Kindness Coins (Arden, Spider, Jordan Battiston, Michael Real)

kindnesscoins
you play as a person that a dating sim protagonist is trying to pick up[Author’s description]

[Download for Windows]
[Download for Mac]

28 Comments.

  1. Ambient Kesha!

  2. So damn good.

  3. Can’t download for the moment, too much traffic to the Dropbox account πŸ™

  4. Really gorgeous art for a 3 day game.

  5. Dialogue has an amazingly natural quality. Lulls you into developing a little crush of your own on Daisy, too!

  6. this is CUUUUTE

    love the characters, florence reminds me of the devil girl in imaginary monsters.

  7. great game and writing! i liked all of the characters and the ending made me really happy πŸ˜›

  8. I have a slight sense that the options provided don’t affect the story arc in any significant way (if at all), which is super disappointing! Kindness Coins is about as engaging as a picture book. That isn’t to say it’s bad – I actually enjoyed the story. But I feel like I was fooled into believing there were choices where none actually existed (at least none that mattered).

    If I actually had a choice, I would have given the guy a chance. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I was forced to watch the girl tell him off. Sure, it was an interesting part of the story, but it just felt so forced.

    I think this should be labeled as an interactive ebook. A cute, carefully illustrated, audibly rich ebook. If I were expecting Kindness Coins to be an ebook, I’d praise it for bringing the reader into the story in a totally immersive way. But I expected a game. A powerpoint presentation could have provided the same experience. It really feels like the difference between a roller coaster cart and a car.

    Sell it as an ebook! You’ll receive the praise you deserve that way.

    • If this were an e-book without the expectation of control, it might not have so efficiently provoked this reaction in you: “why can’t I force the young woman to date the nice guy?”, a question that’s central to the game’s criticism of dating sim systems.

    • TELLING THE DUDE TO FUCK OFF

      IS CENTRAL

      TO THE EXCELLENCE

      OF THIS EXCELLENT GAME

    • What you really desire is to force your heterosexuality into a game about lesbian attraction

      This isn’t the sexless paperdoll universality of Mass Effect, this is real

      • This has a nice enough premise but literally falls apart when it repeats verbatim the kindness coin phrase in a totally artificial way and has a really unrealistic characterization in terms of response.

        The male character also never really learns that what he did was wrong, only that the main character is gay and that totally explains why she didn’t go for him, not the fact that he completely disrespected her as a person. Ultimately the main character ends up apologizing to the creeper for not trying to fix him sooner.

        Actual men in this situation tend to lash out or harbor ill-will long afterward because they’re not interested in changing because they don’t think they did anything wrong. That “lets still be friends” that he pulls is more ominous than anything else, since it basically means “I still want to have access to you so I can try a different, better script on you.”

    • Indeed. People do not just choose who they are attracted to, and this is about sharing with us that moment of realization.

    • It’s a “visual novel”. That’s the name of the genre. I think it’s pretty fitting, ne?

  9. I liked this a lot. The characters and dialog were really natural in what could have easily just been a cheesy after school special affair.

    I think I would have liked to have seen a few more dynamic dialog choices in the latter half, but I can see how they were played as non-options to enhance what was going on. Not that I want to hook up with the guy, lol, the earlier choices just added a little more depth on later plays. :3 Maybe something like a first date option at the end to call back the date sim theme and put a final twist on it.

  10. I enjoyed this as a person, but as a gay woman I enjoyed it especially. As it became clear that no option, either chosen by mistake or on purpose, was going to force Florence into dating the boy, I found myself relaxing. “Oh, I get to be me in this game.” thanks so much for making this

  11. Could have almost worked better long-term, showing how idealistic it is that a rejected person who has expended so much effort just to get with someone would not be totally okay with remaining as a friend and how poisonous the social atmosphere that would remain between them could be. Even the fact that someone’s not interested in your sex won’t stop some people.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsVyBHJrNQw

  12. Short but sweet. I’d actually love to see this as a full, effecting options game. I bet it would be seven kinds of hilarious. The art was super sweet and I can’t believe a spider drew it! πŸ˜† Thanks for this! Seriously.

  13. Kinda wonder if her not being much better than whatshisface in the end was intentional.

  14. This was adorable and really funny

  15. I wanted to know if John was an actual dating sim protagonist, or just acted in his love life like he was (we know him to be a gamer and somewhat socially inept)

  16. This is an undiscovered gem. Clever in all the right ways, cute in all its earnestness, and the writing feels so natural that you instantly feel at home in a world where you can know we’re all delightfully strange just by looking.

    (Bonus points for capturing the feel of WANTING to say one thing and discovering that your brain is overridden by your mouth/heart/adrenaline!)