Face Time

“A pixelized horror game made in RPG Maker, with changing perspectives and time loops.”

Face Time was a week-long exercise in doing art and writing around a game mechanic: the same story, told from different perspectives. I took the Global Game Jam theme of ‘masks’ as an opportunity to try making a game around this concept, which had been cooking in my brain for a while. I decided to use the idea of a grotesque face-stealing creature to explain how you could see the same story from different perspectives, and let you collect ‘faces’ or ‘masks.’ I also dabbled in hand-drawn animation for this, which was insightful.

I took inspiration from Faith: The Unholy Trinity in the animation and general vibe of the game, and games like Zero Escape for the time loop story inspiration. I also wanted to capture the feel of a RPG Maker Horror classic like Mad Father or Ib: I wanted the setting to feel desolate, surreal, and haunted. The game is set in a carnival with characters reminiscing about happier times in their life, and a creature who desperately wants to feel something close to the human experience.

I was short on time so it wasn’t possible to design the story and puzzles around this, but I wanted the game to be about the feeling of alienation and living on the fringes of a society that you know you can never be a part of, and the different perspectives you might take to cope with it. You might have to believe in yourself and do things that are difficult knowing that life gets better eventually, or you might lose hope and embrace destruction in the desperation to feel something.

I have ideas to revamp the story and puzzles to better fit the theme I have in mind - one day I may come back to this and flesh it out into something better. It also needs a better title - it involves faces and time, so I came up with this last minute.