Play here -> https://nekrofelia.itch.io/fragile-handle-with-care
CONCEPT & MECHANICS
Fragile: Handle with Care is a short interactive fiction about moving out as a young adult.
The story of Fragile: Handle with Care takes the players through a last look at their room before leaving their parents’ house to live alone.
The main theme of Fragile: Handle with Care is maintaining the balance between conflicting feelings: the eagerness to sever all ties with the past to start a whole new life and the desire to stay and leave everything unchanged. While it is perfectly normal to feel both of these feelings, it is important to not lean too much on one or the other: living alone is indeed the start of a new chapter, but that doesn’t mean throwing away every connection to life before that; on the other hand, living alone is a big step, especially if it’s the first time, and the fear of change is always behind the corner.
With this experience in mind, while exploring the room players are always dealt two choices that express these two feelings. Each choice is connected to a color: blue for the desire to stay, orange for the desire to start anew.
With each choice, the screen starts shifting toward one of these two colors, depending on which choice was picked. Turning the screen completely blue or orange triggers two different endings, because it means having lost balance between feelings.
Here is a flowchart that maps each choice, its color, and all the endings (open the image in a new tab to zoom it):
MARTINA RAICO 