A game about love. A tale of rejection.
Hot Mess
My Role
Game Design, Art Direction, Pixel Art, Animation
Project Description
Hot Mess is a thrilling and unique game that will immerse you in a world of neon pixel art and firefighting robots. It’s also the first game that I ever made and released.
A total collaboration.
Hot Mess was the effort of myself, a small game studio called Secret Library, and an artist named Eric Guenther.
Simple gameplay…
As a player, you take on the role of a firefighting robot tasked with extinguishing motel fires. The game starts with simple gameplay mechanics, such as spraying water to put out fires and collecting water from nearby sources like toilets, bathtubs, and sinks.
…with a twist.
However, things take a twist after a few levels when you accidentally cross a live electrical wire and get shocked, causing your operating system to malfunction. As a result, you begin to mistakenly identify love (or fires of the heart) as fires that need to be put out. This introduces a new challenge to the game, as you must navigate different love motels, spraying down the couples occupying the rooms and avoiding bouncers.
Rejected, then rejected again.
We were immediately rejected because Apple noticed that our “app icon displays a naked couple. Additionally, the gameplay contains objectionable images as well.” “Fair enough,’ we thought and quickly covered our pixel-based atrocities in some undergarments and resubmitted.
Days passed and then we got our second rejection where Apple called out, "Specifically, we noticed your app displays a barely dressed couple kissing". Since our entire game was based around love motels and couples kissing, we thought Hot Mess would never see the light of day.
After complaining on Twitter, the head of Secret library was contacted by Mark Brown from Pocket Gamer asking about the situation. That story got picked up by Eurogamer, then Escapist then Kotaku. Great! We're a bunch of losers who can't release their game but at least it's absurd enough for others to laugh with. Then, all of a sudden, we were approved and on the App Store.
