Another game (or 3), another rambley postmortem.

I joined Neo Twiney Jam like a week before it was over, mostly because I love playing entries from the jam every year, but also because I wanted to make something for the PRETTYBOY Inc. series. The PBI series is one I enjoy greatly, but it appears I am currently only able to dedicate enough time to make micro games for it right now. I do like what I've done so far, though.

Each of the three games you can consider to be that of an employee profile, with a snippet of their actual work, except it's all the same character but in different versions of the universe. I refer to the MC of this series so far as 'The Puppet,' and each of these games showcases a different version of who he became. Gold is when he's a LXIR ie a hired assassin (a job position no one outside of PBI knows about). Iron is when he becomes a WINDOWBOY ie a model. And Cobalt is when he becomes a LXVER ie a hired escort that definitely doesn't do anything then attend events with people (at least, on paper). Each version of himself exists in a different timeline and is of varying minds. Gold is completely beholden to the company, Iron has flashes of doubt, and Cobalt is free of the company's brainwashing. 

With these three micro games finished, all the games planned after this are intended to be longer. There's one about Belle (the narrator in WINDOWBOY Drowning and The Puppet's sister) and her running into a LXIR from PBI's sister company. There's another one about Hydrogen, another member of PBI whose job mirrors that of The Puppet, and it's about his first day on the job. I'm hoping at some point I can start chipping away at the larger games in the series, but for now, have the last of the short games for the series!

I'm honestly excited for when I get to break open the rest of the world and show it further. I always enjoy surreal, digital hellscapes for a horror setting, and I'm also excited to dive more into the actual horror elements of the series. I think this was just a way to solidify the role of each variant of The Puppet thus far. 

I'm glad I was able to join the jam, and I had a lot of fun with these! I still have a lot to learn in terms of Twine presentation, but this was the first time I designed a Twine game without using a template, and I feel like I learned something from it. I also had fun making the graphics for the game. I've been trying to learn a different type of lineart style, and I used it for the character portraits in this. I also weirdly??? Had a lot of fun making the little period table graphics for each element. It was a lot of fun, and reminded me of my childhood love of science (even if I'm more in the biology/psychology side of things myself).

Aaaand that's all! I hope you enjoy playing!