In 2013, Apple abandoned skeuomorphism, or the design principle of making user interface elements resemble their real life counterpart.
It is shocking to revisit this game in 2020, leering back at the aesthetics of 2010 from a future that may have been hard to anticipate a decade prior.
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It is maximalist in terms of content, with timers and windows and images and command prompts popping up all over the screen, rarely systematized. The game is grey - or, as one more generous article described it, “sharply noir.” Frankly, it’s exhausting to look at. Again: humanity is worthy on its own merits, even if the bureaucracies and systems and plain fact of 24 hours in a day stand up against it. It’s tempting to say that the characters’ redemptive properties - one is a loving mother and sister another has a tender and funny companionship with his cat - make up for their “bad” “choices.” But even that idea should be abandoned. People are not just a collection of choices, good or bad or in between. In removing choice, and simply documenting the malaise of work, the game makes a clear statement. And once you have, the way to make enough of a living, is to ignore nearly everything else.” And yet, the game does not indulge in misery for misery’s sake. One guide states: “In order to succeed, you only need to find one good way of making money. Even walkthroughs and GameFAQ guides that illuminate which steps to take do not make those steps easy or manageable or fun. In fact, there’s no winning “Cart Life,” really. Some players simply budgeted their way out of trouble, and were left with the impression that the homeless and impoverished were suffering the consequences of their own, game-like choices. A Psychology Today study found that even players who were sympathetic to the homeless walked away less so after playing. A well-worn but prominent example of this is “Spent,” a game created by an ad agency to simulate poverty and homelessness. “Empathy games" don’t always work, and sometimes that’s a fault of the game part of the equation. The obviousness does not make it less effective.
It’s obvious what reaction these burdens and obstacles are meant to elicit from the player.
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Even when I figured out how to get the cart, a city bureaucracy moving at a snail’s pace and a looming custody hearing subverted my efforts to get my little coffee business off the ground. I messed up one early playthrough because I forgot the instructions to get a coffee cart, which were described in a line of dialogue and then never again.
The game lets the player choose one of three characters, each of which juggles a dreary day job and overwhelming responsibilities and traumas to the pace of a relentless day-night cycle. Available on: Windows ( Name your own price on itch.io)Įvery detail of “Cart Life” is stifling.