Like so many projects of mine, most of them never reach the finish line, however I want to share with you a game I had intended to make after Planter's Diary. It's a point and click life-sim called PK ULTRA!!
The premise of PK-Ultra was that it took place in an alternate history where "brain-compatable technology" has been around since the 1970s. In the modern day, this meant that you could purchase cartridges (or plug-ins) for your brain that could assist you with any number of things. Below are a collection of advertisements for "Brain Plug-ins":
You play as Wesley, a trans boy who's looking for work in the fast-paced tech world.
Using your trusty smart watch, you have an assortment of ways to manage your stats.
But this life-sim isn't the cozy escape you expect it to be. This is a survival game about managing your hunger, paying your rent, and working in a gig economy.
How will you ever manage all this on your own? Well remember, this is an alternate universe with brain enhancements, and take a wild guess what the main gimmick of the game is:
Yep! Throughout the game, you'll be required to purchase these plug-ins to performance-enhance your life. Anything from Hourglassy: the encyclopedia for your brain. Znoose: the sleep aid which lowers the amount of time you have to rest. TURBO BRAIN: a super duper safe plug-in that overclocks your brain. or even PAWS: which teaches you wholesome American values such as racism.
You'll be able to explore a semi-open world full of weird and wonderful side characters. One of them is a programmer named Edith, who's working on a modded Znoose which can instantly put your brain to sleep with the push of a button.
Her ultimate plan is to enter the astral plane by essentially locking her consciousness out of her body using this tech. Whether her plan succeeds or fails is... left to interpretation.
The villain of the game is Leon LeMain, the CEO of a company called Hourglass which produces Rightaway. He ends up being at the centre or a grand mind control conspiracy (who would've guessed) and it's all up to you and a small group of friends to tear the whole operation down.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed what was essentially an art dump for a no longer in-development project. Maybe someday I'll salvage these ideas for something in the future. Here's a bus ticket if you ever want to visit this setting again.
