Dissolved - Chapter One
Dissolved is the disastrous story of a girl trying to escape the real world by playing video games, to the point where they become her whole reality. The game's humor is as dark as it is silly, and each level has an original gameplay parodying retro games, in surprising and challenging ways.
About Dissolved
This is a collection of mini-games created for various occasions, tied together into a narrative experience. Even though they are joke games, there's more to Padla's story than meets the eye.
Numeric dementia
If there are feel-good games, well Dissolved is a feel-bad game. You play as a girl whose weird psychosis turns every ordeal in her life into a video game. It's a mix of completely new gameplays, fun but very challenging, parodying old arcade games.
Each control scheme is very simple, often one or two buttons, but unsettling at first. How to fight space gopniks shooting from the sky if you can't shoot back? Well, simply strike through their projectiles until you reach them. And if you find yourself unarmed against armies of cops, you can always use their own dead bodies as projectiles.
The tone is as dark and twisted as it is offbeat and silly. Every time our protagonist encounters a painful challenge, rather than facing it she'll prefer taking refuge in her imaginary world. It doesn't make things easier for Padla, the superheroine her sick mind is personifying.
It's now up to Padla to walk your cat on a road which suddenly became a deadly step by step runner. You'll also let her deal with classroom relationships, in a stealth game to make you the most popular girl without being spotted by the teacher.
Each level represents a part of her life that she doesn't want to face: a never-ending school day, playing at a concert, or simply dealing with her alcohol and drugs consumption. They materialize whether as a spooky rhythm game, a coma-induced shoot'em up, even a violent sports game against your classmates... All kinds of disturbing challenges await you.
There are nine different gameplay types in this chapter, some of which can be played two-player competitively, or in endless mode to reach high scores.
After each challenge, the inescapable reality will strike back. You'll then need to find the next one in order to progress, by interacting with newly appeared objects in the different rooms that your monotonous life will cycle through endlessly.
Padla has a dark alter ego who sometimes appears in her visions. Her origin and intentions remain mysterious, but she will undoubtedly play a role in your descent into madness...
