I will go wherever you are.
—The first line in the original Pretentious Game
Pretentious Game is a series of Adobe Flash games made by Keybol, with the first created in 2012. The gameplay is very simple: you use the arrow keys (and the mouse when required) to control different colored squares and solve various puzzles. With each puzzle, there is a sentence or two that gives a clue on how the puzzle is solved. Along with serving as hints, the sentences are used to tell a surprisingly emotional story about love and loss.
The first three games revolve around the relationship issues between the blue square, the bright pink square, the light pink square, and the gray square (for simplicity's sake, they will be called Blue, Magenta, Peach, and Gray respectively). Pretentious Game 1 and 2 focus on Blue as he pines for Magenta, who is oblivious to his feelings for her and ends up marrying Gray, and tries to move on by getting together with Peach. Pretentious Game 3 focuses on Peach's, Magenta's, and Gray's sides of the story. The fourth game in the series revolves around the familial relationship between Magenta's daughter and son. The fifth game focuses on Magenta's feelings toward Gray, both before and after the events of the previous games.
Each game in the Pretentious Game series can be played here
, here, here, here, and here. A five-in-one version was also published on Steam on May 20th, 2014.
The Pretentious Game series contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: The first two games poke fun at the conventions of pretentious puzzle-platform games like Braid and Limbo. By the third game, where the story starts to get more complex, it's arguable that the series drifts into Indecisive Parody territory.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Blue is in love with Magenta, but she's so fixated on Gray that she doesn't notice.
- Birds of a Feather: Blue and Peach; it's mentioned in the second game that they share the same interests, notably wall-climbing. And even though the series never comments on the similarity, both Blue and Peach have also been hurt by a previous Love Interest.
- Bittersweet Ending: Blue is dead, leaving behind a grieving Peach. Gray is imprisoned for drunk driving, while Magenta is hospitalized for an unspecified illness, leaving her son and daughter more or less on their own. However, Magenta's love for Gray never wavers, and she's allowed to reunite with him after Gray's jail term is finished.
- Brother–Sister Team: Magenta's children in Pretentious Game 4.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Although Blue is willing to do anything for Magenta, including "leap cliffs" and "dodge fire," he is unable to actually confess his feelings.
- The Casanova: Gray; in his own words, "[he's] a thief who stole many women's hearts." Deconstructed, as Gray's affair with Magenta later ruins his marriage with Peach, and the divorce affected Gray so much that he turned to the bottle out of guilt and winds up in jail after killing Blue in a car accident while driving drunk.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You can always come back if you fall into a bottomless pit or go off the screen. The only time it's averted is when a drunken Gray kills Blue in a car accident.
- Double Standard: It's mentioned that Magenta will always be remembered for being someone who wrecked a person's marriage (Gray and Peach's), when it was Gray who caused his marriage to fall apart by relapsing into his old womanizing habits.
- Downer Ending: Seems to be a trend in this series:
- The first game ends with Blue not getting the girl.
- The second game ends with Blue getting killed by a drunk driver, who is revealed to be Gray in the third game. Can also count as a Sudden Downer Ending; see So Happy Together below.
- The fourth game ends with Magenta ending up in the hospital for unknown reasons. The fifth game reveals that Magenta got sick, although it's still unknown what her illness was.
- Averted in the fifth game, which ends on the relatively happy note of Gray being released from prison after doing his time for drunkenly killing Blue in a car crash.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Gray turns to alcohol to deal with his guilt and depression over how his marriage to Peach ended. It results in him killing Blue in a car accident and getting arrested when he decides to drive while drunk.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the original online version of the first game, Gray appears blue-colored. He's appropriately colored by the third game.
- Hint System: This is one of the main purposes of the in-game text.
- History Repeats: Subverted in Pretentious Game 4; Magenta's son almost gets killed by a drunk driver, which is how Blue died in the second game, but his older sister saves him just in time.
- Hopeless Suitor: Blue towards Magenta, though he later moves on and hooks up with Peach. It would have stuck had Gray not killed Blue in a car accident.
- I Love You Because I Can't Control You: It's implied in Pretentious Game 5 that this is what initially attracted Gray to Magenta.
- It's All About Me: Magenta flat-out says in the third game that she doesn't care how Peach would feel about her husband being involved with another woman—all she cares about is being with Gray.Magenta: I would step on her just to get to you.
- I Will Wait for You: Magenta is deeply in love with Gray, and is willing to wait for him after he's imprisoned for killing Blue in a car accident. In the end, Gray finishes his jail term and is released, allowing him to reunite with Magenta and their kids.
- Ladykiller in Love: The womanizing Gray ends up marrying Peach. It still doesn't stop him from cheating on her with Magenta, who had been in love with him all this time.
- Love Dodecahedron: Blue loves Magenta, who loves Gray, who is married to Peach. Then Gray and Peach split up, Gray and Magenta end up married with two children, and Peach and Blue get into a relationship. And then a drunk Gray kills Blue in a car crash, which results in Blue and Peach's relationship abruptly ending, Gray going to prison, and Magenta waiting for Gray to be freed after doing his time.
- Love Hurts: The premise of the series.
- The Mistress: What Magenta is to Gray while he and Peach are married. The fourth game makes this trope a Once Done, Never Forgotten example for Magenta, who states she'll always be remembered as someone who wrecked a person's marriage.
- Remarried to the Mistress: A downplayed example; Gray marries Magenta after Peach divorces him.
- Second Love: Peach becomes this to Blue in the second game. Then Blue is killed in a car accident.
- So Happy Together: "[Blue and Peach are] bouncing with joy." Then you hear the sudden car screech.
- Star-Crossed Lovers:
- In Pretentious Game 3 and 5, Magenta describes her affair with the married Gray as something that society disapproves of.
- Blue and Peach's relationship is cut short after a drunken Gray kills the former in a car accident.
- Stronger Sibling: A heroic example; in a few puzzles in the fourth game, Magenta's son is the one who has the strength his sister lacks to move the big green blocks.
- Sudden Downer Ending: Blue finally gets a chance at love when he encounters Peach, who's fresh from divorcing her womanizing husband, Gray. Then he is killed in a car accident when a drunken Gray runs him over, leaving behind a grieving Peach.
- Title Drop: Happens at the end of the first game, when Blue realizes that Magenta is in love with someone else.But all of this is just a Pretentious Game.
- Waiting Puzzle: In the first game, one puzzle requires you to wait for Magneta to come to Blue.
- Wham Line: One in Pretentious Game 4:I didn't know they were home because I didn't hear themBecause I can't hear anything
