Merez

Disclaimer: All names and details are fictional. They are intended for experimental and entertainment purposes, any resemblance is purely coincidental.
 
Merez is a paper prototype for a text based Indian themed game using 'Empathy' as a mechanic. You play as an Indian marriage bureau broker determining the right matches after going through various profiles of Grooms and Brides.

There are 6 characters with 9 matches.

Three Men(Ravi, Suresh and Nitesh) and Three Women(Sunitha, Vemala and Samata).

Each of them with a unique personality.

How to Play:
1. One or More players: This game can be played alone (ideally) or with a group of friends together if you feel like it.
2. Start in any Order: After downloading all the profiles (recommend printing down each of them if you can) you can start by going through any profile you want. There is no character profile order to start from.
3. Interpret Information: Each profile contains some basic information and some descriptions - the player is free to interpret the information about the character however they find reasonable.
4. Decide their Fate: Once you have gone through a profile, go through the profiles the potential brides or grooms (depending on whether you picked a bride or groom) to find a suitable match.
5. Alternate Approach: you can go through profiles of all the brides and grooms first and then decide on an outcome.
6. Check Results: Once you have determined your choices you can download the Matches document and see how you fared (Matches document contains all match outcomes).
7. Success and Failure: The basic criteria for success is that the characters get married. As this game is meant to invoke introspection, beyond this point the player is left to determine if they indeed made the best possible choice and how they reason with it vs the events of the outcome.
8. Replay?: Ideally the players are only given one shot at this game but in its current form I cannot enforce that.

There are only wrong answers and less wrong answers. Choose wisely.

Note: This is currently not entirely representative of the various Indian demographics looking to get married but only a small portion of the various communities - I'd have ideally liked to make a more diverse list of characters of all races, castes, genders and orientations within the 'Indian context' but the intent behind this paper prototype was to test the core gameplay and gather feedback.