Eat the Sun - Postmortem

This game started out as a means of testing Javascript functions and Twine macros, though a lot of that code ended up being abandoned. I wanted something short to work on as a side-project while also working on Pathei Mathos. At some point, I decided it would be about eating the sun.

Evidently, I am not alone in creating games with a theme of eating the sun, as before releasing it, I stumbled upon a game with a similar title, 食い太陽（I want to eat the Sun）. The working title before this was The Sun Gives You Cancer, but I decided against it, both because it sounded a bit edgy, but primarily because it wasn't actually a game about cancer. I figured 'Eat the Sun' was vague enough to be powerful and unsettling, but also descriptive.

Meanwhile, I decided to add some voice samples to some Creative Commons tracks that allowed modification. Didn't originally intend to use it for a game, but once I managed to get the sample from Duck and Cover to say "And now we must be ready for a new danger: The Sun," I knew what I'd use it for.

The game's surreal writing came about because of both the weird concept, as well as the fact that I had no idea what I'd actually be doing with it, and primarily wanted to test what I could do with it, such as with the teeth-pulling section. I didn't want the horror to be at all graphic, so I decided to lean into the surreal.

Deciding to theme the game as the work of a fictional author (and games studio) came late into the game's writing, as a result of the fact that Twine doesn't like to play audio upon startup. Instead, I decided to have a 'boot' page, that would lead into the actual fictionalised game, allowing the mechanical whirring noises to start on the second screen instead.

All in all, when I wrote this weird tiny game, I didn't expect to make it into a series, but it honestly got a lot of positive feedback, due to it being much shorter than my other games, and much easier to pick up and play. Wanted to give some explanation for it, though, especially since the later games are more heavy in theme.