Continued from LMB Occurrences.
The Store That Was Scary is a level where a weird enormous building pops up in Juni's neighborhood out of nowhere. The building is not a store. But there
are two stores, one of which is scary and one of which is the store the title refers to.
Juni is an extreme misanthropist who has to put up with her two wacky roommates as she works out a one-sided relationship with a zany desperate guy. Along the way, she buys a rug, accidentally steals a plant, and loses her grip on reality. The plot is told primarily through in-game cutscenes.
It's also a movie parody that's both too specific and too shallow.
It's also a challenge level with random areas and aesthetic pastiches incoherently stitched together.
There will be bonus content, probably. Like how a movie DVD has the movie itself, and then outtakes, and deleted scenes, and trailers, and stuff. Or how the
Johnny Yesno VHS was an hour long, and about 25 minutes of it was the actual movie, and the rest was an alternate cut that was a bunch of random shots flashing incoherently and music videos for Cabaret Voltaire.
Points of comparison:
- Consequences (1977), an ambient instrumental concept album/sardonic British audioplay/art-rock concept album/commercially unviable guitar effect pedal demo triple-album about nature revolting against humanity. Immediately flopped by virtue of being released the same year as "Frankie Teardrop", which had one thing to say and said it.
- A Scanner Darkly (1977), particularly the scenes where everyone is laying around stoned out of their mind making chit-chat. And the other scenes.
- Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), a groundbreaking horror film shot on low-end equipment that set the standards of the genre and is regarded fondly even today.
- The 2.5 giant Wibi levels that were canned for being too much effort or too awkwardly executed. (2017-2022) Generally most Wibi levels become what I refer to as a "palace of dreams" and everything about the level pales in comparison to "what it could be"; garnish with scope creep. I have tried to deliberately invoke this in hopes that the level will not release, time will tell whether that succeeds.
- Juni Jones: Ace Attorney (2012).
Releasing in October. Maybe.