Everything You Know Is Wrong

It's always a bummer when there's an idea you always wanted to do and somebody else makes it happen first.

Since I was a kid, I had the concept for a game in which the player would always be disoriented, but had I no clue of how it would actually work.  As a teenager, a name was put to the concept when, right after listening to Weird Al's Everything You Know Is Wrong, a friend suggested that I should make an Everything You Know is Wrong video game.

Over the years, I've collected ideas, drawing tons of inspiration from games like Wario Ware and Achievement Unlocked, games where figuring out the controls and objectives are the entire point.  After literally over two decades of mulling around this idea, it's only in the last couple of years that a firm concept has taken shape: the gameplay, the aesthetics, an actual title, etc.  I even fiddled with a prototype in GameMaker a couple times, and I've got a half-written script floating around on my hard drive.

So, imagine my disappointment yesterday when I discovered this:



I mean, it's cool, good for them.  They didn't steal from me or anything; they came up with it on their own, and I didn't even have any immediate plans to start earnestly developing the game.  An idea is only as  good as what you do with it, and the game looks pretty creative and fun.

Still, it's a little disheartening to see such specific thoughts of mine in someone else's game.  It's not exactly the game I would have made, of course; not by a long shot.  But the misleading and taunting of the player, the spikes that are actually trampolines... they even used my tagline!  How crazy is that?

In the end, though, it's cool to see so many of my ideas work.  And even though I clearly can't use the trampoline spikes now without looking like I copied them, there's still enough original things on my end - specifically on the presentation and atmosphere end, which are completely different in my concept, a little more Stanley Parable inspired - that it may be worth eventually doing after all.

But until I finally get off my lazy rear end, go play Default Dan! I know I will be.