Dashcam has you driving to a parent-teacher conference to deal with your child’s evil gene

Did you play Anthology of the Killer like I told you to? I knew I could count on you, person who replied, “Yes.” As a reward, I’ve got a different game for you to check out. It’s Dashcam, a narrative “experience” about being late for a parent-teacher conference.

It will take you about 7-ish minutes to play. If you’re like me, it’s much better spent this way. I would have been scrolling for neat games on social media to share with you but instead found myself doom-scrolling unconsciously, only snapping out of it when I realized I was in Hell. Don’t do that. Play Dashcam instead.

You start off driving down a highway at night. You’re late for a parent-teacher conference. Your husband will remind you if you choose to honk to pick up the phone; he’s such a nag. Maybe if you demonstrate enough unreliability, it will take some of the focus off whatever little Stephen is doing to disappoint his teachers.

Once there, you’ll drive through the halls of the school to learn about how your child is perhaps up to something far more sinister than just cheating on a test. Custom tarot cards about crime, an Angst Hole in the floor of the gym for angst-ing, blackmailing a teacher – the sort of thing that many young teens get up to.

Maybe it would please the teachers if you took corrective action by injecting yourself and your car into the little brat to eliminate his “Evil Gene.” But I’m not sure that sort of discipline is the right way to go. It certainly didn’t work when my parents tried it.

Dashcam is a narrative game that reminds me of the Ecto-1 segments of Ghostbusters Doom 2, because I know you understand that reference. There’s a car’s windshield framing your screen, but you still feel like a person. It makes you think, “Why do we bother getting out of our cars? We’re just going to get back in them later.”

I don’t drive, but if you replace the word “cars” with “beds,” then that’s what I think every day.

You can play Dashcam for free over on itch.io. It was created for the Pizza Jam #8 by ComputerJames, the person who judges Pizza Jam.