Quarantine Libido

Confinement is a good engine for this kind of story and the game uses it properly. You are an immigrant with no job, living in an apartment block the authorities have sealed because of a pandemic nobody understands. You cannot leave, neither can your neighbors, and the only thing left to do is get to know the people on the other side of the corridor. Everything that happens comes out of proximity rather than contrivance.

Athycus plays it for comedy more than drama, which fits. The neighbors are a mixed bunch with their own coping strategies for being stuck indoors, the friendships that form feel earned by sheer forced contact, and the scenes are animated. At under 8 MB it is one of the lightest builds on the site and it opens almost instantly on a phone.

Early and uneven

Version 0.04.33 is thin. Several neighbors are introduced and then have nothing for you, and the building has doors that go nowhere yet. The tone also wobbles, since blackmail sits in the tag list next to the jokes and the game does not always decide which register it is in. Promising, unfinished. Free in the browser above.