Inhuman Conditions: A Game of Cops and Robots

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Much as with games such as Funemployed or Once Upon a Time, Inhuman Conditions put a lot of attention on each of the players. A common criticism I have had is it means if you don’t have anything to say it can be very uncomfortable. For the investigator in Inhuman Conditions that’s very true – they direct the speed and tone and direction of the conversation. The provision of communication prompts though helps reduce the cognitive overload of thinking of something to say or ask. Easy to make rules,” Emma said. “Easy to make systems with a perfect logic and rigor. All you need to do is leave out the mercy, yeah? Then when you put people into it and they get chewed to nothing, it’s the person’s fault. Not the rules. Everything we do that’s worth shit, we’ve done with people. Flawed, stupid, lying, rules-breaking people.” When playing a patient robot, the instruction you are given is clearly shown in the centre of the card, and the font is of a reasonable size. This is an area where the need to pantomime inducer circuits might be useful because it’s where the maze would be on a human card. There are only eleven modules – it’s not inconceivable that there are eleven colours that can be clearly distinguished. And yet we have light blue, cyan, and dark blue along with ‘dark green’ and ‘light green’ and various other annoying combinations. It’s only ever an issue in certain circumstances (such as tidying up the game after a session where certain combinations are used) but it merits discussion.

Finally... this is an opportunity for us to do some large-scale blind playtesting of the cards themselves. We know the framework of the game is solid, but we don't have as much data on the individual cards as we'd like. When you finish a round and someone else cycles in to play, it would be great if you could pull out your phone and give us some details about how your playtest went! The physical requirements are light, but they can’t be sacrificed without consequence. We’ll still recommend Inhuman Conditions in this category. Emotional Accessibility

First of all, the game is heavily card based, and those cards are almost entirely visual. Roles and penalties are dealt out at the start of an interview, and while they aren’t complicated or dense there’s a problem with a suspect inquiring what they are. Not so much the role, which is there mostly for flavour, but the penalty. If a suspect asks ‘Uh, what was the penalty again’ during an interview what they have actually said is ‘Hello, I am a robot’. Human players never need to know the penalty except during the initial calibration exercises.

One potential problem area though comes in the final judgement. Few people will complain about being marked ‘human’ when they were playing a robot, but there’s an edge to the counterpoint. If I’m being a human and someone marks me ‘robot’ then it’s easily possible to take that personally. Remember, nothing in the game forces abnormal behaviour if a suspect is human and both players in that scenario have the same goal in mind – ‘mark this person as a human’. If you fail to convince someone you’re a normal person, it’s down to how poorly you played that role. ‘Robotic’ is often a descriptor applied to people with autism, and it’s one with negative connotations as a result. Nonetheless, we’re going to recommend Inhuman Conditions in this category. Socioeconomic Accessibility The form is the final problematic component since it is very small and filling it out legibly is likely to be an issue.Robots must answer the Investigator's questions without arousing suspicion, but are hampered by some specific malfunction in their ability to converse. They must be clever, guiding the conversation in subtle ways without getting caught. Anyway, you’re not here for inked stamp based erotica. Probably. What you’re here for is our other kind of erotica – stripping a game naked and pointing out its many flaws. So let’s get started. Colour Blindness But still, if the other half of the game was amazing it could rescue the design. The problem is… it’s not. From the co-creators of Secret Hitler & Better Myths: a Blade Runner-inspired, five-minute party game for two players.

There’s no assumption of gender in the rules or in the game, using instead the neutral terms ‘suspect’ and ‘investigator’. There’s no art in the game that is gendered either, with vaguely human bonces used instead on the cards. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1FiUATGD-M4W3YH4L-_QsxinZs_dBkQkmhgrSfEsAyNA/viewform?ts=5ba3f4cf&edit_requested=true Robots must answer the Investigator’s questions without arousing suspicion, but are hampered by some specific malfunction in their ability to converse. They must be clever, guiding the conversation in subtle ways without getting caught. Inhuman Conditions is a five-minute, two-player game of surreal interrogation and conversational judo, set in the heart of a chilling bureaucracy.The only small intersectional issue I might point out is that a fluid intelligence impairment that intersects with an emotional inaccessibility may exacerbate issues that I outlined in those sections. Particularly being labelled as a robot when you’re a human. Other than that, I don’t see an intersectional issue that would change the individual or compound grades. Suspect: I’d replace the soul-dead harlequins that haunt my nightmares with dogs, so I was dean of a puppy college instead. The stamps are fine, and they have prominent iconography on them. Colour isn’t used elsewhere in the game.