Electrogem

Itch.io port announcement from Balloon Co. [marketing division]: First released in Fall, 2015. Estimated time needed to play: 1 min for a successful run.

A collaboration with another indie dev and released under his GameJolt, Balloon Co. [gaming division] has received permission from said dev to release it on Itch.io under the Balloon Co. [gaming division] label. For historic purposes, below are records of the descriptions and marketing made for the game. Note: the GameJolt description is the only explanation of substance that will tell you anything important about the game. The rest are here for archival purposes.

GameJolt description:

Collect gems and avoid the energy bullets. The more gems you collect, the more bullets you need to dodge, so be careful! #arcade

Tumblr description:

A make your own bullets dodge'em up.  For legal reasons that involve a lot of Latin and deep throat chanting, our lawyers made us release the game through a non-balloon co [gaming division] outlet run by developer who is officially independent from our company (we think they should shorten that term to something.  Maybe we should call them pendie game developers)  As such, here is our game that does not have us in the credits.

Promotional email:

We regret to inform you that we have finished another game that doesn't star a hero that wears a green and blue cape.

In our defense, IT WASN"T OUR FAULT IT WAS OUR BOSSES FAULT THEY MADE US DO IT WE CAN"T BE HELD RESPONSIBLE!

So, remember that one RPG we made for a contest?  Well, turns out that not only did it finish two months after the judges said it would (which confirms our previous theory that "deadlines" are supposed to be missed in order to allow for the superior undeadlines to roam), we got a gift card prize for participating!  However, after taking two more months to research how to use it, and another 3 weeks on what to spend it on, it expired, AND UNLIKE DEADLINES EXPIRED GIFT CARDS DON"T COME BACK FROM THE DEAD!!!

Our bosses were not happy to hear we squandered our prize, so they ordered us to enter a different secret contest.  For this contest, we had to make a game that could be completed in 60 seconds.  And we actually finished!

But it was over 60 seconds.

So we had to cut.

OUR AWESOME DEEP LENGTHY BACK STORY WE WROTE FOR THE GAME!

So, here is the super important story that is very important to understanding and playing this video game.

"Long ago, in the far away future, the past has come back to present a problem to the future perfect's present.  You are an alien from Balloon Co. [planet division] with a very important mission.  The planet YAYA-OUOU has gotten its planet hands on wealth gems due to their stupid game playing device that TAKES AWAY FREE-TO-WIN BUSINESS.  And thus, it is up to {$}#</: (that's your name), to trek to that dreaded planet and steal the wealth gems for the glorhonory of the greatest planet in existence! (Hint: IT ISN"T YAYA-OUOU!)

But the not-balloon co planet has some tricks up its robosleeves: They are held in an alternate dimension and only appear in the normal dimension room one at a time!   Not only that, but transferring the gem into your pocket dimension storage pocket activates the RED CIRCLE SECURITY!  What are these red circles?  Electric flying tomatoes?  Sentient killer polka dots?  Symbols of your guilt for breaking your monk vows not to steal even from people who TOTALLY DESERVE IT?  Who knows?  All we know is that if you touch it YOU WILL BE VAPORBURNED OUT OF EXISTENCE!  Quick, the return ship is coming back to teleport you back in 59.9999999999737485749999 seconds!  Loot as much stealing as you can $<! (That's your nickname you got from a class bully but re appropriated into a term of endearment)"

We entered our severely butchered game.  We knew it would fail.

AND IT WAS TRUE WE DIDN"T EVEN BEAT ANY OF THE OTHER GAMES ENTERED.

But we still won the prize.

Nobody else entered.

We wish we didn't win though.

The prize was a 900 hour course on learning some dumb programing language named after some stupid rock: Amethyst.  So now our bosses are making us learn this new "make videogames with a programming languages only weird foreign immigrant computers speak."  And if our lawyers didn't currently have knives pressed against my neck right now, I'd have some choice words to say about foreign computers that don't speak C+-/%, the greatest programing language of all OUCH Inmypersonalopinionnotfacttheviewsexpressedherearen'tofballoon co.

What I'm trying to say is that its gonna be a while until we get back to the Matt that is mighty.  Our fortune teller says summer will be good for crops, so we think that might be when we get back to the mighty one.  In the kinda nice kinda mean time, here is a link to a pirated version of our contest winning-and-losing game:[Link removed]

Well, time to start chipping away at that 900 hours.  Super sigh.