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anxious? me?

Queue

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25 Comments

  1. kareemk wrote:

    best “art game” evar ;)
    just for the toilet “scene”

    seriously though, there should be a warning about the queue’s length…
    the monologues were a bit boring too

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 4:30 am | Permalink
  2. PsySal wrote:

    That was intense.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 4:31 am | Permalink
  3. Bennett wrote:

    Amazing final line, the idea really crystallized with a snap. I’ll be thinking about this for a good long while.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 4:48 am | Permalink
  4. shane wrote:

    this is great. the last four lines are perfect.

    i listened to music while i read it. i don’t think i heard much sound from the game itself, so i hope i wasn’t blocking anything out.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink
  5. wow, that was awesome. it felt like I was sitting in a part of my mind I haven’t visited in a while.

    definitely something for me to think on whilst I’m at the job centre tomorrow (I’ll go to the toilet before I leave the house, just in case)

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
  6. Malefact wrote:

    Flashbacks to my year of jobseeker’s allowance coloured with meditations on art. Amazing. You really get the chance to show off the strength of your prose here.

    Like Sophie, this took me to an emotion that I very rarely experience, and is difficult to name. It was transcendental.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 6:00 pm | Permalink
  7. Perrin wrote:

    Wow that was really depressing but rather excellent too.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 7:05 pm | Permalink
  8. george wrote:

    I like how this was written to all the senses, and the crescendo (?) of voices toward the end. Excellent work.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 7:13 pm | Permalink
  9. James wrote:

    I too was overtaken by a novel emotion. I think it was called “boredom.” ;-)

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 8:07 pm | Permalink
  10. Is this a game? I’m really hungry, leaving at number 170. Anxiety? Fantasies and boredom?

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 8:28 pm | Permalink
  11. Oh, back for 185.

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 8:40 pm | Permalink
  12. Just realized that I wanted to describe what I have on my sandwitch but that I lack vocabulary to translate any of those into english. Some kind of sweet butter and apple goo. Works together well. Off to relinquish control now then!

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 8:44 pm | Permalink
  13. Sounds tasty : )

    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 9:34 pm | Permalink
  14. Jim wrote:

    You’ve found my achilles heel — I can’t stand games that present text at a pace slower than my natural reading speed. I left, checked back every few minutes, hit X a few times and finally saw the punchline about non-interactivity.

    So that’s the joke, right, that this isn’t a game, it’s just an artificially-paced short story? Just like the lives of people on the dole? Forgive me if I missed something.

    Monday, February 22, 2010 at 12:51 am | Permalink
  15. agj wrote:

    Well. This was similar enough yet way better than my idea, so I happily give up on that one. Pretty fantastic.

    Monday, February 22, 2010 at 2:22 am | Permalink
  16. george wrote:

    I don’t think it’s a joke. Digital theater maybe. In any case, it’s a queue — in theme, setting, and code.

    Monday, February 22, 2010 at 3:58 pm | Permalink
  17. vivlo wrote:

    ultimate art in video game ! unstopable addictive power combined with endless boredom ! that’s what every game tends to be about

    Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 2:36 am | Permalink
  18. Andy wrote:

    I feel like I’m missing something – but I’m often left with that feeling with your games Stephen. It’s frustrating. I often feel like I’m skimming the surface of something very deep, yet have a life-jacket on that’s preventing me from diving a couple of feet…

    Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 4:34 am | Permalink
  19. Ed wrote:

    Excellent, nice musings. I’m glad I gave it a second go after giving up the first time about 25% through :)

    I would have preferred it if you’d made the text larger just so I didn’t have to lean forward to read it.

    Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:27 pm | Permalink
  20. Eric the Rexman wrote:

    My computer froze from an unrelated cause while watching this. Reading slow, autoscrolling text is very inconvenient.

    Monday, March 1, 2010 at 9:17 pm | Permalink
  21. Juan wrote:

    Wow. At first I was the reluctant player. Mashing buttons because I thought it would make the text go faster. Realizing I had no control, I let go and let the “game” tell me its story. And when it came to the point that I was starting to get bored, I couldn’t let go because I wanted to see how the game ends.

    And it ended wonderfully.

    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 6:45 pm | Permalink
  22. K wrote:

    When I first started “playing” I was just waiting for my number to be called, but about halfway in I realized how pointless it was and just enjoyed the ride. The coffee scene is what kept me going.

    Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 8:34 am | Permalink
  23. Zoe Anne wrote:

    “I can’t tell who’s saying what in this game.”
    “There’s quotation marks and one character says something”
    “and you say something”
    “(i thought you weren’t saying anything)”
    “and then they keep talking”
    “but they keep doing these quotations”
    “Are you the video game artist? Is someone else waiting a video game artist?”
    “It’s hard to tell”
    “Everything is in yellow.”
    “I wish more lines were visible in the game at a time.”
    “There were four lines, five including the red number.”
    “Eight lines, including the number, would feel much less cramped.”

    Friday, September 5, 2014 at 5:07 am | Permalink
  24. autumn_gloaming wrote:

    @Zoe Anne:

    4 lines are the right number. There’s a certain anxiety pervading the dialogues, and the reader of theirs presumably. Those words go fast on air, it’s just words after all, they’ll disappear in a glance…

    Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 4:25 pm | Permalink
  25. Ganondox wrote:

    Poor starving artist the game.

    Also, that ending…

    Tuesday, November 8, 2016 at 8:56 am | Permalink

3 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Games You Should Play: Queue | Mersey Remakes on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:01 pm

    […] Mr Lavelle’s latest gaming expedition. […]

  2. Narrative Experiments by Increpare | Digital Tools on Friday, February 26, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    […] Increpare Games has an interesting slogan: “Let’s try something out here…“. If you expect experimetal works now, than you are absolutely right! The stuff I tried so far on the site are explorations of narrative forms, somehow in between storytelling, classical writing and game interaction. If you got 10 minutes of time, checkout for example Queue. […]

  3. Design Musings 1 « Interstitial Design on Friday, April 2, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    […] like.  Although you never had enough time for true, deep reflection, I think increpare’s Queue created a micro version of this.  By having to wait for the messages to appear, you were forced to […]