Get a job, beat up some monsters, and solve a mystery that's plaguing Bright City.
Knuckle Sandwich is a nonsensical RPG by Andy Brophy. It was released on November 23, 2023. Its development was funded through Kickstarter, and the campaign can be viewed here
.A young man moves to Bright City, and immediately ends up way over his head; after failing to keep a "normal" job and stuck as a mere Burger Fool, he accidentally kills a man in self-defense, and soon after is knocked out by another stranger for being an anomaly. In a higher realm than his own, he learns that he's been chosen by a mysterious entity to deal with an imbalance of Spirit Cells in Bright City that could cause a catastrophic rift.
Tropes:
- Action Commands: Attacking an enemy takes the form of timing a button press on a meter (or sometimes switching between two meters), while defending takes the form of a minigame that can completely counter the damage if you win.
- Amazing Technicolor Population:
- The nondescript residents are designed as near featureless, besides their various skin colors. It turns out this isn't a stylistic choice; none of them are human.
- The Busdriver, who hails from the otherworldly Goblin Realm, has blue skin.
- The deadbeat that the player knife fights near the start of the game has sickly green skin.
- Author Avatar: At the end of the final credits sequence, it turns out that the weird 8-bit man that split into Cry & Shame and stole the player and Brightside's raft on the garbage island is Andy Brophy himself.
- Bad Boss: After getting fired repeatedly from the jobs assigned to him by the job centre, the protagonist ends up applying to work for Gorilla Burger, where his new boss constantly berates him and refuses to actually pay him. Near the end of the game, it turns out he set up the protagonist's knife fight with the deadbeat at the start of the game and has already been cooking bodies into burgers for a long time, as it's how he's killed and disposed of all his previous employees without having to pay their wages.
- Burger Fool: While the dress code at Gorilla Burger is lax, it's otherwise an absolutely horrible place to work, with a Bad Boss, fussy customers, broken toilets, a dungeon-sized freezer, and a myriad of other problems.
- But Thou Must!: Most of the protagonist's choices are either between similar options, like choosing between "No" and "Not really..." over whether he wants to discuss his accidental murder with The Chooser of the One, or are immediately invalidated, like having to choose one of three applicants for a coworker right before Gorilla Burger gets hit with a surge of customers and the two people you didn't pick get hired on the spot as well. The only time that the player makes a choice that matters is a Last-Second Ending Choice over whether to stay with their friends in Bright City or leave them to become Busdriver's partner in the Goblin Realm.
- The Chooser of the One: Bright City's bus driver quickly turns out to be a being from the Goblin Realm that's trying to find the cause of a Spirit Cell imbalance between the realms, but cannot remain in the mortal realm due to the paperwork it would lead to, so he chooses the protagonist to act as his partner.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: It's not until the party has stopped the Brightfangs from taking Tiny Baby from 1000 Futures that the two groups talk and realize they were both trying to save Bright City all along.
- Creative Closing Credits: The game has two credits sequences: an ordinary one listing the game's staff after the final chapter, and one after the Playable Epilogue and NPC and Enemy Roll Call that lists all of the Kickstarter backers while the player has to play all of the mid-battle minigames.
- Debut Queue: Your coworkers are all introduced at the start of Chapter 3, but you partner with a different one in each subsequent chapter. You get a full party of four briefly at the end of Chapter 5 as you escape the sinking cruise ship, then more permanently after being reunited in Chapter 6, though only one can fight alongside the protagonist at a time.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The instigator of the Spirit Cell imbalance is not the Handsome Humanity gym that fights the protagonist for being an anomaly, the 1000 Futures company supporting Mr. Apricot's mayoral campaign, head of Bright City's Defense Force Xander, or the Brightfang gang that regularly antagonizes the protagonist for interfering with their plans for the city, but Prima, the clerk of the Bright City Job Centre (though she secretly was running 1000 Futures all along).
- Enemy Mine:
- Chapter 6 opens with the protagonist separated from his coworkers after the cruise ship sinks, and washed ashore on a small island of trash. Brightside the thief is also there and itching for a rematch, but since he's only been drinking seawater and has stomach problems, he decides to instead work together to find a way out. Afterwards, while he never rejoins the party, he befriends Gloss and decides to become an antihero that regularly helps the party out.
- In the final chapter, the gym cult learn from Busdriver that the protagonist isn't the dangerous anomaly they were trying to stop, and offer to make the protagonist their new leader and help save the day. Busdriver doesn't want anyone else to get harmed if he can help it, but they volunteer to at least take care of the abominations and protect Bright City's citizens while they defeat the source of the problem.
- Failure Montage:
- The game begins with the protagonist being assigned four jobs, with "Video Game Designer" being immediately disregarded as useless and the other three ending in him getting fired no matter how well he does at the task he's given.
- In the Playable Epilogue, after realizing they're in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, the protagonist and Busdriver try to kill Tiny Baby in multiple ways, even bringing in useless characters such as Mr. Apricot, before settling for just trapping it on the moon instead of killing it.
- Friend to Bugs: The opening sequence of the player getting assigned various jobs by the Bright City Job Centre includes a stint as an exterminator with a boss that's actually one of these, non-lethally catching bugs in nets and relocating them to a private haven. He ends up firing the protagonist after disturbing a hive leads to a turn-based battle against some bees.
- Fun with Acronyms: The reactor of the 1000 Futures building is protected by a "C.O.T.T.A.G.E." security system, which Dolus has heard of before and says stands for "Completely Over The Top Advanced Gateway EX".
- Fusion Dance: The Final Boss, which is literally named "Final Boss" because it's both the last battle of the story and the final version of your Boss, is one between Tiny Baby and the boss of Gorilla Burger.
- Gameplay Roulette: The gameplay is designed as a mixture of Mario & Luigi and WarioWare. Fighting and countering attacks requires you to go through a minigame, which can differ depending on the move used or who you're fighting.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The Epilogue reveals that Tiny Baby has been resetting time back to the Busdriver's arrival in Bright City every time it dies. After the player and Busdriver try to find a way to kill it permanently, including loops where they team up with the Brightfangs and Handsome Humanity gym from the start, they settle for teleporting Tiny Baby to the moon where it can do no direct harm.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Brightside joins as part of an Enemy Mine in Chapter 6, and Busdriver joins for the final chapter.
- Godzilla Threshold: In the final chapter, Tiny Baby breaking loose and corrupting Bright City with its powers is enough for Busdriver to directly get involved as a combatant instead of relying on the protagonist.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The protagonist has no default name, with the player inputting a name when introducing him at the start of the game.
- I'm a Humanitarian: It turns out that the technicolor humanoids aren't stand-ins for ordinary people, but genetically-engineered mutants that dine at Gorilla Burger to satisfy their cravings for flesh by eating the "Knuckle Sandwiches".
- Innocently Insensitive: Busdriver realizes he's been one during the Playable Epilogue, urging the protagonist to help with saving the whole world while ignoring how traumatized he is over things like killing a man in a knife fight, as well as disregarding any opinion he doesn't agree with.
- Lethal Joke Item:
- The Leotard, Bug Net, and Arcade Token that the player keeps from their failures at the Job Centre seem to have no purpose other than to take up inventory space, but are all necessary for completing some secrets.
- Dolus, for some reason, has an egg when you have him in your party. This is somehow powerful enough to deal over 1000 damage to a single enemy.
- Meaningful Name: Mr. Apricot's head looks like a large apricot. He eventually admits he wasn't born this way, but instead he and his staff were cursed on a visit to the Starshine Isles.
- No Body Left Behind:
- After Tiny Baby goes berserk, the only survivors are the player, Brightside, Gloss, and the job centre clerk; the abominations and the game show host are all broken, and the player's coworkers & the Brightfangs were completely atomized for standing at point-blank range.
- After defeating the Final Boss, he reverts back to your regular Boss, lying on the ground, who congratulates the employee for beating the employer before fading out of existence.
- No Name Given:
- The Chooser of the One, who is introduced as a bus driver before his true nature is revealed, is still only ever called Busdriver.
- The player's boss at Gorilla Burger is only ever called Boss.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Prima, the Bright City Job Centre clerk, thinks everything she's doing is for the good of Bright City, providing everyone jobs, entertainment, and energy. And all she had to do was enslave a Goblin, create a bunch of humanoid abominations, and murder everyone that stood in her way.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: The power of Spirit Cells damaging the mortal realm is depicted as video game glitches, with environments composed of random tilesets and junk data blocking paths.
- One Last Smoke: The deadbeat you fight at the start of the game drops a cigarette upon being defeated. Having it in the protagonist's inventory while deactivating the C.O.T.T.A.G.E. lock gives an extended version of the protagonist's trauma sequence that has him give the cigarette to the deadbeat's spirit for a last smoke in exchange for the Infinity +1 Sword.
- One-Winged Angel:
- The fight against Brightfang Nout starts as a regular battle until they transform into an invincible egg, which then hatches to become a fairy that hates fighting and challenges the protagonist to a match-3 game.
- The Final Boss starts as a turn-based battle against a dragon in the first phase, and ends as an action-adventure battle against a three-headed dragon.
- Optional Boss: In addition to five of the seven Goblins needing to be found and fought in order to be summoned in battle, there's an optional battle against a character named Spoof the mime whose sprite and minigame otherwise only appear in the final credits.
- Playable Epilogue: Beating the Final Boss cues the credits, and then gives a prompt to save the game. Continuing from the clear file brings the protagonist back to his first day at Gorilla Burger, but with his stats, inventory, and black eye carried over, leading to the fight against the Mystery Man that instead ends with him being spared. It then goes to an epilogue where the Busdriver shows up, realizes the protagonist has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, and they try to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. After all that plays out, the player is then given the choice to either quit the game or explore the world for more secrets without having to start a new save file.
- Post-Final Boss: There is a single battle that takes place during the Playable Epilogue: a "rematch" against the Mystery Man from the start of the game, with new attacks and stats scaled to match the endgame protagonist's, as the protagonist overcomes his trauma and wins without killing him.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: The source of 1000 Futures' power is Tiny Baby, a Goblin they captured that takes the form of a grey infant. However, it eventually turns out Tiny Baby is actually using them to gain more power itself.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: When informed that Vance believed the protagonist was an anomaly due to a vision he received, the Busdriver wonders if it was really a precognition, or a memory. The meaning of this is explained in the Playable Epilogue, in which it turns out that there's a time loop going on and Busdriver had already tried to solve it a few times with different people before teaming up with the protagonist and discovering their memory of the past loop, unlike Vance's, is completely intact.
- Robotic Reveal: The man that runs the game show at the Job Centre, who's also the leader of 1000 Futures, is actually a robot built by the Job Centre's clerk, as revealed when Tiny Baby goes berserk and blows him up.
- Running Gag: Every time the player interacts with a vending machine to heal for free, there's some variation on how disappointing it is that there's no big biscuits in stock. You can finally obtain one at the final vending machine of the game, and it permanently maxes the protagonist's stats when eaten.
- Scars Are Forever: The protagonist gets a shiner when he's knocked out near the start of the game, and it remains for the rest of the story.
- The Secret of Long Pork Pies: The Title Drop comes when the protagonist accidentally kills a mysterious man in a knife fight while taking out the trash at Gorilla Burger, and his Bad Boss decides to help dispose of the body by turning it into a burger, which he then eats and is so fascinated by the taste that he decides to make more out of people's hands. It turns out that this is misdirection on his part; the boss actually hired the mysterious man to murder his new employees for burger meat, and was already getting away with it for a long time until the protagonist showed up.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In the Epilogue, the player and Busdriver try to find an iteration of the "Groundhog Day" Loop that takes care of Tiny Baby permanently, eventually ending in one where they just trap it on the moon and everyone else stays alive.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: Events that take place in the mortal world are depicted in pixel art, but the sequences in the higher Goblin Realm are done with polygons.
- Unwitting Pawn:
- Mr. Apricot is willing to let 1000 Futures do whatever they want with Bright City as long as they help him remain the mayor, completely unaware that their intentions are anything less than pleasant until Tiny Baby goes rampant and a bunch of people end up dying.
- 1000 Futures themselves were being used by Tiny Baby, the Goblin they had captured; by having them hook it up to their reactor, it gained enough power to reset time whenever its life was at risk.
