You Are Our 1millionth customer!: Game Jam 2022
- Lucelia Price
- Mar 24, 2022
- 2 min read
I wasn't actually going to take part in this game jam. In truth I was insanely tired, stressed and very very fed up with life in general. However about two days in to the game jam my mind, as it often does when stressed, decided to latch on to the most interesting thing that can distract me. It turns out a game jam with the theme loop was enough to let me make something about as incoherent and unhinged as I felt.
Thanks to the previous years game jam I found out about a text based program called Twine from a friend. With three days left of the jam, class in the morning and fuelled by the adrenaline caused by sleep deprivation mixed with an unholy amount of stress I made a game. Its not a particularly good or bad game. Its not very advanced. Its littered with spelling mistakes. But its mine and as such I'm proud of it.
The games premise is quite simple: you have chosen to take this survey for a cool prize. However the tone of the surface is an obvious parody of the various scams you come across the internet. Chiefly the fake surveys with overly expensive gifts, the one millionth customer prizes and the numerous shady companies that try to scam you out of your time and card details. Beneath the surface of an annoying loop game I wanted to make something strange and self aware that's a bit freaky. A couple times I did manage this with certain dialogue showing up on old pages if you do certain actions or if you spend too long on the T&C page it asks why you're reading it all. Sadly three days isn't enough to fully realise the premise of this game, polish it and learn a whole new engine so I find the fact that I finished it in time impressive.
There's a lot I want to expand on and polish up with this game. I want to plan the routes out more, get rid of all the spelling mistakes and add a whole lot more in terms of secret messages and having a dark underbelly to explore.
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