Should They Be Wearing Socks?
Should They Be Wearing Socks? is a two-player cooperative analogue game created with Sabine Harrer for Nordic Game Jam 2023. Players take the roles of two parents trying to navigate a board increasingly filled with social norms around parenting. Working within the jam format allowed us to concentrate on the core rules and the relationship between the two players, using a board, tokens and asymmetric movement to explore the idea quickly.
The two players are working towards the same goal, but each has a different way of dealing with the norms surrounding them. One parent can confront norms by moving through them, while the other can avoid them by jumping to free spaces. Every movement causes more norms to appear around the players, so the pair must understand each other's abilities and coordinate their movement to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Designing Asymmetric Cooperation
A central idea was to give both players the same objective while giving them fundamentally different ways of approaching the problem.
One player deals with social pressure by confronting it directly, while the other tries to avoid it. Neither approach is sufficient on its own. The game therefore turns the difference between the two players into the basis for cooperation.
We designed the movement rules so that the theme was expressed through the game system itself rather than only through text or narrative. As the parents move, the norms continue to follow and surround them, gradually restricting the available space. The challenge is not to eliminate every norm, but to keep working together despite them.