Will this hippo and his ex-boyfriend
(the shark with the pirate hat)
reconcile before the end of the world?
Viktor Frankl gave me the phrase that I live my life by:
Say Yes to life, in spite of everything.
I’m trying to make games that say yes to life, in spite of everything.
That means I need to create characters with agency, and I need create complicated worlds that require that agency.
But I’m also a silly man. A less-central phrase I live by is:
“If you’re going to tell people the truth, make them laugh, or they’ll kill you.”
So yes, I’m using research from the doctors at the Gottman Marriage Institute in to inform my writing process of how two people can love one another but still be fighting each other – but it’s a hippo and a shark, and when the hippo walks out on the shark to go find himself, the people he meets along the way are a golden truck-driver bird, and a retired pancake-delivery robot who is also a truck driver.
I don’t know when you’ll get an email from me if you get on the list, it might be so far in the distant future that I send out emails about this project, that you’ll see it years from now and go, “Who the hell is this and how did they get my email,” and maybe you’ll remember, “Oh is this the crazy hippo divorce guy??” – but until there’s a Steam page to wishlist the game, don’t you run the risk of forgetting this game exists, and then missing out on your chance to let a hippo and a shark potentially change your life??