“The Creator is Mean” by Loïc Manglou & Sébastien Manglou.
“[A point and click adventure game] about [an animated] drawing leaving his screen to save his [girl] from the mean [creator]. On his quest, he will have to solve the [infinite war between ants and cockroaches].”
In “The Creator is Mean”, we get to play the role of an animated drawing called Boy. Boy’s creator decides to make another scribble – Boy’s female counterpart named Girl – and puts the two of them together. However, the creator cannot stand the sight of the fresh couple and wrests their luck from them by cutting Girl out of the project file. She is not gone, though. The creator first printed her out, so that he can have her all for himself. Boy does not want that to happen and goes out on a quest to rescue her. While this point and click adventure game definitely follows the classic ‘Damsel in Distress’ trope, it is still a super cute game and worth a look.
The main reason for my recommendation of “The Creator is Mean” is the art style, which mixes up real photographs as well as video footage of the team’s apartment with stylized images for the characters. Besides Boy, Girl and the creator, you will encounter clans of ants and cockroaches, which are in a long lasting war with each other. As it is the common case with adventure games, Boy will try to help them to reach a peace treaty, and afterwards gets assisted by them, so that his rescue mission for Girl eventually becomes successful. That is also the second reason why I like this jam entry: The whole plot is so childlike in a positive way, that it could be written by one. Drawings that come to life, a war between insects, many unsubtle puns, a typical love story that seems to be inspired by fairy tales in its simplicity – it just all is so adorable and somewhat pure. [PLAY]
