Loved

• Title — Loved • Developer — Alexander Ocias • Publisher — Alexander Ocias • Engine — Adobe Flash • Platforms — Browser • Released — 14 June 2010 • Genre — Platform • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — A colourful motif appears throughout the environment if the character disobeys the narrator's instructions. A narrator first asks players, "are you a man, or a woman?" Players who select "man" are instead told they are a "girl". Similarly, players who select "woman" are called a "boy". Navigation is by arrow keys, which also control the ability to jump and duck. The narrator instructs players intermittently, sometimes to achieve goals but often to suggest actions that will kill the player character (such as falling into a pit full of spikes). Players are sometimes, but not always, congratulated when following these instructions, while disobeying the narrator results in a barrage of insults. Both the player character and environment are in stark black and white, with a colourful motif appearing if the character disobeys the narrator's instructions, or the visuals becoming more detailed but still in monochrome if the character decides to be compliant.

Loved was built over the course of about half a year, transforming from the exploration genre to a mining- and building-based adventure game before settling on the platform genre. Ocias worked on the game intermittently in his spare time, using his "bit of self-taught programming knowledge" to code it. Although no libraries were used during development, Ocias expressed that he wished that he had during the end of production. Research was taken into achieving "certain little fiddly things," Ocias explained, such as generating the text elements and instructing Flash to read his tile maps. According to Ocias, the main themes of Loved were of dominance and power, since to provide a fuller answer would "defy the point of the game". His intentions in making the game were to get people to think about the games they were playing—a direction he found much of the video game industry shying away from. The confrontational aspect of the game was motivated by two aspects: primarily to use "the resource of emotions" invoked by its risk and reward mechanic; and secondly to absorb the awareness of people online. Expanding upon his inspirations, Ocias cited individual games such as The Last Guardian and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, along with companies such as Thatgamecompany and Eidos Montréal, as showing "greater depth" to video games as well as experimentation and research. Ocias ultimately stated that while he dislikes "force-feeding" players, he would try to take a different approach both mechanically and thematically for his next game.