'Speaking Simulator' Feels Different When You Have a Stutter

You just open your mouth and speak.Julie Muncy Eric Adams Julie Muncy Speaking Simulator, by developer Affable Games, puts the player in the head of a robot that has to puzzle out, syllable by syllable, how to talk. Every interaction is deliberately clumsy and difficult to control, so that even when you succeed, you have smoke coming out of your ears.Speaking Simulator is a part of a tradition of "simulator" games that are poorly designed on purpose, set up not to actually simulate the act of doing something but to render the entire exercise absurd. At worst, you chuckle a few moments and move on.Simulator games aren't supposed to make you think, really. It's infuriating.In the first stage of Speaking Simulator, I'm on a date with a coworker, struggling to push out comically written flirtations and prepping my drink order. Questions like: Why isn't there any evidence that real-life speech impediments were considered as even a touchstone for this title's development? I can't speak to how it feels to play QWOP with a motor disability, but it's a game built entirely around the joy of unexpected success. Which, I suppose, makes Speaking Simulator the most accurate simulation of having a speech impediment I've ever played.