City of Lungbreathers￼

City of Lungbreathers

There’s nothing less lucky than a fish coming ashore amidst the docks of a fishing port, and nothing luckier than losing your flanneled pursuers by joining the city’s Fish Day parade. But heroes are often sustained by the tides of luck and Gilly would be no exception.

In this scene, the player would have controlled Gilly as a traditional platform-jumping hero fleeing from the city’s fisherman and into the annual Fish Day Parade. Using parade floats, awnings, scaffolds, and other platforms, Gilly would have tried to stay above street-level, inadvertently becoming the star of the parade. Not one to shy from attention, Gilly would have leaned into this newfound stardom and made a show of his escape. The player would use controller/keyboard combos to make Gilly do twists, turns, and mid-air poses as Gilly leapt from platform to platform. Success in this stage would have depended upon two things:

not being caught by pursuing fisherman
gaining enough cool points to grab the attention of key players in Gilly’s story

If Gilly reached the cool points threshold before finishing the parade, a skateboard would appear, opening new combos and unlocking a cool points multiplier.

This piece was a joy to write. How do you get across that this is a festival? Horns. How do you evoke a sense of mystery? Arpeggiated bells. The rest falls into place around the liquid synthesizer that slides Gilly to the front and center. The drums and horns pop in and out as Gilly progresses through the parade, culminating in the piano break just as Gilly makes emotional first contact with his future roommate and confidant, Bradley Bigshot, a city employee seeking to upset his district’s city council incumbent.

The bell coda would trigger as Bradley pulls Gilly to safety on a balcony overlooking the parade grounds and welcomes him to Big Harbor City. Gilly tries to insist he’s a local, but Bradley sees right through Gilly’s newfound celebrity and into his fishy fishness.

Bishop Grisha