Is this kind of like The Marriage?
Kind of, but I don't think too much. The marriage is a very definitely constructed model, with a detailed, deliberate, and rigidly-described metaphor "the pink square is the wife". There's a key that lets you translate descriptions of the game (assuming you don't deal with the analogy) into descriptions about the dynamics of a marriage.
Whereas, with this, given that the underlying theme is something like that of consolation (or relation), what do the blue squares represent? Tears maybe? But what precisely do they have to do with this subject of miscarriage? Nothing precisely. And of the blue squares dropping onto the pink square? What's with that? Why is one square pink while others are blue? I put a small amount of thought into each of these, to be sure, but none of them were planned out in any rigid way.
That I included explicit narrative elements at either end, that establish a particular sort of tragedy, rather than dealing with 'tragedy' in general, also seems to be a difference.
Also, I'm not quite so ascetic with regards to presentation; I was happy enough to include text/sound within the game.
And, to begin with, it was chiefly motivated by wanting to try make a rhythm game based on a canon; that was my starting point.
More generally, I find 'the marriage' to be weird. Conceptually, I find it...not really but sort of but not really interesting: he constructs a basic dynamical model for a marriage with room for one agent, comes up with a relatively ascetic interactive realization, and that's it. In theory I like this, but I don't find the game very interesting as an experience, nor the idea of the game too interesting. I do find myself using it as an orientation point. In some ways I'd like to do something that would fit more exactly into his program, but I just
don't really want to at the moment.
Hmmm...thanks for the question; it's helped clarify some of my thoughts on the matter.
Developer
