I seriously want more games where balancing feelings, stress, and friendships are a legit thing.
More than just "let's level up in this friendship in a linear way" or "get enough points here until you end up in a relationship". Hell, sometimes relationships won't actually end up a thing, they'll draw a hard boundary, and you should frikkin' respect it.
@Ulfra_Wolfe My goto example for this is an old Yu-Gi-Oh PS2 game we played when we were younger- You would have to get a friend to be close enough friends with you to want to be Dualing Partners in a 2v2 finale that was your school's Final Exam.
Not having one person sufficiently high-friend-level by then was a Game Over when the exam starts.. And the only way to make someone like you more was finding out their favourite type of sandwich then *incessantly throwing sandwiches at them at every opportunity*.
@Ulfra_Wolfe Early Morn: "Hey Bill, have a ham sandwich!"
Mid-Morn: "Hey Bill, have a ham sandwich!"
Noon: "Hey Bill, have a ham sandwich!"
Afternoon: "Hey Bill, have a ham sandwich!"
Evening: "Hey Bill, have a ham sandwich!"
Bill: "I now feel that I truly can rely on you as a friend, [PLAYER], and so I shall open up to you about my troubled family history & how it drives my passion for Duel Monsters."
@GlitchyDragon Hahaha, wow.
@Ulfra_Wolfe This has been a notorious running joke between us & chosen-sib-system for years now as a result.
"I just introduced someone on Mastodon to the Yu-Gi-Oh Sandwich Game."
"..I'm sorry for their loss?"
@Ulfra_Wolfe I've had similar ideas.
@Ulfra_Wolfe Yeah, I've always found meaningfully depicting friendship in games to be very difficult, because conventional game structure has [Goals] [Obstacles to Goals] [Way to Achieve Goals / Navigate Obstacles] and any attempt at applying that gamification to friendship automatically veers into "Ew this is gross" territory.