In the Summer issue of the Fullbright Newsletter (which you should sign up for if you haven’t!), I introduced the concept of Fullbright Presents: an ongoing series of small, strange, lo-fi games I'm producing as a solo developer, to be released into Steam Early Access as they roll off the production line. And now, just a few short months later, here it is! This isn't a super-rough alpha Early Access launch either, the game is actually a pretty polished version of itself. There's a little more in the way of features and content to add, balance to improve, and bugs you'll help me find that I'll need to fix, but really at its heart this is the game as it's intended to be played.
So, what is this game you might ask? Perhaps the real place to begin with that question is: what is a Fullbright game? With Gone Home and Tacoma, and even Minerva's Den, which is the proto-Fullbright game in many ways, these games at their core have been about humanity: the human side of the characters' experience, understanding who they are as people, what events in their lives shaped them, and in the end how their experiences might relate to our own lives, outside the game. Whether it's Charles Milton Porter's attempts to overcome immeasurable loss only to have to learn to accept and move on, Sam Greenbriar's struggles to reconcile her own identity with the expectations and prejudices of her peers and her family, or the crew of Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma banding together in the face of impossible odds and learning to rely on each other in spite of their many differences— these are games about people first, and through learning about them, perhaps we learn just a little bit about ourselves as well.
Anyway, the new game is called TOILET SPIDERS, enjoy!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3098700/Fullbright_Presents_TOILET_SPIDERS/
You may be asking yourself: “What?”
And to you, my answer is:
Toilet. Spiders.
Truly excellent cover art and logo by Markus Bülow
In brainstorming ideas for Fullbright Presents entries I've gone far afield, sketching up concepts for cinematic vignettes, digital travelogues, job simulators, single-room immersive sims, and yes, one darkly comedic, play-the-odds, randomization-based arachnid-centric non-combat survival horror game.
But Toilet Spiders didn't come strictly from my own imagination: my five-year-old daughter Juniper actually gave me the idea, when one day she speculated about what if a spider jumped out of the toilet and scared grandma— and of course my immediate response was, well I could make a video game out of that. Now the game is out, and if you're able to complete it, you'll see that Juniper gets the first line in the credits.
The idea for the game ended up aligning with a number of other conceptual items I'd been wanting to play with: a game set in an abandoned research facility, a straight-up horror game, a game about managing your resources and tilting the odds inspired by the brilliant Buckshot Roulette. And so, for better or worse, TOILET SPIDERS was born.
"What PSYCHO did for showers…
What JAWS did for the ocean…
You’ll never look at a toilet the same way again!"
So, the game is now in its first Early Access version, meaning it's not fully feature- or content complete, and I'm looking to you for input on balance and tuning, bugfinding and general feedback on the state of the game as it approaches 1.0. If you take the time to play the game (and I'll be so grateful if you do,) feel free to post on the game's Steam forum with any feedback you may have! All input will be considered, and will make a huge difference to future versions of the game.
I do hope you'll check out Fullbright Presents TOILET SPIDERS; if you dig it, please leave a Steam review, it's the best way to get more folks onboard!
Thanks for playing, enjoy (?) your time in my lo-fi hell world of giant spiders jumping out of toilets onto your face— and good luck!
-steve
