Watch Me Jump

"So, I'm the highest paid player in the WNBA.   You know who makes more than me?   All 401 players in the men's NBA.   All of them.   By a lot.   Tony Alexander makes more than me." [i]"Who's Tony Alexander?"[/i] "Exactly."

An adventure with some visual novel elements game where you incarnate a superstar LGBT woman basketball player who is being caught in middle of scandal while being in a crucial transition. PRO - A good story that is not about love or being cool, seeking the mankind behavior behind the character! - The graphics who will remind you Maniac Mansion in a good way. - LGBT elements that is not pornography suggestive. - The pace - The musics are great despite some adaptive flaws (see the con) CON - The musics are sometimes inadequate for the scenes. By example, when our character is angry we can't fully feel it because the music brings us the downer effect of her sadness instead bringing us intensity. - The save system. Which force you to play like if it was a rogue game, so in one shot which can prevent you from going back to see alternatives of your previous moves. On the other side this is a short story, so that's a not a big con. - The lack of freedom when in "free roam" which make point...

I picked up Watch Me Jump after it was featured on RPS's Unknown Pleasures mini-column because it was billed as an LGBTI story but there's... well there's a lot going on. Visually it's got the appeal of a brick. No getting around that unfortunately. But the writing and characters are where it stands out. It's only an hour long so that's a positive or negative depending on your view. Watch me jump is a short story about Audra Bee Mills, a top WNBA player who's got to deal with a sudden 'crisis' of being outed as bi the night before a playoff and things snowball out of control from there. I finished the game last night and I had trouble sleeping because it was on my mind the whole time and the first thing in the morning when I woke up. The producer's background is as a playwright and the game's definitely structured more as a story than anything else. There's twists, turns, drama and reveals. Chapters play out and you find out more about the characters, their past, and choose how to r...

Really enjoyed this bite-sized drama about basketball, women in sports, personal ambition, public scandal, and what it means to be "the best". I don't normally go in for visual novels, and that's functionally what this is, but it's written and paced like a stage play (because it is directly adapted from a play) so it works better, for me anyway. It's quite short, but it's very easy to quickly become infused with the characters' high emotions when the dialogue is so snappy and effective. Very recommended. Aggressively priced. Short and sweet. The only caveat I would add is that there really isn't much "videogame" here. However, if you go in expecting a play, you'll be quite pleased.

Remarkable. A lot of games I play nowadays make me want to wave them around going "LOOK! THIS IS GAMING NOW! THIS IS SOMETHING GAMES CAN DO!" This is one of them.

A superb gem, the dialogue is superb and the pacing is spot on. It sucks you in and absorbs you in a tensely crafted story of basketball, fame, depression, friendship, amibition and lies. Every decision you make plays out in a way that feels right, even though the drama unfolds in a way that might make you feel uncomfortable - this is what makes it beautiful. This will stick in my memory for a while to come. It is short, but perfectly formed and well worth your time,

Scottie "Pippin" huh? And twice? Nah son, gotta do better than that. Honestly this game isn't all bad, but I can't recommend it with the way it's described. It is in no way a "basketball game." Basketball is a theme and plays into the plot, sure, but when you're misspelling the names of hall of famers and and say stuff like "If you can't get into the paint I need you to go and get fouled" or something along those lines, it's clear how much reverence for the sport the creator(s?) really had. Also the idea of 4 quarters being a framing device for the story seems a little inconsequential. Maybe I missed something, but it's not really a big deal anyway. It's weird to say I didn't like the story because it allows for different dialogue options, so maybe other players will come to a more satisfying ending than I did, but for me the whole thing was all fizz and no pop. It kinda just ended, with the player character seemingly knowing what she knew at the start of the game, and having had pre...

Watch Me Jump is a short (1 hour) talk'em'up about the life of a professional athlete. I went into it hoping it'd be a light, fun diversion. The graphics are simple but do the job, and the interface works well as a way to move the story along. Unfortunately, everybody in this game is a shitbag. You are a shitbag. Your boss is a shitbag. Your "friends" are shitbags. None of the characters have any redeeming features. I guess that's kind of the point - professional sports, especially in America, is trash. Fortunately, the story is well-written, so even though everyone is awful, they're awful in a way that doesn't feel contrived. It's not really a fun story, but it's worth a playthrough.

+ Tackles difficult themes like sexism in sports, alcoholism, and being LGBTQ + Complicated characters + Great dialogue - Graphics and music are really just there as vectors for the writing - Unexpressive character sprites and lack of voice acting mean it can take a while to get a read on characters and how they're supposed to come across If you're sick and tired of men being the only ones who get stories about being famous and empty, Jeremy Gable's got your back. This is a dark little game, and I do mean little. But the writing is tight enough that not a single second is wasted. You play as Audra, a deeply flawed character with anger management issues that have only gotten worse under the constant pressure of being the best player in the WNBA. Many of the things that affect her life aren't her fault, like the media's reaction to her being bi, or having to deal with the fact that women in sports need to meet higher standards than men for less acknowledgement and less pay. Other thin...

Watch Me Jump is a fascinating little bite of a story about a WNBA player facing down a number of scandals in her personal and professional life. Intelligent stuff for a video game. It's remarkably well written, and its history as an apparent play is obvious once the credits roll. I like the basic straightforwardness of the game - you're not doing anything much more complex than picking dialogue options or walking around limited-size rooms. It's very much focused on the story, and I respect that. That said, there's quite a bit of murkiness with the intended dialogue choices. At several points I thought I was making a more human choice than the immediate tongue-lashing my character delivered, and that's a little off-putting. Rather than having two vague choices, I'd have rather seen what the character would say in either option. It's a pretty minor quibble to an otherwise great story. Give this one a go. It's over fast - I think I finished in just under an hour - and the sharply intel...