HI.
I'm IODINE, the developer of Burden Street Station, and I have something extremely exciting to announce:
Burden Street Station is joining the CRITICAL REFLEX family!!
It says so right here on the wall:
BSS is the narrative adventure game I've been working on, featuring a surreal, ‘90s PC aesthetic (think Myst, ENA...).
In this world, mortals have their best and worst life moments harvested and made into sentient books. These books are then sold to higher celestial beings (Gods) for entertainment and nourishment.
One day, one of the worlds suddenly halts all book production, and its God disappears without a trace.
An unassuming worker drone (that's you!) and their assistant (a snarky book missing her own moment) are tasked with getting to the bottom of what happened, and uncover the mystery of this God's disappearance.
So, what will YOU be doing in this game?
Explore a multitude of bizarre places and chat with their odd inhabitants.
Experience a surreal story that touches on themes like memory, grief, existentialism, and community.
Transform your head, body, or legs to unlock new dialogue choices to open people up with!
Enjoy the game’s unique artstyle, reminiscent of late-90s/early-00s PC edutainment titles.
Dive into the game’s strange atmosphere: somewhere between quirky, eerie, somber, and liminal.
I hope it makes you feel as weird playing it as I felt making it!
Why join CRITICAL REFLEX?
Burden Street is more or less a solo project. Alone, I just didn't have the resources to properly communicate the message it wants to convey.
I feel like CR is the perfect kind of publisher to help out with the kind of games I make – I think they really understand what I'm trying to do.
As part of the partnership for example, I got to work with COLORFICTION, who was very patient and taught me how to really get the most out of the artstyle I was going for. It wouldn't look nearly as cool without him!
This partnership also lets me do some things that are difficult to manage as a solodev, such as localizing the game into many, many languages.
In short, everybody wins!! But I win more because I get to make this thing even cooler than I originally planned.
The game is coming out pretty soon, so until then stay tuned and keep an eye out on updates and devlogs I will be posting on this Steam page from now on!
By the way, I’ve also got my own Discord server, so if you’re feeling lonely and want to talk games or just post silly stuff, join in! My other project, Pillory, also gets its own damp, murky corner on the server, so you can talk about both of my games and just have a good time (optional).
See you all pretty soon!!