Well This is Awkward

Well This is Awkward is a Twine-based comedy game that takes a scenario most adults find genuinely uncomfortable—buying condoms at a store—and turns it into an interactive exercise in social navigation. Emma Kidwell strips away fantasy and sci-fi trappings to focus on the mundane embarrassment of everyday life, making the game's central tension feel immediately relatable rather than absurd.

Gameplay centers on dialogue choices as you approach the counter. Your decisions determine how awkward the interaction becomes, affecting both your character's composure and the cashier's reaction. It's lightweight mechanically—text-based navigation through conversational branches—but the writing carries the weight. The humor lands in the specificity of social anxiety rather than shock value; you're managing your own nervousness and the other person's comfort level simultaneously, which creates genuine comedy in the gap between intention and execution.

The adult framing here is mature and self-aware rather than gratuitous. Kidwell treats the scenario with the same tone someone might use discussing sex ed in a health class—direct, slightly awkward, but normalized. There's no graphic content; the game's "adult" label comes from its subject matter and the implicit acknowledgment of sexuality, not from explicit depiction.

The game is brief and designed for quick replays (fullscreen recommended), making it ideal for moment-to-moment play. As a Twine title running in HTML5, it's accessible across browsers without installation. It won't occupy more than 15–20 minutes per playthrough, but the branching structure invites experimentation to find different outcomes.