A new video devlog is out this week. This time we're talking about removing a game from our storefronts.
Video Content Transcript
William Somewhat here, co-founder of Somewhat Software, and welcome to our second dev log video. Today I’m doing something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now : I’m canceling a game.
I made Behold in April 2020 for the Haunted PS1 Wretched Weekend jam and I wasn’t satisfied with it back then and I’m still not satisfied now. The game was meant to be an homage to the inspiring and neon-drenched night-photography movement. It was a self-indulgent reason to create cool places to hang out without any gameplay attached to it.
Of course, I had to make it a game about…something. So I tried to add in a story about a gimp person visiting places for...kink reasons. And you, the player, would witness that gimp person being in places and doing some things and the game would subtly ask the player ‘who are you in relation to this gimp? Are you their partner? By being witness, are you an accomplice? Are you participating in the kink activities you’d be witnessing during the game? Behold was the name of the demo, but the full game would’ve been called Beholden, subtly hinting at a relationship of some kind.
That’s also why this was the only game I made that had the VHS filter on, which is a popular visual effect in the low-poly gamedev community. I felt it was narratively justified because it suggested you were in fact documenting the activities of the gimp person.
But at some point, I’ve had several discussions about the subject of the game, about playing out kinks in public and the psychological motivations behind kinks, etc. And, with some hard to take humility, it became clear to me that I wasn’t fully in control of the narrative I wanted to tackle. I was not the right person to tell that tale, or maybe even the tale wasn’t worth telling.
So I’m cancelling it. It’s still just a demo, and the only ‘free’ game on Itch Somewhat offers right now, so we’ll be removing it by the end of the week. Get it now if you are curious to try it, but know that I do not approve of the game anymore, and pretty much distance myself from it.
Anyways, all of the themes, the ambiance and the self-indulgence will be back full-force in our next project, hopefully in a better, more balanced and more mature package.
See you all real soon, under the full moon.
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