Poop In My Mouth: The Project Catapillar Story

[Gizmog]

What drives a man to do the things he does? Can a man go too far? Should a man continue to do what he wants to do, even at the expense of others? These are some of the myriad themes explored in filmmaker Tom Six's The Human Centipede. For those not familliar with the film, I will summarize: it's basically Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only instead of stitching together a mask from your victims, he sews their butts to each others mouths and trains them to act a single organism. Pretty slimed up slime. Perfect material for a stupid RPG. But who would be stupid enough to do it? Spoilers: This superslimer right here.

It all started during the 2013 Random Collab Contest. Like always, I had no way of communicating iwth my partner, didn't even know if they were still alive. The other teams rushed ahead, and there was Giz without an idea. I hated Ichiro for not being there, and set about on the worst game possible. I'd blame the whole damn thing on him! I'd been fussing about with something or other and noticed that if you slowed a caterpillar party down real slow, they overlapped and looked like one entity. This was exploitable. But how? I didn't have the motivation I needed yet. It was only my irrational and unwarranted hatred of a collab partner I hadn't even met that pushed me to the obvious conclusion: Four heroes would become one mouth-pooping monster. But a monster for JUSTICE! The super-hero team nobody really wants. It was perfect.

I voiced my intentions to the SlimeSalad IRC Chat. BMR told me I'd never do it. Giz 1, BMR 0. I worked feverishly, getting most of the battle system set up that first night. At some point I started doing graphics and came up with some really good paranormal urban stuff, forgot about the Catapillar and started going with a Gangs vs. Cult vs. Demons idea. That idea went nowhere, and by the time it'd fallen off the rails Ichiro had showed up and convinced me we should make it a game about werewolves.

I nominated myself the artist for the project, 'cause I didn't want to try and design a werewolf thing (Little bit too furry for my tastes). Each day I asked Ichiro what he wanted and each day he told me it was cool. We both thought the other had taken up the mantle of design. As the week started to wear down I got worried we'd have nothing to show, and picked up the Catapillar project again. Somehow, the battle system I had painstakingly crafted now didn't work. It took me forever to fix it, forever to get the rest up and running, and by the time I was about ready to release my emergency backup plan, Ichiro had showed up with enough of a werewolf game to release. It was a terrible game, but at least nobody pooped on anyone else. We went with it. In hindsight, we should've gone with the poop.

But, as I mentioned, there was IRC to appease. BMR called me a liar, swore that no such pooping centipede game had existed. The whole thing was a smoke-screen to cover up the (awful) werewolf thing. I didn't take it lying down! An hour or two later, the pooping game was unleashed on the public. I had wanted to add a final chapter, a real test of their capability against an enemy who would shoot back, but by that time my art muscle had dried up and I was sick of the whole damn thing. A common ending.

Since Ichiro had come through in the end, I didn't feel right blaming him for this game. Hence the Thriller rip-off disclaimer. I'm surprised to find out that you can talk to the dude on the left and slime up the order of the catapillar, that's not supposed to happen and didn't happen in my original tests. Game's cursed. Not my finest hour, but at least I still got my street cred.

I like the tone I took. I had considered going way way darker, like the source material, but instead decided to take a "Eww! Dooty!" attitude to the concept and I think it makes it funnier. I'd give it much higher marks had the final crime fighting chapter been completed, where you'd eat hot dogs and poop on burglars in the city, but no intention of going back and doing that now.