Prodigal Sun

Your son/sun is a fickle son/sun. You must appease him and save your village from his fiery tantrum rage while questioning the nature of your own actions.

Prodigal Sun was a 48-hour game made for the Molyjam, a worldwide game jam based on the tweets of @petermolydeux (a parody of game designer Peter Molyneux). In the game, the player receives prompts about what has to happen, and attempts to please his son by blasting items (via rocket) up to him, while dealing with confusing moral questions. The son is either pleased or displeased, and the more displeased he gets, the closer he is to burning down the village. Survive 5 turns and you live to see another day.

I had the pleasure of writing the prompts and responses for this game. In the spirit of @petermolydeux, the writing style is absurdist, seemingly deep but ultimately jarring and weirdly wrong.

Prodigal Son was made for the 2012 Molyjam. The team included Joe Kowalski, Arthur Ward, Ben Johnson, Tanis Meyer-Thornton, Andy Wallace, Stephen Keating, Bryce Williams, and D.W. O'Boyle.

Play it here. You can also download it here, to play it offline.