Building Games Around Humor: Lessons from The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game

[@benfoote9945]

This talk was super helpful as I'm also trying to do humour without voice acting. It's reassuring to see that other games are relying just as much on things like cameras, dialogue timing and animations to get those jokes to land.

[@sus_melon]

watch/play undertale, you will get humor without voice act!

[@cyncynshop]

The game is so lovely. Made by chill developers and really made me smile whenever I played or think about it.

[@anthonyapm]

Awesome talk and what a lovely game :D

[@BillyPalmerMusic]

Loved this game, that is all.

[@kimtae858]

I wish she had talked about growing a fanbase and how she was able to get a very peculiar product in front of the right people. The Frog Detective trilogy is marmite in videogame form; players either adore the silly, plain dialog style or they bounce right off it and spout trash every time the games are mentioned. So much can go wrong when trying to pitch things like this.

[@PEDR0L0PEZ16O2]

I like this game so much 10/10

[@zenithquasar9623]

This presentation was very well put together and useful! Thank you Grace!

[@luchollandsyd]

Great talk Grace really interesting

[@jase1976]

This was wonderful and helpful. Thank you.

[@aidandodds7672]

Great talk, great game!

[@phodaOG]

lol. her jokes + public reaction and then she reacting to these jokes, its perfect hasaahahahha. such positive and happy person i like it. and those jokes she did, they were funny but not hahahahahz funny so not much public reaction

[@Funkopedia]

Grace is so cool.

[@oleksandrshvets]

Very charismatic girl. And very cute funny game! Bravo!

[@AcidelCyqage]

To those who thought that the music track from the game's intro is really similar to something. It sounds a lot like the one from The Testament of Sherlock Holmes credits.

[@heeteeheetee2387]

Subverting expectations is that kind of thing which is fun for the creator but bad for the user. Cant remember who said it but theres a talk on this channel that discourage you to do that and i agree. If you go see a superhero movie, you want to see action, not the main character doing his taxes for 2 hrs no matter how funny you may think it will be

[@nairocamilo]

There are certain subversions that do capture the viewer's attention. However, the creator ends up trading the spectator's attention for their entertainment. Therefore, I agree.

[@retroid8357]

How would you gather what people expect, maybe by looking at what similar things have been successful... Maybe get a focus group involved.... And this is why everything is the same and boring as hell! I want to be suprised, damnit!

[@heeteeheetee2387]

@@retroid8357 the devs set the expectations themselves. In this exemple the character goes around carrying a magnifying glass and the title contains the word Detective.

[@ZoidbergForPresident]

Comedy and humor are not sciences.

[@ArtofWEZ]

I don't know it works well, like earthbound's horror moment is scarier and more memorable than any horror game for me just because I was not expecting it. Same goes for uncharted.

[@user-py7mz8oj7o]

1st

[@Lishtenbird]

Her points are valid but none of them sounded convincing. The jokes in the talk felt tired, forced and out of place and didn't really land. Granted, I haven't played the game itself either. But more likely I'm just too old and far from the initial childier target audience. I mean, I enjoy comedic subversion a lot and love well-timed absurd humour, but what I saw didn't look like it was up to the mark and felt like such a thing is about 10 years late for the current Internet culture.

[@Lishtenbird]

So, watched a let's play, and the game matched my expectations. That's not really "absurd comedy"; that's at most "funny nonsense", which's been cool around 10 years ago when everyone could go post their web comics on the Internet, so many teens went and drew nonsense for other teens to laugh about. Similar genre deconstruction was, as well, popular back then. Nowadays, the format has no "novelty" and is stale, so you need "quality" - the standards are higher. Thing is, absurd comedy is already a thing that relies heavily on timing and acting - so it works for performances or TV show, but is already harder to pull off in comics, and even more so - in text-based low-budget videogames. Without proper voice acting (and acting in general), it just reads as scripted nonsense designed to be unpredictable just for the sake of it. And in this particular game, there's too little of it anyway. Am I saying then that people should not be making games like these? Nope; indies can and should do whatever they want and realize their dreams, even if their audience is children. But - children and Internet hordes will eat mostly anything, so making a talk titled "Building Games Around Humor" based on this particular game is... very questionable, and, frankly, a bit disingenuous. Thus this text.

[@SquaredMediaYT]

She said at the beginning of the talk that it wasn't going to be funny, I don't think most of the jokes were intentional

[@BedWords_]

did she say this was a brand new type of comedy she invented? no! she was invited to give this talk because her game was a surprise success. Having played it myself, I found it delightful. I suppose if you go into it thinking it's going to disappoint you and that you don't like the humor style, i suppose you wouldn't. But this critique rings hollow and reactionary to me.

[@MsNerdine]

@@Lishtenbird Apparently the game has an audience and apparently you're not part of it. That's fine. Not everything is for everyone. I don't think that this game is made for children or "Internet Hordes" either. Just for people that have a different humour than yours or enjoy the silliness of the game. The game is built around humour and she gave great explanation on e.g. subversion of genre, so I don't see how the title is misleading, especially since the game that she draws her conclusions from is mentioned in the title.

[@benfoote9945]

I disagree, but I think you raise some good points