What Lengths Would You Take To Become Famous?

As I was scrolling through a variety of indie games on itch.io, I came across #influenced. The adorable art caught my attention and I decided to try it out. #influenced is a kinetic novel created for the Nanoreno 2020 challenge. So what is a kinetic novel? A kinetic novel is a form of visual novel that does not have multiple storylines and endings. It’s basically a linear story book in game form. This game was created in a month so it has a very short playthrough. The website says that the game has about 30min of gameplay. It took me 2hours to play and I’ll explain later why it took me 2hours to complete a 30min long story book. To be quite honest, I did not read the game's description or any of the comments posted on the game’s itch.io page and was quite surprised as the game progressed. I saw the content warning (since it was in bold font), but did not take it as the game is potentially a horror game (it's a horror game). I mean, the art is so cute! I couldn’t possibly think that something so cute would turn the way it did.

In #influenced you play an average, but cute girl named Dolly Pearson. In my head I kept thinking her name was Dolly Parton. That might have been who her name was inspired by, but I’m not sure on that. Dolly wants to be a popular social media influencer and decides to reach out to Vanessa, a popular influencer who Dolly is jealous of. Vanessa turns out to be a very sweet person who tells Dolly to get in touch with her agent Mr. A. This is where the seemingly innocent game turns dark. Once Dolly starts private messaging Mr.A, the music immediately becomes ominous. Letting the viewers know that Mr.A is not a good person. It also makes you wonder about Vanessa too. Vanessa throughout the whole game seems so sweet and is nice to everyone she comes into contact with. Yet she’s involved with a person like Mr.A. In order to gain more likes and followers, Dolly must do what Mr.A tells her to do. The first task really wasn’t a big deal and it made sense when he explained to her why. So of course she did it and immediately gained followers. As the game progressed and Dolly craved for more followers and likes, the tasks became more and more gruesome. So gruesome that I had to stop playing for a while. I was just so shocked and thought to myself, “don’t do it!”, but this is a kinetic novel. So there was no option to have her not do it. It took me a while with each task to get my composure back and continue playing. This is why it took me 2 hours to complete the game. Dolly, who became more and more horrified with every task, did each and every one because she so desperately wanted to become famous to the point of literal insanity. By the end of the game I was both shocked and horrified. All that just for tens of thousands of followers and it was obvious that the overwhelming majority were not even real people. It does leave me wondering if it was all worth it in the end to Dolly.

This game, though greatly exaggerated, does bring to light a huge issue in today’s youth. Yeah I sound like an old person, but this also includes my generation as well. Most people are on social media. It doesn’t matter how old you are since there are an assortment of reasons why one would have a social media account. It could be for work, keeping in touch with friends and family, to talk about your hobbies with other like minded strangers, the list goes on. One thing that does standout in the world of social media, is that social media has opened the doors to a new kind of fame. The influencers. People with large amounts of followers and likes who post things that relate to and entertain the everyday person. This does umbrella a lot of different interests and hobbies. Making becoming an influencers very obtainable to the average person. It does seem like a lot of teenagers want so badly to be famous on the internet since it does look like a reachable goal. Many will even do viral challenges in order to gain more followers and likes. However, some of these challenges are extremely dangerous. The most recent challenge I’ve seen is the Skullbreaker challenge. I was actually shocked to find that this is something teenagers from all over the world were doing. It’s like they’re addicted to the followers and likes that they’ll do anything to get them. Including extremely dangerous challenges. The character Dolly does remind me a lot of these teenagers that are doing all these horrible things for followers and likes. Dolly would most definitely do some of these dangerous challenges that exist in the real world. Social media has it’s good uses, but #influenced does touch on a very real issue when it comes to social media and young people.

Even though #influenced did leave me horrified for the rest of the day, I do recommend this game to people who enjoy horror and thriller type stories. I do hope that the developers will further work on this game and turn it into a visual novel with multiple endings. I can see this game easily having multiple choices and outcomes if that is what the developers want. The story is very well written, I loved the art, and the design of the game really did feel like you were reading DM messages and looking at social media posts. Overall it’s a very well made game especially when you consider that it was part of a challenge where the developers only have a month to start and complete a game.