Sure, Apple’s iTunes store might have a bizarre relationship with sexy-fied apps (there one day, gone the next), but one thing is for sure: The Cupertino-based company has no problem with a little gay right role playing in iPhone gaming.
Valet Hustle, which its creators call “a cross between Tetris and Diner Dash,” has players … parking customers’ cars. Haha, don’t let that turn you off though, because the game actually looks pretty challenging in a Sally’s Spa sort of way. But if game play won’t do it for you, how about a gay-themed underlying story?
According to a release: “Depending on one’s personal preference, players can assume the role of either Ren or Akira, the young female or male offspring of a wealthy Japanese businessman. Both of these characters were expelled from boarding school for breaking the rules… they openly kissed a fellow student of the same sex. Though proud of who they are, both Ren and Akira are forced to bow to family pressure and take over one of their father’s businesses — a parking valet company that services high-end nightclubs and restaurants. Though mentally and emotionally up to the business challenge, Ren’s or Akira’s success ultimately is determined by the players of Valet Hustle. As players advance through levels, they learn more about Ren and Akira, whose personal lives are also on the upswing as they from move Tokyo to New York.”
Then should we expect scenes of Ren dancing at Splash on a Saturday night, yes?
JNunzio
Um, Akira would be working at The Web. Duh.
brilliantgreene
@JNunzio: HAHAHAHAHA
Zac
Weird, but I guess it doesn’t matter if the game is fun, and it does look fun. For 99 cents I’ll check it out.
Just Andrew
Nice article, I particularly liked the title and I wish we’d thought of it for our press release.
The gap between the storyline and the gameplay is intended to be geeky satire.
Most Japanese puzzle games feature a storyline that goes a little something like this:
“Your a dragon that spends most of his time bursting bubbles and then between levels you rescue a princess”.
With this in mind, we decided to give ourselves a ton of leeway in terms of the linkage between the backstory and the game itself. So we choose characters that we thought where way more interesting than dragons and tied them to a more socially relevant storyline.
That said in later levels you will start to see the gameplay and the story become a little more obvious.
We hope that folks will enjoy our game more than Sally’s Salon, as we tried to create something that goes beyond the typical Diner Dash type game.
Apple was pretty cool about approving our game although we had a couple of odd conversations about how far we could take things in the game: “so is a hand down the trousers okay?”, and in case your wondering the answer was “no”.
Finally, we do give Akria a night off during the game and he gets to go out and dance at Le Baron de Paris, which is a very cool little club in Tokyo.
Cheers,
Andrew
CEO & Janitor
Factory Games.
San Francisco.
2ndBorn
uhm, splash isn’t “splash” anymore. i’m not sure what they’re calling it these days, but i think a club in sacramento named “faces” bought them, redesigned and opened them under a new name.
don’t know why i felt the need to get that information out. LOL.
craigers
Andrew – you should put this game on the Android Market Place. I’m buying it as soon as you do. And I bet you won’t have a problem with a hand down the trousers there!