[RELEASE] A Very Pretty Pipe Dream or A Chill Hell or Memeify McCree

[Ben X]

RELEASE: https://timegentleman.itch.io/memeify

 

ORIGINAL POST:

 

"There are no rules"

 

Yesterday, Jake, Chris and Nick streamed most of this Jam's games, promising to finish up the rest (and maybe play some form the previous jams) in a couple of weeks' time. I jokily asked in Slack whether it was too late for me to make an entry so it could get played on the next stream. To my surprise, the answer was yes! So I'm going to make another Cwine game over the next two weeks, based on the three main 'cast titles released since the Jam 'deadline'.

 

I've got a few ideas already, but I thought it would be fun to implement the crowd diversifier. So please, everyone, let me know what ideas for stories, characters, events, jokes etc these titles bring to your mind and I'll fit them in somehow! You could even do concept art or photographs if you like and I'll adapt them into the game's art style.

[zerofiftyone]

So glad you're doing this .

 

I had a quick think about this on the way home in my sleep addled state and came to the conclusion that "A Chill Hell" is just the experience of waiting in a queue alongside totally insufferable people, while relaxing muzak plays over the PA system. I had an experience this year when I was taken to A+E (the ER room for any Americans reading) and while I was in the waiting room there was a couple loudly having an argument; a really loud guy who was asking everyone in the room for cigarettes; and another man who was really interested in striking up a conversation with the other people waiting, asking them why they were there etc.

 

This wasn't the track that was playing; but it was similar:

[phill]

A chill hell is the buffering of a Netflix video, for sure. Or really any situation where you are trying really hard to relax, but something is sticking you in a way that is completely out of your control. Like an itchy tag on a shirt you can't take off.

 

A very pretty pipe dream could be combined with memeify mcree to produce a situation where a gruff, hard-as-nails traditionaloly masculine character dreams of one day taking up a traditionally feminine occupation.

 

Also McCree the actual character is (imo) bullshit overpowered in pub-stomps at the moment, so you could have a character who merely has to breathe on things to blind or kill them (accidentally [kind of like a gruesome midas touch] or intentionally).

[atte]

[Dr Nick]

Haha, I like this pipe dream!

 

For me a Chill Hell is when there is a smudge on your monitor, and without thinking you reach over and try to rub it off, which of course leaves a bigger smudge, etc...

[Spenny]

I memed mccree for you

 

[z_bill]

Jams within jams within memes. Excellent. Mcree has been well memed.

The stream gave me an idea for a game too. But I'll save it til next jam...

[Ben X]

Okay, I've incorporated some of the ideas above, and the general opening concept is

that you are Memeify McCree, you work at The Internet creating memes and sending them down the series of pipes for people to enjoy. The Internet is a Google-type workplace, full of bros enjoying slides and scooters and a wide selection of cereals. It is a chill hell. What you really want to be doing is painting 'shipping art, MLP fan art and such - this is your pretty pipe dream. But you're a bro! Can you really join the Tumblr crowd? "There are no rules"...

 

So, feel free to keep the ideas coming!

What bullshit would there be at this bro/Google/Pixar workplace culture? Who would work there? If McCree decides to keep working there, where could the plot branch off to? Would he uncover a conspiracy? Become one with the meme? If he quits, what trials must he perform to join the Tumblr crowd? Who is part of it already?

 

Come at me, bros!

 

I've started doing rough drafts of panels quickly so I can get everything into Cwine and sort out a skeleton structure that I'm happy with as a minimum. Then I'll start doing the art proper and replacing the roughs. Then I'll spend the rest of the time before the next stream adding in as many story branches as I can...

[zerofiftyone]

From the slack:

[Ben X]

Good stuff, thanks! (can you put that image in spoilers though, please? I don't mind people seeing what has been suggested but I'm trying to keep the general context in spoiler tags)

[atte]

I changed the word gene to meme in various concepts, here's some goofy results that could add flavour to the story:

- Meme Patent (should you be able to patent a human meme!?)
- Memetic Engineering
- Meme Therapy
- Memetype (the memetic material of an organism)
- Meme Pool
- Human Memome Project (identifying and mapping all of the human memes)
- Essential Memes (the set of memes thought to be critical for an organism's survival)
- Memesis? (Genesis)

[Ben X]

Thanks atte! The structure is pretty much nailed down now, but I will try to put at least some of these in either as background/dialogue gags or little hidden story-offshoots.

 

I'm wondering to myself if I could somehow add this comic into Blue Hag Christmas as yet another story to optionally fall into...

[Ben X]

This is now an itchio!

 

https://timegentleman.itch.io/memeify

 

I'd like to try and change the clickables' highlight colour before the Thumbs get to it in a couple of days, but I'm not sure if I'll have time.

[zerofiftyone]

​​This was funny!​! I played it through enough times to see (I think) all of the endings and really enjoyed myself. Also, that opening sequence is incredibly good.

[Ben X]

Yay, thanks! I'll do a little post-mortem post at some point...

[Ben X]

I just watched the Thumbs stream this, and was happy to get a good few laughs out of them. I really hope they play it again in their own time at some point and try to quit the chill hell. I also hope everyone else here gives it a few play-throughs - it would be a shame if it got missed because it came a while after the jam deadline.

 

So, I was much happier with this than my previous one - I overcame a few more tech issues and the story concept and structure was better. I also enjoyed crowd-sourcing; I originally was planning to have The Internet workplace essentially be the wild west, as both a metaphor and to fit with the cowboy-sounding McCree name, and to have the Hell be a literal afterlife, but the suggestions in this thread led me to a the more interesting bro-infested Google/Pixar-type start-up work-place setting. I think I could definitely have turned that into an adventure game, especially once I started adding the conspiracy, different rooms, and world-building details like the emoji-based room signs. I also crowd-sourced the list of fictional cereals to reference (which the Thumbs didn't notice, along with the extended Don Copal's office scene riff which I was very surprised they missed!). Someone originally suggested on Slack that I 'stone soup' the game by secretly completely building it from crowd-sourced ideas, but thankfully I didn't need to do that!

 

The things I'm not so happy with: my art skills aren't great, so there are a few ugly panels in there; I didn't have much time to work on it, so the story isn't quite as extensive as I would have liked.

 

Once I move my desktop out of the living room and into the (very small) second bedroom/office/crap storage, I'm planning to tidy up my previous Cwine game and insert this into it, so it becomes an even branchier game where you have more chances of tripping into a completely different story!