The Museum of You
TMOY is a series of interactive art installations hidden inside a first person adventure game. Explore the “museum” and the surreal void space it resides in, make choices, discover new worlds, play (or suffer through) a variety of strange minigames - it’s up to you. It is your museum, after all.
The Museum of You is a choose-your-own-adventure walking simulator primarily set in a series of futuristic galleries featuring the works of various contemporary artists. As you explore the “museum” and the surreal void space it resides in, you’ll find a variety of galleries to explore, choices to make, worlds to discover, and minigames to either enjoy or suffer through - depending on the kind of experience you’re looking for.
This initial early access version contains about 2-3 hours of total gameplay, 30 possible endings, multiple core narrative branches, and a collection of art and music from a dozen different contemporary artists working in various mediums. While initially presented as story driven by a single narrator, the game actually consists of a number of characters including you (the player), dave (whom you control), and several others posing as different narrators. This version is still somewhat of a demo/playable trailer in many ways, but it does still feature an ambitious scope and narrative in line with smaller indie games of its genre. V1 is still in the writing and early development process, but is planned to be significantly larger, aiming to contain around 100 unique endings, 10-15 core narrative paths, dozens of minigames, a compelling meta-narrative, and displays of hundreds of works by dozens of artists from a wide range of backgrounds and mediums.
This early version of TMOY is based on a fictional video game described in the short story aptly titled "The World's Least Playable Game" by Justin Wong, who also co-authored this adaptation alongside lead developer Cean Mindeman. The original game concept was described as “unplayable”, “impossible to code”, and “a miserable gaming experience” in the piece of experimental fiction it was first imagined in. Through the development process, this iteration of The Museum of You has decidedly differentiated itself from that inspiration. It still maintains some of its thematically significant and intentionally “unplayable” spirit, but some efforts have been made to make it a (mostly) enjoyable experience for the player. As new versions and iterations are released, we hope to zero in on the best way to balance the original concept’s desire to torture its player with our desire to have at least a few people enjoy playing the game.
Welcome, to The Museum of You. What do you think you’ll do with your time here?
