Smart Theory is a short, choice-based, satirical game made in Ink. You play as a college student who attends a crash course in a new philosophy that’s suddenly become popular on campus. Nearly the entirety of the game is a conversation between you and the speaker. As such, it’s a game that’s explicitly about ideas rather than a game that’s telling a story or a game that’s presenting a collection of puzzles to be solved.
Smart Theory’s satire is aimed at certain features of social justice ideology, particularly its manifestation in online activism. I’m in general agreement with much of Smart Theory’s critique, but I’m not sure that it works all that well as a game. There’s little interactivity, for one. Yes, there are choices presented, but except for the final one they don’t appear to have much effect on the main flow of the game. I also think a story whose plot and character interaction dramatize the problems to which Smart Theory is calling attention would be a more effective satire than one that is nearly all conversation.
Still, several of its punches land. And I think the game is strongest when it takes aim at the banality, trite slogans, and general shallowness of online activism—problems that are certainly not limited to any one worldview.
An Exercise for the Reader 