a game about how much i dont want to take part in adulthood, set in midwestern space

the abyss strikes fear in my heart

Here is my moodboard:

early notes

rostam’s song/music video “EOS” flaming lips dark blues and bright pinks/oranges simplicity of line and color, modeled after moebius/japanese paintings flat cel-like animation on top of textured backgrounds chinese imagery, texture, etc. entirely foreign (at least to an english-speaking audience). how would the space race have manifested in china? how would the artists and writers of the song/tang dynasty visually and linguistically expressed their feelings on space exploration? journey to the west? a hero’s journey oil pastel, colored pencil, crayon. a mixture of stop motion and analog animation IMAGES a telephone booth in the middle of a planet lines of bright orange in a dark blue sky the red/white/blue/orange glow of a rising planet REFERENCES Kentucky Route Zero KOTOR Freshman Year "EOS" "No Surprises" OVERVIEW Eject test on threes The Tennessee Waltz QUOTES The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar – forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel; our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence. -Virginia Woolf Along the coast we could see time and space / And across the water it was all emptiness / But I held you close, my cheek pressed up against yours / And we could feel the storm gathering in front of us both -“EOS” by Rostam

visually, a space roadtrip

what's it mean?

vague outline

  1. zoom in from way beyond in space over planets and horizons and onto a highway
  2. car is driving on a highway. it's sunset, and you drive onwards, burying deep into the moutainous horizon. music is playing. there's twizzlers in the front seat and diet mountain dew in the back
  3. you take a look at your map. you'll reach your destination in about half an hour. the map is stupidly simple, like a slightly meandering line curving across the page to meet a star, demarcating an unknown location
  4. suddenly, the music stops. your car stalls. i don't know enough about cars to know why it stalls, but it stalls nonetheless. you don't know enough about cars to know why it stalls either. suddenly, you find yourself slowly pulling to a halt. the road is silent.
  5. you look around. there are no other cars on the road. so, you decide to walk. direction doesn't matter, but you must make the decision to walk. you can also chill by the car and watch some bats in the sky, but it'll probably get boring, eventually.
  6. after walking for a bit in the fields that surround the highway you were on, you discover a dirt road. the shadow of a person is silhouetted by the sunset. it's walking towards you
  7. eventually you meet up with the person. she asks if you are a traveler, and you say, i guess i am. she says, not many people find our town, even though it's not too far from the highway. you don't see any town nearby, but disregard this fact. you ask if there is a mechanic in town who can help fix your car. she says yes, he has been there since as far back as she can remember, and that he would certainly be able to help fix you car. you say thank you, and you go on your merry way. but before you go, you ask for her name. she gives it. then, she asks you yours. you get to decide between "clementine" and "konstantin" (or something else, idk yet). you part ways.
  8. you walk along the road, still trying to find the town. no sight of it, yet. it's getting darker, and you worry a bit. but you stumble upon a few locations on the way. each location contains one main person to talk to, and maybe one or two supporting characters. there are five locations in total, not organized linearly, so you can decide who you get to meet first based on which direction you go to. one of these people is a person who will accompany you throughout the game.
  9. the various characters in the game are:
  10. the mechanic is an elusive character. he is constantly referred to as a genius, a handsome handyman, a polymath, etc. etc. but you never meet him. every person you talk to speaks of him, but you slowly begin to realize that everyone says something different about him, some different miracle.
  11. the "town" itself is a labyrinth. there is no clear end or beginning. you find people in locations independent of where you decided to turn.
  12. “trying to build! connect! network!”
  13. the last stop you make (but you don't know it's the last stop, of course) is a record store, or a concert or something. music. you talk to the representative of the location, and they ask if you want any CDs, because there aren't any more boom boxes in the town. you say no thanks, your car is so old and shitty it only plays cassette tapes. your friend pipes up and says that he's been carrying around a cassette tape all this time with no where to play it. you're like, fuck this mechanic, let's go back to my car and play this cassette.
  14. its some really shitty cheesy song about love or something, an 80s love ballad. and you look upwards at the sky and drive off into the sunset, or directly into a canyon, or watch the universe as it passes by
  15. but like in the office, as the music is playing, it goes from the scene you're in with your friend to some other scenes with other people, and they're all doing stupid shit. all the while the ballad is playing.

music ideas

inspiration