OCTODAD!

So I played Octodad in the weekend and gosh did I hate it or what.

So you’re an octopus pretending to be a human dad. The objective of the game is to carry on with your everyday life, without your family becoming aware of the fact that you are actually an octopus. The game requires a lot of attention throughout the game.

You must pick up and swing each leg individually; sliding the mouse around to gain ground and majority of the time you would end up in an awkward position. Controlling the hand movements was much trickier to control. I knocked more things than I picked up.

The view point for this game is third trailing. It performative involvement which refers to various modes of the game piece requires conscious attention throughout. And for someone like me who isn’t use to such controls was absolutely horrible at this game and I quickly become frustrated and annoyed. So, although I was involved in the game it was not affective engagement. My decision making and conscious game control to sustain the outcome was useless.

The store is suppose to keep you driven by having a check list, ticking them off and moving forward, however that was not the case for me. I think I didn’t enjoy the game because I don’t have the skill set to play this kind of game. I’m a causal gamer and I like simplicity. In this game I had to focus too hard on actually controlling the mouse then the actual game its self. I needed to get my brother to come show me how it works and he got the controls instantly. After several attempts I started to become okay with it. As long as they were tasks that involved more leg movement then hands. For example; I enter the son’s room where he has to score a goal and run around the room etc.   

The affective dimension of the game is very light hearted, no real, strong sense of environment and I wasn’t entirely engrossed in the game. Maybe because I was to focused on trying to make the controls works it took the potential immersion away from the game. The narrative of the game I believe is discourse narrative? It’s not presented in a chronological order where it has a beginning, middle or end, rather everything happens in segments. Once you have completed the list you move on to the next room and explore that section of the game.

I did release some dopamine every time I something got ticked off the to-do list. Became quite gratifying actually, however I’d get really agitated and frantic if I couldn’t do something right and the ‘suspicious’ bar kept rising up. I suppose near the end I did become diegetically immersed within the game. Thinking about it now the affective dimension works very well with in the game. The fact it seems so easy going almost contradicts itself as it proves to be quite challenging.