Imaginary Friends Games did a fantastic job with creating a wholesome experience for young and old audiences with Shindig. It’s a unique adventure driven by fun (and flawed) characters, well-written and performed dialogue, and packaged with a fair amount of passion. It might be a short experience, but it’s one that you’ll enjoy.
Ted Lasso is a wholesome show. While the show features some negativity and obstacles, the drama and comedy usually point towards positivity and hope. In my opinion, that is what makes the show wholesome, welcoming, and just a break from everyday life. We all need that in our lives. It helps us cope with a current pandemic, the stress from tension the world is holding, and all the unnecessary stress that we carry in our lives on a day-to-day basis. We all have to have a knob that opens our mind’s vent to bring some of that terrible build-up out into the open so that we can breathe a bit again.
Is this too deep for a gaming site? Probably, but it’s the truth. We all need that Ted Lasso-esque experience to turn that knob and vent out our day-to-day. It helps to keep us going.
This week, I had the pleasure to play a lovely game called Shindig developed by Imaginary Friends Games, which is made up of exactly… (counting in head)…a wife and husband team. They have drawn, written, voiced-over, animated, designed, and even included two of their beautiful cats in the point and click title. This game is a whole experience, which has been this week’s go-to for opening that vent to let the mind’s steam out.
Let me tell you why.
Story
Your character answers an ad to help oversee a shindig. They are asked to gather material around an animal-run island in hopes of putting on a visual and delicate delight of a party. To do that, your character must go find pieces and parts, help different residents of the island, and find a way to get everyone to work together to put on the best darn shindig ever.
The story is simple in tone but certainly assumed difficult by genre nature. You know there is going to be a quid pro quo with sets of characters to make the story unfold. It works out how you would expect and there isn’t much of a surprise from point to point in the narrative design. Everything flows quickly in the story and is direct with what the next step is in the game. That isn’t a knock because you never want to stop too long in a story like this to try and figure out what the next step should be to progress. You want to keep going with minor road bumps along the way. The story is built for this, and it works in the long run. Ultimately, it’s a charming story with good feels throughout the journey, none of which is disrupted by too difficult of puzzles. It all just flows well.
Don’t mistake the age range, it’s made for everyone
Having reviewed games for 21 years now (omg…wow), I have always thought of myself as someone who firmly understands what audience a game is speaking to when it’s released. Call of Duty, you have 18–39-year-old (though some act like they’re under 10 at times) gamers. For Putt-Putt and anything from the Learning Company (when it existed), it was under 10 years old. Balancing out the simplicity of the design with the content presented, a dash of difficulty somewhere in the equation, it’s easy to see what games were made for whom.
Or so I thought.
Mistakenly, I assumed this was a game made for a younger audience. The point and click design asked for simple tasks to accomplish, while also featuring cartoon-y characters and experiences. For example, the boat you start on when making your way to your Shindig island destination at the beginning looks like something out of a Nick Jr. cartoon. Maybe a later season of Blues Clues when it got weird. It was childlike and welcoming, which made sense in my brain that this was for a younger demographic. I assumed this type of gameplay pointed to a younger group of gamers. ASSUMED. You know that old saying, I don’t need to remind you.
Anyway, Shindig is more than something made for a younger group of gamers. Shindig has simple goals, but sophisticated and fun dialogue that everyone can enjoy. The narrative is a blast for adults and easily understood by kids. My wife and I had a blast going through this game and listening to dialogue and how it was acted out. It was a wonderful experience for us, and it made us laugh at times. On the other end of the age group, my youngest (7F) understood what was going on and picked up on the humor as well. It was such a wholesome balance that was unexpected and undetected during my review session with it. It was just wonderful.
As stated in the previous paragraph, the balance is mainly handled by the well-written script and perfectly performed acting to meet the dialogue’s expectations. The devs brought enough variety to the characters and brought the exact amount of creativity to the dialogue to make it feel at home for all ages. That’s so difficult to do, especially when your team is two people. Shindig’s devs pulled this off and honestly this game was an adventure that I would revisit if there was additional content. It’s so much fun and wholesome for all ages.
To help bring all the voice and dialogue together, the game features some cool character design which includes friendly, flawed, and relatable animals. One of the bigger uphill climbs for devs is how to engage and bring your audience into the fold where the game experience encompasses the gamer’s time and attention. The key component to making this happen is having a variety of characters and designing your game to make it relatable to your player. Each character in the game has their own set of quirks that kids and adults can connect with during the experience. For example, I related so hard to a crocodile in the game. The crocodile is incredibly shy and tries to avoid going to large gatherings but understands the need for once-in-a-while socializing. For 13 years of E3 this was me. It was painful to go to them, but the need to do so kept this site going. Bless that croc. Another example of a relatable character is a large plant in the center of the island’s town. The large plant wants hugs from people to not only make the hugger’s day happy but also to provide the plant positive energy to make it through. I have a good friend that enjoys hugs and she lives on them. My wife is the same way, where her day gets better when she is hugged. My final example is a warthog that is living their life to the fullest because they’re dealing with an illness, and they want to take life in as much as possible. We have all known someone in a tough health situation that tries to see the best in life when everything should be going wrong for them. Again, relatable characters help to grasp and engage players. There is so much going on in the narrative and so many different types of characters that you’re almost guaranteed to find one that you can relate to and love.
Again, wholesome.
The good folks at Imaginary Friends Games seem to have taken careful pride in making these characters and even providing some accurate ways of approaching them. For example, my character will kneel to eye-level with any characters that are shorter. This provides a sense of safety and is welcoming, which makes sense considering you play as someone who isn’t a resident of the island but is seeking help from the island’s residents That’s a small detail, but one that is thought through for this game. You get a lot of these tiny details through Shindig.
Anyway, WHOLESOME.
Gameplay expectations
This is a traditional point and click game. The crux of the gameplay is gathering clues through dialogue hints, finding said items mentioned in the dialogue, and having it all come together by the end with a sea of solutions. What is required isn’t particularly time-consuming, nor is it irritating or difficult, rather it just paces itself out perfectly and makes sense with the narrative. Yes, the gaming experience is short in comparison with any LucasArts/LucasFilm Games point and click experience, but again the dialogue, unique characters, and intentions (which are built on a lot of love for the material and game making) make the short journey fun. The additional customization of characters and joy of the experience pushes and personalizes the experience further.
On top of this, the game comes to you for a mere £5.79 / $7.99 on steam. That money is honestly pennies when compared to what you’re getting in return. There is an incredible amount of love and passion that went into designing this game and it shows from character to character. From catty cats to aggressive mice, and to grateful warthogs, there is so much here in the game to take in. Again, it’s just incredibly wholesome.
Conclusion
Imaginary Friends Games did a fantastic job with creating a wholesome experience for young and old audiences with Shindig. It’s a unique adventure driven by fun (and flawed) characters, well-written and performed dialogue, and packaged with a fair amount of passion. It might be a short experience, but it’s one that you’ll enjoy.
