Once upon a time, Deirdra Kiai developed a small piece of interactive art called The Little Girl Nobody Liked. In it, the player advanced the story of the little girl by clicking either the little girl, or the group of friends encountering her. Different patterns of clicks lead to different paths the story could take, each playthrough taking about 20 seconds to finish.
Even with a good six or seven endings, the whole thing took only a couple of minutes to experience completely. However, they would be good minutes. With its soothing narrator and background music, The Little Girl Nobody Liked was a picture-perfect picture book of a minigame with a streak of subversiveness to match its adorable charm. True, some of the readership of the awesome casual gaming review site that featured it, might question if it truly "counted" as a game. But such differences of opinion mattered not, because other readers got themselves some milk and cookies, wrapped themselves in their favorite blanket and really enjoyed The Little Girl Nobody Liked, before settling down for a truly great afternoon nap. The End!
That was cute. The narrator sounds oddly familiar for some reason, though I don't recognize the developer's name. Ah well.
I liked how none of the endings were conveyed as 'bad' endings and that the player/listener had to make up their own minds.
I'm only getting 4 endings, in some cases the same ending from different click patterns. How many did you guys get?
This is a very cute idea!
This story sort of hit home a little too much for me... Even worse when that little girl looks just like you...
Is there a "happy" ending ?
Where
she does not have to fit in with the crowd
@yaddab
crowd, girl, crowd, girl, girl
@yaddab: The "best" ending (or at least, my favorite ending) that I found was with this path:
Click the group, the girl, group, girl, girl.
As far as I managed to run this, I only got 4 distinct endings:
Girl reads alone: 2 paths
Girl follows the group: 3 paths
Girl is ignored by the group: 3 paths
Girl makes a friend: 1 path
Granted, the endings are a little different for each of the paths, but the ultimate outcome is still similar enough to group together.
Not going to say that any one specific ending is better than the other, as they are all interpretive. I do like the ending that Rayna and Isi like, but much like the game, this ending is very, very rare in real life. Rather sad, in fact, of how true of life this all is, making the rarity of the outcome quite similar to the outcome of the real-life scenario. One can probably write an entire thesis paper on that, but I'll leave that for you guys to think about it.
@anon how did you get the girl to
make a friend?
Ruka
Group, Girl, Group, Girl, Girl
Ooops
A late thanks to ray9na & Isi , I just see you answered the same question that I asked yesterday as Ruka did today!
Sorry, I wasn't being a smart arse I did not see until after I posted an answer to Ruka
*sigh*
This was a fun waste of one minute to see all the endings. Not a whole lot to say about this. :/
Nice narrator...
I really like this. It's amazing how it packs so much thought-provoking realism into something so tiny. The voice acting takes it from awesome to perfect.
The storyline definitely hits home for me, too. My own story was definitely the one where
I didn't understand, and read a book by myself! With a touch of trying to please the other girls, but being rejected anyway. Guess I wasn't good at walk/talk/acting like the group. But then, who wants to be good at that anyway? Well... it does have its temptations, especially when that 10,000-ish-th book by age 12 or so gets to feeling really lonely. But still. For me, it wouldn't have been worth the cost.
I'm glad I've found a couple of the make-a-friend outcomes for myself by now, though, when I'll be turning 35 this year.
I would also love to see a longer sequel. It would be fantastic to be able to explore options like:
Getting to know the individual girls in the crowd better, and finding out what's different about each of them. Options to make friends or not with each. And I'd love to see an ending where all (or most, depending on the path you take) of the girls form a new, accepting group where everyone gets to be accepted as different. Yes, I know that would be a challenge to say the least... but it's the same thing I hope for in the real world. I believe it's possible here, so why shouldn't it be possible in a game too?
All in all, the subversiveness hit just the right note with me. As challenging as this game's concept and material is, I found its sense of possibility to be wonderfully uplifting. 5/5 mushrooms!
Update