This week’s Cool Thing is the game Mighty Jill Off by Anne “Dessgeega” Anthropy. It’s made in Game Maker, a freeware application for, well, making games. It is also BDSM-themed, which is how it caught our attention here at Cult of the Turtle.

Indie games are the rage this year, especially after the Independent Games Festival a few weeks ago, and while this game wasn’t one of them, it still shows the kind of thing that can come out of the indie games movement. The game was released on February 29th, and as we’re sure was intended by the author, the main mechanic in the game is jump–, err leaping.

The mechanic itself is interesting: the left and right arrow keys to move horizontally, and the ‘Z’ key to jump. Instead of the traditional “press jump to double-jump” that is common in platformers like this, instead the second ‘Z’ press cancels your jump. Tapping the ‘Z’ button after that allows you to float, as Jill is “flapping her rubber cape.”

The story is simple. Jill’s Queen (pictured above, along with Jill) lives at the top of a very tall tower. One day Jill takes too many liberties (licking too high on her Queen’s boot) and she is in term, booted out of the tower to fall all the way down. Thankfully, falling is one of Jill’s other talents, and you’re never penalized for falling distance, unless you land on one of the ubiquitous spiders, spikes or fires.

Well, you’re not penalized by death, we should say, but since the goal is to go up, ever up to the top. Falling isn’t really very proactive. Still, the game is a reasonably fun diversion. The game itself doesn’t take very long to play. we played it in just over 30 minutes, getting it down to 20 on our second play through. The developer says she can get it done in less than nine minutes, but we don’t have the patience for that.

We mainly played for the final cut scene.

The picture at the top comes from the very beginning, a series of a few slides to let you know what is going on. The ending is similar, fun and worth the half-hour or so it took us to finish. Enough that we did it again.

This game is a good example of mixing sexuality with game design. The sexuality here merely provides the motive for climing the tower: Jill wants to please her Queen, so she climbs the tower for which she is rewarded, somewhat by her Queen. Sexuality isn’t directly part of the gameplay — this isn’t a poke-the-doll kind of game.

Instead of navigating a horizontal space, as is common in platform games, we’re given a completely vertical space to work through — in fact the tower is never wider than the screen itself. As we reach plateaus — once every screen/area or two — our play is saved so once we’ve reached one level, we never have to start over. One area is difficult to pass, and you have to repeat Jill’s most basic action 100 times until you can continue. Then you’re rewarded with a series of little, fast, easy jumps that take us inexorably to the peak, and the climactic conclusion of the game.

There are things that are hard. Moving your fingers fast enough on the button to keep the floating going long enough to leap over some of the longer pits of fire. Some of the jumping sections require a great deal of accuracy. There’s a countdown at the end that some have had trouble with, but which can be solved by allowing Jill to do what she does best.

A few people have complained about the flapping/repeated presses of the Z button. They are perhaps too old, they say, to make that motion. To them, we merely refer to the title of the game, and suggest they should be glad that instead of pressing Z they didn’t have to press Shift and X together at the same time. Try it out, and if it’s not too frustrating, we can be sure that you will enjoy it.