The Soup Road
(Paint Jam 2021 entry)
Sell humanoid junk and save the Humanology Museum!
Humans have extincted themselves, and all we have left of them is a bunch of paraphernalia we don't understand. This is a silly shop-running game about pawning off objects to clueless non-human customers.
The Soup Road was created in under 48h for Paint Jam 2021 (as in MS paint).
Core Design
The idea came from the desire to integrate interesting writing into a game we knew (and hoped) would look very very silly. Figuring out how we could explore the randomness of carefree, uncoordinated production was vital.
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The mixture of shop-running and a chaotic, quirky aesthetic was ideal. The whole fun of the experience is not in trying to maximizing profit, but in getting into the minds of these weird creatures and laughing at their absurd understanding of our everyday stuff.
Basically, this is very much not a barter simulator, but a text-based game. Reading up on what the Humanology Museum curator bug (wrongly and expertly) thinks about each item is the only experience-defining activity players undertake.
Our little alien friends, who look and act like they were conceived by 5-year old children, make perfect customers. All you have to do is pick a fitting item for each alien. Some will pay more, some less, depending on how ideal the choice was. There wasn't enough time to balance the price swindling mechanic, so all we had going for us was goofy descriptions. Honestly, it was quite enough to make a unique, self-contained romp!
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Since I was relegated to writing in a text-based jam game, it was a great opportunity to showcase my chops in a pressure situation. We ended up with 30 aliens and 30 items worth of light reading. Each item has 3 different descriptions, with a little story about their discovery, their presumed use and observations. You can check it all out on this neatly organized spreadsheet here!
Writing
Figuring out a fun concept to write about was half the battle. From there, it was a very intuitive process of deconstructing meaning from mundane objects, actions and cultural entities in a comedic way. It was a blast to figure out what purpose and value random items could have in a setting that makes absolutely no sense. You could even call it critical of consumer capitalism!
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Sound Effects
What better fit for an agressively rustic aesthetic than mouth sounds?
Check it out on itch.io!