sidechain

There's 10 minutes left at the warehouse party at the end of the world and you are the Angel of History. It’s your job to make these final moments count.

sidechain is a point and click adventure and micro game rush. This is my first time attempting to make a game that felt ‘complete’ so I wanted to use the chance to throw a bunch of shit in there and just try seeing what I can do as I get more comfortable with the tools I have access to. 

It’s dedicated to the diy/dit warehouse spaces that raised me (MINT, Corrugate, No Place) and the club nights (Black Ice, BUILD, Nesting, Headcleaner, Slick Down, Dweller etc etc etc) that gave me refuge. Whether you fuck with it or not, thank you for taking the time to play 🙂

Controls + How to Play

You have 10 minutes to reach the DJ on the dance floor. Time is limited, but you can find more of it. Explore, mingle with folks- it’s a party after all. The timer does not stop at any time and this game does not save, so maybe use the bathroom before if you need it. 

Mouse - Hover over objects on screen to interact with them. Your INTERACT ICON in the top right screen will change indicating what can be done there.           

Interact Icon phases

Arrow Keys - Directional arrows around the interact icon indicate the direction of areas you can navigate to from your current location. You can go there using the arrow keys on your keyboard.     

Spacebar - If you get lost, you can press the spacebar to highlight interactable objects and paths to new areas around you, shown by arrows floating over them (see screenshot #1). Clicking these highlighted paths and objects are another way of navigating to new areas of the party.

ENTER Key - An enter gif in the bottom right corner of your screen indicates that whatever text is on screen is advanceable (sometimes show in the side panel, sometimes down at the bottom, it low key depends) via the ENTER key. When in doubt, just hit enter.     

Backspace - In case you get stuck, you can always (with some exceptions) hit the backspace key to return to whatever area you just came from.

*A note on the micro games: like the black electronic music that inspired it, this game is an exercise in experimentation and playful expression with machines. When you enter a mini game pay attention to what keys are on screen. Mess around and press them to see what happens. One might use WASD and JIKL, the other might use the arrow keys. You can’t fail these, so relax and give it a whirl. 

Credits 

Many of the character designs in this were inspired by the late, great Ernie Barnes- the dance floor and bar scenes in particular are literally just me ripping off ‘‘The Sugar Shack’’ and his tribute piece to Marvin Gaye’, but his finger prints are all over the work. Salute to the GOAT. 

Music

Credits and trailer track:  "Wanna Go" - Love Higher (feat. Tromac)                                  

Bathroom mini game bgm: "All Over" - Love Higher                                                            

Opening track: "Track Ten" - Juan Atkins                                                                             

Dance floor bgm: "Siam" - African American Sound Recordings 

Smooching mini game bgm: "Looney Tunes Sheep Raider Track 7" - Eric Caspar 

This game uses sounds from the following sources throughout it's UI  

Pokemon Red/Blue - Junichi Matsuda                                                                      

Hotel Dusk - Satoshi Okubo and Yuhki Mori                                                        

WarioWare Gold! - Kenichi Nishimaki, Yuki Kusuhara, Ichiro Kohmoto         

Undertale & Deltarune - Toby Fox                                                                                    

 Killer7 - Jun Fukuda                                                                                                

Messiah and or Roblox - Joey Kraus 

Ambience

the bathroom and couch areas use audio from Club Bathroom Ambience.wav by bennathanras -- https://freesound.org/s/607421/

Gifs

Most of the gifs used throughout the game have been sourced from the internet archive’s gif cities project. The gif backgrounds used throughout have been gathered from the following: 

Prologue BG - ‘Relaxing Op Art’ by Joe Winograd

Credits BG - ‘loop glitch’ by LetsGlitchIt

DJ background - colors houston by MFD        

Game over screen - glitch art data moshing by Transientfault

Citations & further readings

The conversation with the DJ at the end of the game recites an excerpt from Mckenzie Wark’s book ‘On Raving’.

The track playing during the BGM of the old soldier’s mini games samples sounds from Black Journal’s 1977 episode ‘What Happened to the Black Revolution’ and a Gerald McDermott's 1967 animation of the 'Magic Tree' folk tale. His monologue after the game was inspired by this Red Bull interview with Rik Davis talking about his experience during the war in Vietnam. 

While making this I was also thinking of:

Down & Out - Ife Olujobi & Garrett Allen 

the scene in the game eulogizing Tosha was directly inspired by a similar scene in the second volume of this phenomenal play. If you enjoyed the game I highly recommend tapping in with Ife and Garrett's work.

My week at this year’s Dweller fest 

Forever thinking of the moment where my Partner and I emerged from the portal that was Travella's sunday morning set at Nowadays into a sudden snow storm. Teared the veil open.

The Last Angel of History - John Akomfrah 

Akomfrah's hybrid doc/future memory transmission played a large role in me arriving at the Angel of History frame.

Theses on the Philosophy of History- Walter Benjamin 

Assembling a Black Counter Culture - DeForrest Brown Jr. 

essential text on the history of black electronic music and its lineage(s).

My time working with Blake Andrews during the SFPC class 100 Games Later 

Without my time TAing this class I would have never thought making a game was possible!!

Kaveh Akbar’s ‘Calling a Wolf a Wolf’

Cracked my brain open and rewired how I think about language.

Lover’s Rock - Steve McQueen

The house party feels like a living organism in this film. The images of the sweating walls was a big inspo for the environments in the game. Wanted them to feel like they were pulsating with life.

Aberration In The Heartland of the Real - Wendy S Painting

Drew heavily on McVeigh's reflections on his experience during the Gulf War for the veteran section of the game.

Paradise - Toni Morrison

"Another ship...heading to port, crew and passengers lost and saved, atremble, for they have been disconsolate for some time. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in Paradise."

In loving memory of my teacher & big sis. The best to ever do it and the woman that showed me that community is a verb; Tosha Stimage.