honestly I hate βcan you pet the dog?!?β not for any of the common reasons but because it was initially interesting as a proposition of βcan you interact with the world in a way that is not within the primary mechanical loopβ and that very quickly fell away to being βwell now any indie developer making a game has to have a pet the dog button or theyβre going to get lettersβ
One of my dream projects has an NPC with a dog, and if you try to pet it, the owner tells you not to do that. If you try again, it bites you and you take damage. I want to do this entirely because I genuinely believe that this would make me feel way more grounded in the world than any βclick button to see cute animationβ would ever do, and also it would be really funny to have a game where people lose their runs because they tried to pet a dog they were told not to pet

















