grounded

a sci-fi solo journaling game about obligation, keeping up appearances, and the weight of loving someone as a person when so many people love her as an icon.

made for the inaugural this should be a game! jam
(a game jam created alongside the game design podcast i do with jess levine!)
based on themes we dug up from the movie apollo 13

Your wife is a very important and beloved woman. She's become the face of modern cosmonautry. Her work is beautiful. Her work is very dangerous. Behind closed doors– and only behind closed doors– you've repeatedly made the point that her work is also, in your (evidence-based, measured, carefully expressed) opinion, optional.

Yes, as the banner behind every press conference her team lead gives reads: The exploration doesn't end just because we've arrived! Yes, as she said in that interview that gets played at least once every time she goes back out, We've only made it as far as we have because of preventative maintenance. We don't stop when we get comfortable. We do everything we can to ensure the continuation of that comfort. Yes, as she's said to you behind closed doors– and only behind closed doors– I get it, my love, I do. But morale is a necessity for survival. As necessary as food, or air. Well, you haven't starved or suffocated for lack of it, so maybe she overstates her case. But maybe not.

At the end of the day, she chooses to go out into the black, mission after mission. So far, she's always made it back.

So far.

It's been ten years since the ship you grew up on landed on the colony planet it flew its 300 years towards, and everything has been going exactly as planned. The atmosphere is regulated, the crops sustain the population, the labour is long but the rest is restful. No-one wants for the basics. From what you hear of the world that came before, even this is a vast improvement.

So if you're not satisfied by the basics alone, it's not really worth thinking about. Things are working as intended. Don't fix what isn't broken. Don't break it, either. And don't let it break. A break isn't a single failure. It's a series of them. No-one takes the blame alone, here. Someone else always could have taken responsibility at some point. Preventative maintenance.

Maybe other people are like you: quietly suffering under the weight of expectation, silently cracking under the force of obligation to perform fine-ness, invisibly burning up from the heat of acceptance. Or maybe you're selfish, and cruel, and insufficiently community-minded.

Best not to risk it.