Kind Words 2 Playtest
I've picked up the game Kind Words years back after a recommendation by a youtuber. The game was advertised as a calm affair where you just write out whatever is bothering you, and other real people can read and respond to it. It's a self-help forum with nice visuals and some lo-fi music, essentially, but wow did it end up being way more than I thought it would.
There's a lot of things you need to get off your chest but just don't want to tell a friend, so having this gaping maw of the void to toss letters into was really convenient. Actual forums work too, they give you some degree of anonymity, but you still end up having an online persona with a history, personality, and opinions formed by other people about you. In this game? You're a one-letter signature on the letters you write, nothing more than that, and no one can see what people reply to you other than yourself.
By being so limited with the forms of interaction the game made it a little harder to ask for specific help, but paradoxically made it easier to ask for help in general because... well, you don't need to worry about the conversation becoming serious, or burdening someone, or being annoying, because at most they can only reply once. It was cute, and looking at my old letters here, seems I used it extensively when I was going through some hard times.
A few months back I saw that they're working on a sequel and had an option to sign up for the beta-test, so I did, and I finally got in. And I gotta say - I think all the additions they made are wonderful.
They didn't touch the "core gameplay" from last time beyond some little visual changes - it's still letters, one message response max, and the straightforward presentation. It's backwards compatible with the first game too, which is nice. What they did instead is add more options in how you can vent out your frustrations and talk to random people!
You see, in the first game a lot of people used this opportunity to ask for book recommendations, or write poems, or just look for someone to chat for. While understandable uses - they were not at all what the game was designed for, and ended up detracting for the people who wanted to use the game for its "intended" purpose. Seeing this, seems the devs realized they can't actually stop this phenomenon and opted instead to redirect it. As The Design of Everyday Things says, "you should design for how people act, not how they ought to."
They added a records shop where you can ask other people to recommend you anything from movies to books (I used this to ask people for more nonfiction to read!). They added a street corner where you can start conversations with random people, with actual back-and-forth whenever each of you opens the game again. They added a small club where you can write out poetry. They added a personified void where you can write messages that are instantly deleted, literally tossing your thoughts into nothingness. I love it!
There's still a few bugs here and there (it is a beta test) and an occasional missing feature (why are there barely any long hairstyles :<), but overall this is a really good game, and I think more people should play it! The first game was super cheap, so if any of this sounds like it would interest you I would really recommend wishlisting it! Even if you don't end up getting it, wishlisting a game helps the developers so much in terms of reach, and helping out an indie studio always feels nice.