Friendship Test

What's the story?

Friendship Test is a game about a robot (or Program) who goes on a journey travelling a mysterious laboratory, where they'll meet different programs in need of help (and friendship). FriendProgram was built to be a perfect friend, but is that what they want to be? Is it wrong to not want to?

 

What's the gameplay?

Friendship Test is a RPG Maker game without any typical RPG fights. The game does include 'battles', but they only require you to figure out what to say to your adversary, to convince them not to kill you. How nice of them.

The game includes very few puzzles too, it is a heavily story focused game, if you are looking for a more gameplay-focused videogame this might not the one for you. Thanks for reading anyway, friend!

What's the game about?

Friendship Test explores different relationships and how it affects different people. The difficulties, challenges and complexities of connections. 

However as the story develops, Friendship Test primarely focuses on the topic of lovelessness.

-There are multiple characters in the aro spectrum: from romance repulsed to romance favorable, from parterning aros to aros that prefer to not have any partner, among many others. The game focuses on many other aspec identities like asexuality, aplatonicism, etc.

-Other LGBTQIA+ characters are included in the story as well.

-While aspec themes are a big part of the story, neurodivergency plays an important part on the narrative and characters as well.

Is the game fun even if I don't know much about a-spec stuff or the concept of lovelessness?

I hope my game is fun overall! But yes, you do not need to have in-depth knowledge about the topics discussed in the game, as the story keeps in mind there are people that might have never heard/don't know much about these identities. Hopefully my game can even help more people find out or understand different aspec identities better!

"I have played the demo recently, do I have to start the game from the beginning again?"

The game allows you to skip the Prologue and Act 1 and start directly after the events of the demo. Replaying the beginning of the game is not necessary and nothing new has been added, only a couple of songs have been changed.

How long is the game?

10+/20+ hours long.

Visual Warnings:

-Interacting with the game with your mouse creates flashing boxes when you click on a character, object or tile. It's adviced to play with your keyboard or controller if you wish to avoid this.

-When navigating through the menu or choosing a dialogue, there is a flickering light that highlights which text you are currently positioned in. Should not cause too much trouble, but a warning just in case doesn't hurt.

-There is an issue on characters with multiple text box sprites, as they flicker for a second on occasions.

-There is a running option, so it can show some fast movements on the screen. 

-Numerous scenes include a shakey camera effect.

-There are some scenes with dark backgrounds and brighter colors to make objects and characters pop up more, which may cause eyestrain for some.

Overall Content Warnings:

The game deals with some heavy topics from time to time, warnings will be provided in-game and it's meant to be handled as tactfully as possible, nothing too triggering will be shown on screen.

Here is a list of all the possible triggers:

-Death and murder

-Ableism

-Aphobia

-Emotional abuse and implied physical abuse

-Animal experimentation and animal abuse

-Unreality, dissociation, derealization and depersonalization

-Disturbing imagery

-Eye contact

-Moments of tension, life threatening situations

-Discussions of OCD

-One scene can be perceived as self-harm, even if that is not the intention. The scene is cut off and the character is not harmed, but there is a moment where they try to press a specific button in their armor with a sharp pointy object.

-Self harming behaviour is a recurring theme of one character in particular

-Suicide

The topic of suicide is heavily implied in one event of a character's past, and it's implied later on the character (and another one) still suffers from suicidal thoughts. However, it is kept very brief. The story does not show a suicide on-screen and does not discuss suicide on-depth.

Viewer discretion is adviced. The game let's you skip dialogue and fast forward scenes if you hold down the (X) key on your keyboard or hold left click on your mouse.

Music

This is a project made out of fun and passion. While I am able to draw (maybe not great, but I draw) and I was able to program a videogame (maybe not great, but it's playable), one talent I lack is making music.

The game includes free-to-use music made by many talented people. I know this is not ideal for many, but it is what it is.  

Compatibility

I have only been able to fully test the game in Windows, so there could be problems with the game in other platforms. I wanted to at least upload the files, but again, they might have problems. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. If you're not able to play, you can watch a full playthrough of the game in the official Friendship Test youtube channel.

Other issues

English is not my first language, while I believe to have a good level, it might be noticeable sometimes that this was written by someone whose first language isn't English.

While the game has been playtested a great amount of times, it's always possible there can be a couple of typos, as I am only one person (+ a friend of mine when she was able to playtest) working on this game. Don't be shy to let me know about any typo or error, it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Controls

-For keyboard: 

Move around with arrows.

“Z” or “Enter” to interact with objects or characters. 

“X” to open your menu and to fastforward conversations and scenes.

-For mouse:

Click left to interact with objects or characters. Holding left allows you to fastforward conversations and scenes.

Click right to open your menu.

-The game also works with controllers!

But most important of all...

I hope you enjoy the game! Thanks for reading!

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Find Friendship Test in other platforms!

https://www.youtube.com/@Friendship-Test/videos

https://friendship-test.tumblr.com/

https://bsky.app/profile/friendshiptest.bsky.social

Support me on Patreon!

patreon.com/Mar64ds