"Kyle woke up. He is famous"
Kyle is Famous is a 2019 text-based adventure game by John Szymanski, published by New Blood Interactive and starring Gianni Matragrano as the narrator. The story centers on Kyle, host of the talk show "Stay Up Late with Kyle", whose next episode is his most important guest interview yet: the philanthropist Rachel May. This interview requires preparation. Kyle has 30 hours to prepare, he must choose his actions wisely...
Initially released in 2019 on itch.io, the game was re-released in 2021 on Steam as a "Complete Edition", which now has a narrator for the text and also increased the possible endings from 21 to a whopping 117.
This game contains examples of:
- Actually, I Am Him: Parodied. In one path of the interview, Kyle can announce that HE is Rachel May, much to the confusion of the real Rachel May sitting across from him. He then proceeds to interview himself.
- Then exaggerated when in the same path, if Kyle's first question is "Is your mother a mother?", he answers that he is his own mother, and everyone's mother, and everyone else!
- Alien Invasion: If Kyle brings his fridge with him to his hot dog sale, a slug invasion will occur that Kyle fights off with his fridge.
- Ambiguously Human: Kyle can do some really weird things without any explanation as to why such as morphing into a bug, vomiting out cats or swallowing an entire fridge in one piece and pulling it back out later. If he chooses to wither away and die instead of getting out of bed immediately, he becomes a ghost, but can later "stop being a ghost" to do his show, "as usual."
- Amnesiac Hero: Kyle can become this if he attempts to open a locked door in his apartment by slamming his face into it.
- Back from the Dead: If Kyle decides to wither away and die in the beginning of the game (thus spending his preparation time as a ghost), Kyle will, as per normal, turn back to a live human before the interview.
- Kyle's friend Harold will also come back to life due to the power of friendship.
- Bamboo Technology: Bringing Rachel back in time will result in the time machine breaking and trapping both her and Kyle in the past. Both characters will casually build a time machine out of random plants and garbage lying around in the past in order to get back to the present, all while having a friendly chat.
- Blatant Lies: One route involves Kyle claiming that his shoes are missing and trying to prove it by showing his foot with the shoe still being worn. He will then continue to insist his shoes are missing.
- Body Horror: If you make Kyle stand in the kitchen for too long and think about hot dogs, he will begin to melt due to standing in the same spot for too long.
- Comically Missing the Point: In the "Kyle Consumed" ending, Kyle chugs a bottle of lard during the interview and ends up vomiting all around him in a 10-feet radius, ruining the broadcast. As Kyle heads home, he makes a mental note to refill his lard supply.
- Explosive Overclocking: If Kyle uses the phone he acquired from the tech store too much, it will explode on him. This happens right after he reads an article about a recall for the phone due to its tendency to explode when overused.
- Gainax Ending: Nearly every single ending in the game is just flat out bizarre. Examples include:
- Kyle covers himself in gummy bears and claymores, turning him into a giant gummy bear monster and he then proceeds to eat an entire race of elves who start new lives inside his body.
- Kyle walks into the mayor's office while naked. The mayor beats him with a stick until he leaves and when Kyle won't stop trying to come back the mayor barricades his door with his desk which results in the mayor being unable to eat and starving to death.
- Kyle declares that everybody in the world is him, which is somehow proven to be scientifically true by sociologists. Nobody cares.
- Kyle randomly decides to play hide and go seek without anybody present and then jumps into a pit of goo where nobody ever finds him.
- Kyle's favorite band from his childhood breaks down the wall of his studio after Kyle plays their music on live TV without permission and proceeds to beat the crap out of him. Kyle decides it was the best day of his life.
- Guide Dang It!: Most endings can be obtained just by taking every possible item into every single path and finding them by trial and error, but a handful of them require other endings to be obtained first which can make them hard to find if the player doesn't know this and has already gone down that particular route with every possible item. The game also doesn't tell you that your fridge is a unique inventory item. Most players will stumble into obtaining it by selecting the option to eat it but not realize that the game counts it as a unique item since doing this just gives the player a bad food icon which other options such as eating bugs or chugging lard will do as well.
- Golden Ending: Kyle baselessly and correctly accuses Rachel of being a criminal, gets in a sword fight with her and then after she escapes and flees the country he follows and marries her. This ending in particular is appropriately set apart from the other endings on the in game endings list by by having a gold icon instead of the standard red that the rest have and can only be obtained after finding a very hefty chunk of the game's other endings.
- Heroic BSoD: If Kyle claims that he is Rachel May during the interview and has no interview questions prepared, he just remains silent and motionless as the camera continues to roll with no one really knowing what to do. This was eventually interpreted as Kyle performing an artistic episode.
- Interactive Fiction: The game is an interactive text adventure, where players can choose what Kyle does to prepare for his interview.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Choosing the "wither away" option at the start of the game causes Kyle to die. After this happens, the player only has the "shucks" option, as if that's Kyle's reaction to dying; he then continues on his planned business as normal.
- Multiple Endings: The Steam edition of the game features 117 endings that Kyle can encounter.
- Naked People Are Funny: Zig Zagged. If Kyle does not get clothed before the interview, he appears nude on the set, shocking the production crew and Rachel. However, if he decides to leave his apartment and go visit the neighbor or tech store before being clothed, no one comments on his lack of clothes.
- Never My Fault: If Kyle fails to prepare his interview questions before meeting Rachel May, Kyle blames Rachel for him not being able to prepare any questions.
- Not Helping Your Case: If Kyle admits that he ran over a puppy on purpose, he will (after a moment of silence) attempt a "Just Joking" Justification... by screaming and then laughing violently."Hey, I ran over a puppy on purpose," said Kyle.
Everyone in the studio froze.
Kyle spread his hands out wide. "IT'S A JOKE!!!" He started laughing from the bottom of his stomach. - Of Corpse He's Alive: The "Helped a Friend" ending, in which Kyle finds the corpse of an old friend Harry, who went missing in Kyle's house for some reason. Harry comes Back from the Dead via The Power of Friendship, after Kyle forgets to bring his corpse to the movie theatre, and the two share a hug and plans for drinks later.
- Once an Episode: If Kyle acquires Techno Jim and interviews it, his ratings will skyrocket (due to the cutout catching on fire during the interview) and result in Techno Jim becoming a staple of the show. And, of course, it gets destroyed every episode.
- Painting the Medium: Sometimes special effects appear over the interface, such as when the studio's fire sprinklers come on and cause raindrops to appear on the cards.
- Sleeps in the Nude: Kyle apparently does this because after waking up from his bed, if he does not perform the actions to get clothed before the interview, he appears in the interview nude.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: If Kyle brings up the Bug Vigilante after he discovers their identity on his talk show Gabby will walk onto the set uninvited a few minutes later just to tell the audience that she isn't the Bug Vigilante despite Kyle not mentioning her name.
- Take a Third Option: If Kyle manages to steal the Techno Jim cutout prior to arriving to the studio, it's possible to have him decide to interview the cutout instead of Rachel. All this does is have Kyle pretend the cutout is Rachel, and the cutout soon catches on fire because of the lights in the studio.
- Tap on the Head: Plays out when Kyle attempts to open a locked door forcing the door open using his face. This results in Kyle gaining severe short-term amnesia. The door remains locked despite his efforts.
- The Power of Friendship: It is this that caused Harold to be able to be Back from the Dead.
- Time Machine: In his closet, Kyle can unlock a rusty box and discover a time machine box within, which he can press to start the day new or take with him to the interview.
- Timed Mission: Played with. Kyle has 30 hours to prepare for his interview. However, the hours are counted by the choices he makes (one interactive screen = one hour).
- Unfinished Business: One choice leads to Kyle dying, then continuing on to prepare for the interview."Kyle is now a ghost. This does not relieve him of his responsibilities."
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Done constantly. For example, Kyle can choose to swallow Gabby whole and then spit her out later to get her help with tasks both mundane and bizarre. Most of the time she doesn't even acknowledge that he just ate and then regurgitated her, and when she does get annoyed it's almost always because Kyle is asking her to preform an annoying task rather than because she had just spent several hours stuck in his stomach. Onlookers don't seem to care that a celebrity just horked up an entire human being either.
- Vigilante Woman: Gabby, Kyle's downstairs neighbor, is the bug vigilante. Kyle can use this information in his interview.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: What Kyle eats will influence the outcome of the interview. If he doesn't eat anything, he'll pass out immediately after Rachel introduces herself. If he eats bad food (like his entire fridge, or a filled pantry closet's worth of lard), he'll immediately puke instead. Nobody will react to him puking and the show continues on as normal, though Kyle will sound noticeably worse for wear.
