Pictured: Either Ben or Paul on the left, and the protagonist on the right.
The Preposterous Awesomeness of Everything
is a satirical Point-and-Click Adventure Game by Joe Richardson, released on February 9, 2016 for PC through Steam.
It is set on a formerly tropical (but now increasingly desertified) island populated by naked people who are trying to build a rocket to escape to a different world. However, their efforts have been failing for years, and so it is up to the protagonist to find out what went wrong.
Tropes present in this game:
- Always Identical Twins: Ben and Paul, only discernible when Paul is wearing his pink hat.
- Attention Whore: Helen. She originally gets by in the island's "anarchy" state by just looking pretty and acting nice so others would share food. When the island's society upgrades, she ends up getting into "showbiz".
- Book Ends: The game ends and begins with the protagonist naked on a beach.
- The Cameo: Felix Kjellberg's face is used for "The Dangerous Lunatic".
- Central Theme: Two: Politics and Cycles.
- The first segment of the game is convincing the majority of people to follow a mentally ill man just because he has a big head and can dress in important-looking clothes. When a democratic system is created, the two forerunners spend more time lying and trying to impress people than accomplishing the task they were elected to do (and which they were doing poorly, arguing over whether tape or glue is better to build a rocket), and it's impossible for a third party to win without stooping to their level. And when someone that can actually get things done finally comes into power, he turns out to be a sociopath, and everything he does is quickly undone when he's ousted.
- Life before deciding to build a rocket was the same motions of eating and being reckless every single day. When identical twins Ben and Paul run for head of the rocket-building process, their leadership is literally indistinguishable from each other, save only for whether they prefer tape or glue. The game also ends exactly where it began, with the player able to go through the entire plot again from that point if they wish to.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The Man With The Little Pencil ends up being eviscerated and cannibalized by The Dangerous Lunatic.
- Excuse Plot: The main character learns that the trash on their island is actually discarded rocket parts, and sets out on a quest to get the island to build a rocket...because it sounds awesome.
- Game Within a Game: It isn't actually played, but one optional event has the player attempt to comment on the current broken democratic system with a satirical point-and-click adventure game, which features an optional event of that game's protagonist trying to make their own game upon realizing how hard it is to make one.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: In one of the game's bad endings, Drake's plan to save the island by removing people ends up completely ruining the ecosystem, with too much initial overgrowth for smaller, necessary things like flowers and insects to survive and keep other things living for very long.
- Have a Nice Death: There are various ways for the player character to die, each of which usually has a paragraph of text describing how exactly it happened, or what happened to the island following your passing.
- Karma Houdini: Ben and Paul, who get first-class seats on the rocket once it's complete because of all the food they kept for themselves when in power. Though admittedly, the rocket is set to kill them, along with everyone else, at first.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: When democracy occurs, there is a small group of revolutionaries gathered on the beach that are against the corrupt system, but never actually vote or try to overthrow anyone.
- Self-Deprecation: The Game Within a Game scene was likely inspired by the developer's own tribulations with game-making.
- The Sociopath: Drake, who considers his intellectual inferiors a blight on the ecosystem worth sending into the sun.
- Title Drop: As the main character falls to Earth when the rocket explodes upon reentry, they get a good look at their island home and remark how life is preposterously awesome.
- Treacherous Advisor: Drake, who provides the main character with hints and is the only one that actually knows how to build a rocket, decides to send everyone into the sun with the completed rocket because of how they ruined the island.
- Useless Item: Not only are there actual items that don't progress the story, there are two entire commands, "Pray For" and "Do A Back-flip", that have no real purpose whatsoever.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Drake claims, when his plot to kill everyone (including himself) is revealed, that he's doing so because they were causing the rapid desertification of the island.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Jane, an islander that the main character has a crush on, isn't seen outside of the "anarchy" segment of the game.
