Give Me Strength.

Nice little game. I used the word "little", but it is not a criticism. In fact, GiveMeStrength is a poem - something without any pretension, but which gives us the desire to meet people, interacting with others. I really like it. This game made my day. This is exactly what I expect from a game. The main aesthetic is minimalist, but with great animations. The music is beautiful - something ethereal and quiet. Thank you ++

i love this so much. i found it at exactly the right time. thank you so much for making this!

I really like the idea of this game, with all this thoughts and stuff, but actually I had so much fun in the dancing part :D

It made me really happy and I didn't expect that, I played it much longer than ten minutes, thanks for that!

This game stole 3 hours and 44 minutes of my night, caused me to download numerous programs and probably a good few viruses onto my computer, and will have single-handedly ruined my sleep schedule. In other words, this game was fantastic. All this despite - or perhaps because of - the immense pain and suffering it has brought upon me.

I am not writing of the game's content itself, that has been done already and I assure you it was fantastic. No, I seek to tell the story of my arduous journey in searching for a way to play the original speaking audio of the... characters(?) in the game.

Admittingly, I may be my own to blame for this games trespass. I won't lie, I thought it would be easy to find and play the audio. I started off and went into the game data, finding a folder of streaming assets. Easy right? This story complete? NO! NOT EVEN CLOSE! NOT BY A MILLION MILES CLOSE IN ANY CONCEIVABLE WAY! Why not, you might ask? Well because of the painful, and I do mean painful fact that the audio files were of the .BANK type.

You see, the way in which one goes about converting this file type is so brain dead, so cruel to anyone who might try, I honestly question the mental state of whoever designed such a heinous file format. Hours spent reading guides from online websites, downloading programs which were supposed to convert BANK. files and didn't, frustration incarnate is a meek and meager description of what I could call my supposed feeling at that point. Quite frankly, there was no feeling. Only a sunken suffering of the soul as I plunged deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of YouTube videos with less than five views and hyperlinks with less than superb standards. Download buttons placed in the abandoned wreckages of decade old websites, whose remains I robbed in search of a conversion tool.

Over and over I went through the excruciating process of trying programs, which either didn't work due to my computers age (it uses windows 7, so sue me) or which were so broken they wouldn't have functioned under any right circumstance. A repetition of program deletion, guide finding, video watching, hyperlink clicking, program downloading, program failing, and program deletion.

Finally, after multiple hours, I stumbled upon a blessing of a video, with a functioning download and a working program to convert .BANK files. They were then converted to .WAV files, which forced me to download VLC Media Player. I would attend to frustration further, but compared to what I had already faced it was very little to ask at that point. I finally had access to the voice lines of the games characters. The oh-so inspirational dialogue that I sold my life to.

Game developer, James Poole, you have created something which has changed this day in my life completely and totally. It means something, to have had purpose in a task, even one so frustrating. Well, after all is said and done anyways. It has been been done, and now it is said. Thank you James, and whoever else needs thanking of course.

Also, forgive what are surely ramblings of stupidity in this comment, I am tired. So, so tired.

by "playing" this interactive thought, i'm reminded of the thousands of strange, some inaccessible thoughts i have about every single part of the creative process. i'm reminded of the fact that 90% of what i create is going to be shit and that i should accept that and continue creating regardless of that fact. and, finally, i am also reminded of the beginner's guide by davey wreden which is the highest compliment i could give to an interactive experience.

What a wonderful game!

I don't often write reviews, but I thought I'd give it a go here.

Over lockdown, I imagine thousands of   socially  starved creatives came up with some crazy ideas for games (or  'interactive thoughts' in this case) , and one in which you walk around interacting with hundreds of  thoughts and feelings  most certainly seems like it wouldn't have been made otherwise. Some are completely mundane, others are more thought -provoking, and some made me LOL ('THROW  THOSE SHAPES'). But they all form  the seemingly endless network of thoughts that make up 'Give Me Strength', allowing  the flow of James' thoughts to be relatable to all in some way, particularly people like me who like art and want to make it good, but have no idea how or why. 

In terms of technical side of the game, there are one or two minor  things that pulled me out of the experience. Firstly, I accidentally skipped the tutorial and opening monologue by going to the blue guy  straight away, which was fixed by a second playthrough. A more  not-me problem is how, in the first level, there are invisible boundaries that make quite a few of the 'red guys' inaccessible; something very frustrating for  100% perfectionists   like me in  such narrative experiences.   However,  I'm not sure whether this an over-sight or a deliberate stylistic choice, since we can't access all our thoughts at the same time (would love to hear James' thoughts on this!).

The soundtrack is a great background to the experience,  being  soft and flowing enough to not interrupt your own thoughts and the flow of the experience, but never in a dull moment when you do pull away to listen to it: like good   elevator music, but better     and mirroring the echoed style of some character models. The animation style has a similar flow, with excellent and yet so tragically under-used dance moves, which definitely took far more  development time  than most other things in the game.

I don't believe that such an open ended game is designed to tell a cohesive story. Instead, it allows  the player to think as deeply and take as many lessons from it as they can interpret. I, for one, was reminded that good work comes from throwing lots of bad work out there  and seeing what people like. While  'Give Me Strength' can allow you to have a good think about the nature of your own wandering thoughts, I believe it is a little too abstract, and requires too much internal analysis, to gain mass appeal. But I'm also fairly sure that making the next indie  darling wasn't James' intention, but just to put another game out there and see if anybody could make meaningful connections to it. In that regard, I think it's class.