Vessel of The Garbage God
A downloadable game
You are an ancient god dragon of garbage. The humans serve you well, drawing old souls from the earth, trapping them in plastic, and delivering them unto your temples, called landfills. Your hoard.
From these great mountains of garbage you draw strength. But there are those faithful whom society neglects, forced to live at the fringes of civilization. The houseless and unsheltered, whose refuse is a burden no one will help with. These things must be tended to, even if it means you must interfere more directly.
You will take over a human vessel, and command them to do your bidding, venturing into the places where the houseless camp, gathering their trash, and delivering it to your hoard. FOR THE GLORY OF THE GARBAGE GOD.
OMG ORION, YES - Jeeyon Shim
A really sweet game about helping to clean up trash among our least supported citizens, it approaches the topic with care and conviction and also a healthy dose of whimsy. - Bully Pulpit Games
Written in alliance with Just Housing Olympia.
We work with our housed and houseless neighbors improving our community for everyone.
EDIT: Just Housing Olympia is now Olympia Mutual Aid Partners . Please visit our website at https://olymap.org/
Art by my brother @jerskann
<3 Layout by Jason Morningstar <3
Download
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Development log
- Vessel of The Garbage God release notesMar 23, 2020
Comments
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i teach this game as a text in the analysis unit of my composition class for college freshman. we use it to talk about tone, imagery, metaphor, autonomy, concept mashups, and other good stuff. ive taught it twice now and the students seem really interested in this as a text. definitely will continue to use it in coming semesters
Wow, that's amazing to hear, thanks for using it! I feel honored.
Vessel Of The Garbage God is a bit difficult to define. It's a lyric game and a praxis game. And it's about trash.
The PDF is 5 pages. It's dense and zine-y in its layout, with intricate black and white artwork crawling around the corners of each page. Despite this, it's extremely readable.
There's plenty of space between the background and the text, and the font fits the aesthetic to a T without losing any legibility.
The writing is strong and expressive, and likewise helps build atmosphere.
The gameplay, weirdly, subverts the whole stack of mysticism and sacred imagery by having you pick up trash.
After all, you are an agent of the God Of Garbage, and the God does not permit its offerings to be left by the sides of roads or scattered in public parks.
I personally really dig this sort of design, and I also appreciate that Vessel stays grounded whenever it needs to talk about something important. It recommends using a grabber to pick up unfamiliar objects, getting permission before collecting trash, etc. It specifically gives a lot of guidance on how to reach out and aid the unhoused, and that guidance is clear and direct.
Overall, if you're looking for a game that makes the world around you a little better (through you, as the vessel of a god,) you should check Vessel out. It's a quick read, it's well made, and it's easy to play.