Purgatorio Jukebox
Purgatorio Jukebox (2017) is inspired by Hiroya Oku’s comics series Gantz, the video game series Portal, and similar media in the “game of death” genre, which seems to be very popular right now, especially among youth (perhaps because they are embedded in such “games” as part of neoliberal capitalism?).
You, a handful of random individuals, have been saved from certain death— whether a bizarre accident or deadly disease—by the large, mysterious, telephathic floating cube that calls itself the Tesseract. In return, the Tesseract demands that you undertake deadly missions, earning points for completing strange, dangerous tasks—points that can eventually be spent to earn your freedom. Until that freedom is achieved, however, the group of you are imprisoned in a concrete bunker by the Tesseract, which uses its incredible powers to teleport you to and from the locations of your missions. You may occasionally be given leave to briefly return to your own lives, but the cube always brings you back to the bunker and to your assigned missions. What is the Tesseract and what does it want? Can you slowly piece together the clues, all while doing your best to stay alive and to keep your new makeshift allies alive as well? You are trapped between life and death, but play that song one more time. Welcome to Purgatorio Jukebox.
This game draft is not totally finished, but there’s almost enough here for experienced players to be able to improvise around. I hope to return to this soon.