Among the critical views here, I think we need at least one that is constructively critical. While I agree with some of the critiques that this doesn't qualify as a 'game' and shouldn't be in the gaming category, it does deserve some warrants. Being more of a dialog honestly, not really even qualifying as a movie or interactive story, the only interaction being the end which offers two options and only take you to one further screen which seems to be more an introspective summary of the preceding rantings of the red crayon.
I agree, it does look like it was done by a small child and I know that it was the creators wanted. But why?
The red crayon is a personification of you. The human race. The child would be the essence of the driving force that propels you. The child expended the crayon because it loved it. It used it because it was it's favorite. The crayon knew this and relished in the idea that it would be so implemented in all of the child's works. But it also knew that this came at a price. That it's life would be cut short due to its utilization.
How does this translate to us? Could the child be the essence of God? Perhaps our desire for success? Or desire for acceptance and to be needed? The red crayon asked if you would fight for your life essentially becoming like the red crayon, or just continue living it and end up some other color crayon.
But the end seems counter intuitive to what the crayon was saying. He said he had accepted his fate, decided that to be used up by the child's love for him was better than to not be used and be any other color crayon. Then when you say that you will just live your life, accept it as it is, he says you will end up another color crayon.
If you say that you will fight for your life he says that you will essentially be a red crayon. But this is after he says that a red crayon must accept his fate to be consumed by the joy that his utilizing entity so pours upon him. So the end is truly contradictory to everything the crayon has said.
I agree that we just continue to be valuable, and that the effort that we put in will consume us. I feel the undertones that you are going for here and they did strike me... to the point of writing this review. I just feel that the target was missed. The bad reviews show that the audience missed the obvious theme by tearing the submission apart as "NOT A GAME"... ok, yeah we get it.. they missed the deeper message.
I appreciate what you guys are going for here and would like to see you rethink the dialog, and change the approach. It is quite an existential submission with much potential as to the message that is being conveyed. The innocence of the child behind the scenes is brilliant. Almost a conundrum like entity that possesses god-like airs yet is merely a force that drives us. Like a dog looks up to its child owner as it is the creator, not knowing any better, the crayon has accepted the favor of the child as fate and destiny.
So that is why the ending is ironic and counter-intuitive. To fight would be deny the child, to NOT accept fate. So it seems odd how you played it out.
Overall I think I over-analyzed this and have had too much to drink. And I have a strange desire to go draw in blood.