Professor Chaos's "Mean Sardine Machine"

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.09
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.94
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.87
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.11
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.81
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.52
Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.00
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.21
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★100%
====== STORY ======

Lately, Professor Chaos had fallen on hard times for a super villain. Every one of his plans had been thwarted by simple second rate superheroes, including a troop of girl scouts. Where had then glory days gone? Those long lost battles and masterful plans that defined his career had all but disappeared.

And then it hit him - all this time he'd been making it too easy for them to catch him. He set about work crafting a revolutionary mind control machine - a way to implant his monstrous mind into the body of any other person and control them from afar. Better yet, he found that sowing chaos like this allowed him to harvest AWKWARD ENERGY™ for every social interaction he ruined. How could they catch the Professor if it was never him to disrupt society?

The machine's first test ended dramatically as its first tester awoke, believing herself to be a fish. A well known master of the pun arts, the vile Professor nicknamed the machine the "Mean Sardine Machine". Everyone laughed, and clapped and cheered. Everyone being, of course, Professor Chaos. Now, another test subject has been abducted, the AWKWARD ENERGY™ batteries are ready for more power, the machine is (theoretically) safer, and the Professor is ready to have a whale of a time!

Are you ready to step into the Mean Sardine Machine and ruin lives like the monster you've always wanted to be?

====== INSTRUCTIONS ======

Control with arrow keys and the Z button.

Select from various conversation paths to ruin lives while enjoying my bad writing. I hope.

====== TOOLS ======

"Art": Photoshop and Fireworks CS6
Music: pxTone
Engine: Phaser 2.4.3 RC
Editing: Sublime Text

====== SPECIAL THANKS ======

@RHY3756547 for the amazing title.
Fish, for giving me the drive I needed to finish this flipping thing.

screenshot

Comments32

highlyinteractive24 Aug 2015, 18:00
Love the music & the graphics are great, but SO much text! Cod do better, but not total pollocks ;)
RHY3756547
RHY375654724 Aug 2015, 18:27
You're FIN-ished! Absolutely hilarious. Too bad you couldn't get more art in, I'm sure the remaining bad hairstyles would have been a sight to behold. Music is fabulous.
axoona
axoona25 Aug 2015, 18:02
This game is completely absurd! I love it :D
A_K_25 Aug 2015, 18:03
Cool 16-bit soundtrack on background! )
tayl1r
tayl1r25 Aug 2015, 18:03
This is better than my haircut.
Pierrec25 Aug 2015, 18:03
I wasn't able to figure out what were the good/bad options (I guess they were all the same) but I really DIG your graphics, and even the absence of graphics!
CAT_IN_THE_DARK_WOOD25 Aug 2015, 18:05
Hahaha, you are such a monster making this "game"! =) Hilarious entry =)
glimaleite25 Aug 2015, 18:07
I loved the jokes and the fish obsession haha. Good job!
kerotan24
kerotan2425 Aug 2015, 18:16
I love it. the music is great and the story is really funny (insert fish pun here)
P.T.A26 Aug 2015, 16:07
i love this game! so much non sense and fun, love the jokes about hair, fish and llamas very very well made, good job! =D
boardtobits
boardtobits26 Aug 2015, 22:22
I liked that you integrated the themes of the fish-obsession and the hairdresser into everything. Didn't feel like the choices I made would make much difference though. Just utter chaos all around.
glerikud
glerikud26 Aug 2015, 22:25
Ah yessss! Puns! More give me mooore puns!
chanko0827 Aug 2015, 01:44
Musics and narrative were highly amusing. So many PUNS.
sprawl27 Aug 2015, 01:51
The first game that kept kraken me up until the end. Well played.

On a side note, the music was great.
sonelliot27 Aug 2015, 01:55
I enjoyed this game. Great audio and humour. I laughed out loud at the response: 'I've been 3 dwarves in a jacket this whole time'!
careless
careless28 Aug 2015, 10:59
The music loop could have been a little longer as it drove me a little mad in the end.

Shame you didn't have time to add more artwork for the scenes.

A nice idea with completely mad story line, transitions between scenes could have been less quick, not sure how I got from the wedding at a Fish restaurant to a Presidential debate :D

It is good to see unique and quirky game with a crazy sense of humour. Well done.
Jani Nykänen28 Aug 2015, 18:04
A lot of dialogue. I'm glad it's well-written.
Grahhhhh29 Aug 2015, 00:16
Where did I go just now? Hahaha, love super random, the fact that it was funny too was a big plus. Great art, music, all around nice job.
PowerSpark
PowerSpark30 Aug 2015, 02:50
That was fun! I wish there was more art though.
Omiya Games
Omiya Games30 Aug 2015, 04:02
A pretty fun visual novel, with a nice sense of humor. Could have used some branching paths, but I did appreciate the tuna puns.
chrissou30 Aug 2015, 17:18
Funny game. more illustrations would have been great. Bride's gorgeous
wg_phancock30 Aug 2015, 20:30
Very finny story game, laughed several times throughtrout.
Shaun LeBron31 Aug 2015, 03:15
Music was really great, liked the pixel art haircuts and characters. harvesting the forced awkwardness of a situation, I like it
Larzan
Larzan31 Aug 2015, 13:52
Great music + art. Looooots of text though. But some funny lines in it :)
inbetweengames
inbetweengames3 Sep 2015, 07:22
That was hilarious! The music and writing worked really nicely. Felt like a good trippy cartoon show or a sequence from Day of the Tentacle!
Would also wish for more visual representation like pixel art adventure graphics and may be some feedback on how much AWKWARD ENERGY I'm collecting. Just for laughs. Sorry I'm just imagining this as a jam entry full of images of disbelief, fish, awkwardness and bad haircuts. ;)
Flaid
Flaid7 Sep 2015, 16:03
That was a lot of fish puns, but I think I built up an anemone to them after a whale.
terop7 Sep 2015, 21:11
this game has lots of text in it... too much in fact.
psychonull9 Sep 2015, 19:22
Hilarious! haha, awesome graphics, lot of text but soo funny!, the music is awesome and transitions are great!. relally good job!
LevieDAudio
LevieDAudio14 Sep 2015, 16:44
This game made me laugh so much and, at times, so loudly! I really liked the music and how it was continuous throughout the different scenarios; it made the whole game seem so much more chaotic (for lack of a different word)!

The only issue I had with the game was that, when choosing what to say, it was hard to tell who I was speaking for. It took me a few scenarios to realize that the protagonist's portrait was speaking as the speech-controlled person in each scenario.

But yeah, I really had fun with this game! Even when without graphics, the scenarios were quick to understand and the game mechanics were very simple to get a hang of. I loved the writing so much and the fish obsession was just so funny and you handled that concept so excellently! Great job!

(Also, the name is, indeed, amazing!)

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