Enough of a Mess

FREE BOOKS

I made this game to promote my poetry book. Now it's time for you to win a free one, by doing one of the following:

1. Win on "Impossible" difficulty 
2. Finish a speedrun in under 2 minutes (by the in-game timer)
3. Find all of the in-game texts (making them all visible on the Texts screen)
4. Capture a screenshot using the Take Screenshot button 

If you're one of the first ten people to send me a screenshot documenting one of the above achievements, I'll mail you a copy of my book! Send screenshot to: 

 

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FOR BEST PERFORMANCE, DOWNLOAD THE WINDOWS VERSION BELOW

Tips:

• Right click and drag to look around
• Walk to food to pick it up
• Hit opponents with food to level up and see poetry 
• The sum of "Mess" and "Hilarity" determines which text you will read
  
• Gain additional power-up items by leveling up
• The "Demon Refractor" power-up item reveals the level exit. It is a large ice cream cone that eats you when you get very close.

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My thanks to composer Erik Griswold for his permission to play his music in the menu screens. Please find his music at his bandcamp.

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Why does this turn-based food fight simulator exist, though? I always loved the old Atari "Food Fight," I played a lot of it on my 7800, and I thought it would be fun to update it. On another level, I developed this game as a kind of playable "trailer" for my poetry book The Amber in Ambrose and other poems, which is forthcoming from Trnsfr Books in 2023. The game is full of little text snippets and samples from the book. 

It should be noted (particularly by anyone still reading after the paragraph above) that the game and the book are tonally different from one another (the game being light, even trivial by comparison), though they bear on one another in curious ways. I think of games (and poems for that matter) as artificed dreams, to be shared between people. It's an unwise person who treats even trivial dreams unseriously; but then, it's foolish to throw food, too.