Maggie, Beauty, and the former's beloved boyfriend.
Maggie's Apartment is an adventure Point-and-Click Game by CalArts student Anatola Howard, released on August 1st, 2017. The player takes the role of Maggie Mallowne, a marshmallow girl trapped in her one-room apartment by a lockdown order. The entire game takes place in this apartment, with all information gleaned from the radio, Maggie's possessions, or neighbors talking through the walls or on her balcony, and the aim of the game is to discover why the apartment is on lockdown...and whether Maggie's mysterious celebrity boyfriend is hiding something.It can be bought on Steam and completed in three to four hours.
Maggie's Apartment provides examples of:
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Downplayed. For a period after The Reveal, the player chooses Beauty's responses rather than Maggie's, as Maggie is too shell-shocked to think straight.
- Basement-Dweller: Played with. Shrimp is a college dropout and lives with his mother, but is pleasant, intelligent, and actively working to develop skills for a job. As a musician, but still.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Maggie herself is quite fat, but considered pretty by multiple characters.
- Bio-Augmentation: In an odd example, Ham was apparently capable of this because of his experience as a construction worker. It worked, and well enough that the only things distinguishing him from the real Randy Rosebud were his lack of hair (fixed with a stolen wig) and his voice.
- Break the Cutie: Maggie, when after hearing Randy's death on her radio learns that not only was her boyfriend an impostor, but the direct cause of her fan club's failure and her debt, in addition to her would-be murderer.
- Chekhov's Gun: Literally. Officer Rascal's gun, which Maggie acquires relatively early in the game, is instrumental in defending herself against Ham.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: Rascal thinks so when drunk, at least, and is quick to arrest Shrimp on Maggie's tip-off. Maggie herself expresses no strong opinion about it, but remarks that she makes an effort to attend concerts and pay full-price.
- Downer Ending: Randy is dead, Beauty is eaten, and Maggie's life is in shambles. The one bright side is that Ham's cover is blown, but whether or not he gets caught is left ambiguous.
- Edible Theme Naming: Maggie Mallowne, Shrimp Marinara, Hector Cheese...
- Evil Laugh: Hector Cheese's specialty, even noted in the subtitles.Hector: [malicious laughter]
- Funny Background Event: From the balcony, a number of windows can be examined to yield descriptions of these. The ambient music also occasionally fades into surreal advertisements.
- Giggling Villain: Hector Cheese, overlaps with Evil Laugh above. He sounds constantly gleeful.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: A rare instance of somebody's lack of a smoking habit signifying their villainy. Maggie claims that her boyfriend never smokes, even though several advertisements are shown of Randy endorsing cigarettes. This ends up being a clue that the Randy who Maggie knows is actually an imposter.
- Kill and Replace: Ham's ultimate goal. He had already modified himself to look exactly like Randy, and had his plan worked, he would have stolen Randy's vocal chords to replace his own as well.
- Let's Meet the Meat: Beauty is a radish who's prone to casually suggesting that Maggie eat her. What eating her would do, exactly, is unclear.
- Loony Fan: Ham, of the Kill and Replace variety. See the entry on it above.
- Loving a Shadow: Maggie was completely infatuated with Randy Rosebud...who her boyfriend was not. As Beauty points out, despite looking the part, Ham lacked Randy's defining qualities, but Maggie was so taken by the idea of dating her idol she ignored it.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: How the hell is the player supposed to know to get the bullet in the final puzzle, you need to give Beauty's tooth to Dunc so he'll give his tooth in return, which is a bullet?
- Police Are Useless: A single officer was dispatched to investigate a carbon monoxide concentration, and that officer gets drunk and leaves his post to arrest a teenager pirating music.
- Pretty Boy: Randy Rosebud's claim to fame, along with his smooth voice. After his extensive body modifications, Ham counts too.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Dunc gives several impressively pretentious speeches on the destructiveness of the sun while hiding in the closet.
- Sex Sells: In-universe, meat is sold with husky-voiced, innuendo-laden voiceovers, and promotional material for Randy Rosebud mentions his sensuality and attractiveness constantly.
- Smoking Is Cool: Several times, gameplay is interrupted by a commercial in which Randy endorses cigarettes, and he's seen lighting one himself in a flashback.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: Beauty wears a nicotine patch to try to quit smoking, telling Maggie that she doesn't know when she started but wants to stop.
- Smug Snake: Hector Cheese wants to make very sure Maggie understands how much control he has over her future.
- Star Scraper: The setting of the game. Maggie lives on the 982nd floor.
- Vocal Dissonance: Beauty has a surprisingly soft and pleasant voice for a giant talking radish with an eyepatch and one tooth.
- Wham Line: On the paper Hector Cheese drops:THANKS FOR HELPING ME KILL MY GIRLFRIEND WHEN YOU HEAR HER CRY AROUND 7 PLZ BLOW UP MY APT WITH CARBON
