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To my first born son

Download for Windows
Download for Mac OSX

Download Source Code (Unity 3.5)

controls : wsad/arrow keys to move, mouse to look, space to jump, (i to toggle invert mouse, if you must)

Monday, January 21, 2013, at 4:05 am. Tagged , , . Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

23 Comments

  1. William wrote:

    The light and texture in this game is really something else. It was for Slave of God too. Do you think you’ll make a game soon that lets us live in these worlds a little longer?

    Monday, January 21, 2013 at 5:27 am | Permalink
  2. stephen lavelle wrote:

    Thanks. Nope.

    Monday, January 21, 2013 at 12:32 pm | Permalink
  3. Bandanbladderstiddle wrote:

    That sucked.

    Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 11:07 am | Permalink
  4. PiGPEN wrote:

    Neat little poetry jam you got here.

    Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 12:43 pm | Permalink
  5. valtism wrote:

    Another game? Damn dude, you’re a machine. I’ve been loving the stuff you’ve put out recently.

    Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
  6. Lord Autos wrote:

    Uhh… Was there any trouble with your parents growing up, Stephen? Because I’m kinda sensing a theme here…

    Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 11:10 pm | Permalink
  7. stephen lavelle wrote:

    I had a pretty average upbringing. Be careful about making public insinuations about people’s families.

    Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 1:07 am | Permalink
  8. Lord Autos wrote:

    I’m not tryin’ to offend here. It’s just, a lotta this involves stressful family matters. Nevertheless, none of it’s my business. Sorry to have bothered you and carry on!

    Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 4:40 am | Permalink
  9. mcc wrote:

    This was sweet.

    Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 6:15 am | Permalink
  10. liz wrote:

    a nice little illustration of patriarchy from inside and out

    Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 7:16 am | Permalink
  11. Ava Avane Dawn wrote:

    Yeah I’ve been loving the activity around here the last weeks too. :) This game was one of the most straight-forward I’ve ever seen coming from Stephen — it even had “The end” written out! Maybe finally something so straightforward as to recommend to my non-gaming queer friends (the last game I posted on facebook was Anna’s dys4oria).

    Autos: There has been some increpare games with themes involving childhood, such as Signifier, Mirror Stage, Oíche Mhaith, Sleeping Scared, and letter to my firstborn son (well, there are babies there!) but I think the first two in part are due to Stephen’s prominent usage of/fascination with Lacan (even a game with hir mathemes was created, although I cannot recall the name of it), literary criticism and philosophy (recall Modernauts (Derrida), Rapidfie (poststructuralism?), Primitive Pattern (Hegel?). There are also issues of feminism at work in letter to my first born son, as in Good Sister, while I guess that Oíche Mhaith is quite the pure childhood-trauma game, if you could call it that. Maybe there’s some Lacan there too, children and their identifying with the Big-Other lest they perish… or just general stockholm syndrome, the fact that every slave is secretly in love with their master, viewing the overpowering as inevitable or a natural force which must be honored; the parent must remain perfect, I shall take all the blame, etc.

    Stephen has also made “Home”, about growing old and retirement homes, so I think zie has the whole spectrum right there. :P No speculation concerning hir childhood though, zie seems very much private about hir work here on the internets, no artist statements, scarcely an interview… care to comment Stephen, I mean especially on this latest point? :)

    Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 10:26 am | Permalink
  12. RMD wrote:

    Goddamit stephen, I fucking love you but don’t go into more Unity3D streaks, as a GNU/linux user I’m sad to not be able to play your games.

    Thursday, January 24, 2013 at 2:32 am | Permalink
  13. stephen lavelle wrote:

    Unity 4 has linux exporting capabilities, but I can’t afford to upgrade. Some day!

    Thursday, January 24, 2013 at 3:30 am | Permalink
  14. Gareth wrote:

    Beautiful rendering style, never seen anything like it!

    Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 5:45 pm | Permalink
  15. DylanC wrote:

    Oddly enough, this was posted near january 23rd, my birthday, and i am the firstborn son of my mom

    coincidence

    Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 10:55 pm | Permalink
  16. psepho wrote:

    @dylanc – My birthday is also 23 Jan and my daughter is 24 Jan, both of us first-borns. Coincidence squared.

    On topic, a lovely and thoughtful game. Very resonant to a lot of the differing dynamics and attitudes that I see in my own family and other families around us with young children. Thank you.

    Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 8:46 pm | Permalink
  17. Jasper wrote:

    I found this incredibly beautiful and inspiring.

    Sunday, June 30, 2013 at 2:29 pm | Permalink
  18. Sorgklaan wrote:

    It made my computer crash when I opened it.

    :C

    Friday, January 17, 2014 at 10:31 pm | Permalink
  19. stephen lavelle wrote:

    That’s not good! Could you tell me what operating system you have, and if there was any specific error message? (in particular, if there were any log files left in the program directory, if you could send them to me at anayltic@gmail.com, that would be useful).

    Saturday, January 18, 2014 at 12:51 am | Permalink
  20. Sorgklaan wrote:

    I am using Windows 8, and nope, and nope. All I know is that I extracted it, ran the EXE, and seconds later my laptop was saying how it had encountered an error and needed to restart.

    Also, upon looking at the event log, I believe the last two entries prior to it flipping shit were:

    File System Filter ‘npsvctrig’ (6.3, ‎2013‎-‎08‎-‎22T06:38:22.000000000Z) has successfully loaded and registered with Filter Manager.

    Followed by

    File System Filter ‘aswSnx’ (6.0, ‎2013‎-‎11‎-‎06T07:37:52.000000000Z) has successfully loaded and registered with Filter Manager.

    aswSnx apparently has to do with Avast and is well known for causing a BSOD. Dunno if that actually has anything to do with it, though.

    Saturday, January 18, 2014 at 7:57 am | Permalink
  21. stephen lavelle wrote:

    Weird. I’ll keep an ear to the ground, if anyone else has any troubles. Thanks for the report :)

    Saturday, January 18, 2014 at 12:11 pm | Permalink
  22. Anton wrote:

    Ha! And the guys who did Killer 7 thought they were avantgarde! Love the shifting colors and graphics style, and how the water looks.

    Monday, February 10, 2014 at 4:31 pm | Permalink
  23. Gigelinho wrote:

    Huh. Interesting aesthetic but I don’t “get it”.

    Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 4:09 pm | Permalink