Support

Modern (social)
Glass-Free* Games
2016
Complexity: 1

Support is a game about boobs, or rather a game about people and their relationship with the boobs that they may or may not have. Now if you’re thinking that’s an oddly-specific focus for a role-playing game, and that’s only because it is. But “oddly-specific” is kinda like, one of the things I do here.
Also this is my 50th review, so that’s something.


Character Creation: N/A
Characters are made by specifying the character's name and gender identity, then answering three questions from a list. Things like “How do you feel about children?” “What sorts of things make you cry?” or “How do you respond to pressure?” It’s all pretty minimal, but it’s really just for creating a rough sketch of the character. Turning that sketch into a deep, nuanced person is the general point of the game.

Gameplay: 2/5
Play involves players taking turns role-playing “scenes that focus on significant moments in your character’s relationship with their boobs.” These scenes can be either ‘Monologue’ scenes, in which the player narrates the scene by themselves, or ‘Group’ scenes, in which other players are drafted to play other relevant characters in the scene. Once the scene has been decided, the player chooses and answers a group of boob-related questions, specifically relating to the specific time of the scene. That last part honestly feels a little unnecessary. I get that the idea is to think about your characters relation to their breasts in that moment, but since you’re already choosing scenes specifically related to character-boob relations it seems like that’s something you’d already be considering.
After the scene has been played, the player writes a brief summary of the scene on a sticky note and sticks it on their character’s timeline—which basically means just sticking them on a wall or something in chronological order—then the other players write something that supported the character in the scene on a different colored sticky note. After 3–5 rounds of this everyone just kind reflects on the experience and the game is over.
Support suffers from the same problem as other similar games. Specifically, it’s so free-form that the rules feel more like something that just kinda gets in the way. However, if said rules were absent it would be less of a game, and more of a suggested conversation topic. This puts the designer in an odd place, they have a concept, but in order to be like, a game, there needs to be some kind of structure to it.
So I think what it comes down to is they gave themselves a difficult task, and did the best they could, but didn’t really come up with a stellar result.

Writing: 3/3 [+]
While the writing quality isn’t particularly noteworthy, the writing style is. The language used is very… well, supportive. They make sure to take the time to address things like the fact that people with breasts are not necessarily women, women do not necessarily have breasts, and the complicated emotions relating to the breasts they may or may not have. They also make sure throughout to remain mindful of the intended emotional nature of the game, even specifying that reflecting on the game should be done in third person to help the player disengage from the character.

Presentation: 2/5
The layout is honestly nothing special, just kinda text in a couple columns with headings and bulleted lists. There’s only a few illustrations—a bra, binder, and bottle of estradiol—but I can’t really think of any other boob-related images, so I can’t really fault them for that.

Final Remarks
Support is a game that tries to do something different, and it does. Encouraging players to think about their relationship with their breasts—or more importantly, the relationship the relationship a different person would have with their breasts—which is an interesting and admirable idea. It has its flaws as a game, but a lot of that comes from trying to expand the idea of what sort experiences and conversations can be part of a role-playing game.

Base Points: 4
Character Creation: N/A, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: +1
Setting: N/A, Writing: +1, Content: N/A

Overall Score: 50% (5/10 Points)