
“The Signs”

About this Project:
My project addresses the issue of abusive relationships. My idea was born in one of the Girl Hack sessions where learned the different signs of both healthy and abusive relationships.
When we did this lesson, I knew that I could take an interesting approach to it. So, I used the program Twine to create a story in which the objective is to try and prevent your best friend from staying in an abusive relationship.
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Feedback from the Judges:
I was caught between thinking some additional graphic elements (as mentioned by the developer) would be helpful to the narrative or distract from the seriousness of the topic. Having the story play out without any imagery was definitely impactful and I think introducing any additional visual elements would have to be done very carefully to not detract from the message.
My only advice here is to give the player more options to choose from and to reduce the amount of narrative significantly. The script is excellent and the overall story compelling, but the game goes for several pages at a time without any choices for the player and at times the choices themselves don't seem relevant to the story (e.g. what treats to bring). I think both these issues can be solved simultaneously and significantly improve the experience in a way that gives the game an even louder voice.
These are solvable issues though and overall I think this is a really important piece of work that deserves to be seen and experienced by a very wide audience. This is a great use of technology to make a change in the community and I applaud the developer's insight on this topic.
Thank you so much for sharing such an important project with us. You've taken a critical topic and created a valuable tool to educate users and help them understand the issue more deeply—it also has the potential to keep people safe and save lives. I think there's a ton of opportunity to build this out and create additional assets and resources—even an entire curriculum! It would also integrate well with other resources and organizations that work to end intimate partner violence. What would you think of incorporating more interactivity and breaking up the scenes more? It'd be cool to add more checkpoints along the way for the user.