Adventure; Ad Game; Educational
Tim und Nina
Tim und Nina is an interactive infotainment program developed as part of an AIDS awareness campaign in Switzerland and released for Windows 95. The application combines playful narration with health educational content and can be classified within the genre of interactive fiction.
In terms of content, the program follows the perspective of either the titular character Tim or Nina, whose developing relationship is presented in a dialogue-based format. Throughout the narrative, health-related and social topics such as contraception, sexually transmitted diseases — including HIV/AIDS — as well as homosexuality are addressed in a humorous and accessible manner.
Building on this program, the sequel Sex Komplex was released in 1998, in which Tim and Nina live together with additional characters in a shared apartment. This program was likewise published in the context of a Swiss AIDS awareness campaign.
In 2011, sw wrote in a comment on the Werbespiel Blog: “The puzzles are extremely simple, and the actual gameplay boils down to dialogue... but that’s not a bad thing given the theme.” The presentation is anything but bad for 1995 and, even from a technical standpoint, better than many commercial adventure games. I’ve now played through about half to three-quarters of the game in half an hour (at least the Tim part) and find it really well-done as an interactive educational tool... though the part about gay people might be a bit “too much of a good thing,” since it basically “works through” a completely different social issue in 5–6 sentences (don’t get me wrong, I’m bi myself, but I strongly suspect that a dialogue like that is more likely to “annoy” than actually make you think).”