC support. I never realized how bad PPCs are supported until I started using my moms G4 (im not at my "normal" home for a month or so) : /
Posted by: Bleagle | February 28, 2009 5:00 PM
Same for me. Blue Screen. Reboot. It happened so fast that I didn't get to read any of it.
Posted by: stezton | March 1, 2009 12:50 AM
"Using a combination of the keyboard and (ironically) Black and White style mouse movements . . ."
not what 'ironically' means
Posted by: matthew | March 1, 2009 12:32 PM
The game is all done in black and white and the mouse movements are like from the original Black and White game. Sounds pretty ironic to me.
Posted by: Michael Rose | March 1, 2009 3:00 PM
I thought irony was something to do with spoons and knives?
Posted by: RobF | March 1, 2009 10:18 PM
i can't get past the level where you need to end the conversation, what do i need to do(and please explain it in a way that a complete idiot would understand, because... the game stopped making sense at that point...)
Posted by: Ed Genesis | June 9, 2009 12:19 PM