Bennett Foddy’s GIRP reminds us of the human instincts to survive and to improve. Lana Polansky explores how GIRP captures what it’s like to feel over-exerted—and the sense of accomplishment that comes from outdoing one’s own expectations.
The year is 2025. You’re a detective, apparently. You specialize in data alteration, or something. Inexplicably, this phishing site called dénicheur.net has drudged up the embarrassing personal information of four old acquaintances, threatening an important event in each of their lives. Fred, Anaïs, Morgane, and Tom now need you to help them save their reputations by going back in time and saving their younger selves from the pitfalls of the Internet. How is this possible? That’s on a need-to-know basis.
If videogames are two things, they are spatial and temporal: concepts a Kantian would say are human instincts. Likewise, poetry often uses space (imagery) and time (rhythm and meter) to magnify the emotional details of human experience.
Dinner Date poeticizes our small, unconscious tics. A tutorial makes it clear that I am not Julian Luxemburg, but his subconscious. I control his doubts and anxieties in response to being stood up on a date. I do not control the flow of the game. I can’t alter Julian’s script; I just provide an emotional framework.