Piece Together Intimate Moments in ‘and i made sure to hold your head sideways’

Words stop making sense. Darkness is interspersed between flashes of reality. Soon, you'll lose some control over your body. There's no way you'll make it down that set of spiral stairs by yourself. It's not long before you're unconscious. It's New Year's Eve—everyone is drinking—but maybe you've had too much.

Made for the Flat Game annual game jam, Jenny Jiao Hsia's and i made sure to hold your head sideways pieces together those moments of darkness. Hsia's clever mechanics turn the story into a pop-up book of sorts—albeit, of course, a flat one. And I made sure to hold your head sideways tells you the story of New Year's Eve from the perspective of your companion—the one who's generously holding your head sideways to keep bad things from happening.

Arrow keys untangle scrambled images from that night, piecing together frames and uncovering lines as the story becomes clearer. Intimate moments between two people are fogged by the haze of hangover, turning what was like a chaotic night ending in a hospital visit into a serene picture of love and friendship.

Music from AP Thompson is an essential part of that, smoothing the lines when the narrator is unable to do so. Each arrow moves the pile of lines in a different way, though only one is correct. Fitting each piece in its correct alignment moves and i made sure to hold your head sideways forward.

Reliance on the narrator feeds the story and the mechanical experience of the game. Unguided, through the knotted maze of messy lines, a player wouldn't make it through. When many games are moving away from this sort of hand holding, and i made sure to hold your head sideways relies on it—because the story's subject relies on it. Hsia's game is more of a real and human experience for it, speaking to notions of friendship, love, and reliance.

And i made sure to hold your head sideways is a free browser game playable on itch.io.