This was never the darkest timeline

Maybe you have access to a parallel world where your parents didn’t pass on radiation sickness or whatever, but that characters path diverges so quickly from yours it become irrelevant and hard to relate to pretty fast.

You also have a spoon counter, and when your spoons are low, the diplomatic and moral-high ground options in game play are seeable but unselectable

Checking in on your alternative-universe self DEFINITELY costs a few spoons every time

Maybe the parallel timeline mechanic gives you access to two worlds, one if you’d been privileged from birth (which is ALWAYS just sipping organic coffee and reading the PostApoch Times in the cushy community bunker you got kicked out from as an infant)

The bunker people assumed that physical deformity = mental deformity, and they live in a bunker so they’ve never met anyone who would authoritatively disprove their point, they shoot all mutants on sight! The Give Mutants A Chance lobby is small and young and dresses badly.

And you can also select one timeline over, where your character JUST somehow got a facelift, so they’re in the same situation with way more options and a full cutlery set

That would be sloppy writing because mental trauma doesn’t instantly heal just because physical trauma does, but, idk, MAGIC.

Also very important – there’s a very detailed character creation screen you can spend hours in, making yourself as fit and sexy and capable as you like – but then the game starts and algorithmically beats the crap out of your character, both visibly and through stats

It should be fun and “winnable” and have jokes and players should be able to relate to both RealYou and PrivledgedYou, regardless of which people might think the player has more in common with in real life.

There’s also a totally corny and mechanically dissimilar 8bit post-credits minigame where you get to bust through the rift and give all your alternaselves a big ole group hug

There is also an easter egg where you can go back in time and stop the apocalypse by organizing a letter writing campaign to your MP to stop dismantling environmental protections. Its extremely long, boring and difficult to win

You also know it’ll have no consequences on your deformity, you know you’re still fated to be born at a pretty extreme disadvantage even if you save capitalism.

But it’s the only way to get a 100% achievement in steam

So it’s called This Was Never the Darkest Timeline please send grant money and resumes to the email listed on my website

I know there’s already been a lot of scope creep just in this thread but i promise no crunch because the actual environmental apocalypse will likely happen way before our release date

Lets spend our last few years here staring at our computer screens desperately trying to get people to care about each other.