So I’ve just added a feature that allows the player to name their interns. I thought this might be an ordeal, but the keyboard_string function in GameMaker actually made it pretty easy. I hadn’t done this because I did not feel it was in company spirit to allow the naming of things and the attendant possibility for emotional attachment, but I think we all know I was just being lazy.

I’ve never been asked what my video game inspirations are for BossMan, but let’s talk about that, anyway. The most directly influential game was Hotline Miami, but not actually in the way you might think. Though the top-down visuals bear obvious similarities, it was actually the documentary Complex put out that got me going. More specifically, at 26:45 in, Mike Wilson of Devolver Digital says

“Like, if you wanna make a game and you don’t, right now you’re kind of a chump.”

And I knew then that I was a chump. I mean, I’ve called myself some pretty bad things, really just hated on my person, but that cut me deep. And that was really the vital spark I needed to kick things off.

The other games that I most wanted to somehow mimic were FTL and Papers, Please. Well, maybe mimic isn’t the right word. I enjoyed FTL greatly and wanted to make something similar. I wouldn’t say BossMan is similar to FTL, but something about FTL motivated the making of BossMan. As for Papers, Please, I’ll admit that I have a hard time getting into the game. I think I’ve played, like, ten minutes. It’s an extremely depressing game, and one that seems to require a certain sadomasochistic mood, but the fact that there is even space in gamer society for the quietly harrowing tale of an Eastern Bloc border agent was extremely encouraging to me.

More than anything, those three games and the ideas surrounding them justified BossMan to me. It reassured me that there was a place for a game like the one I wanted to create, and it got me to start making what I had just been idly talking about.

So just remember, you may be a chump today, but that’s just cause you’re lazy. Stop being lazy.

Actually, upon further examination, BossMan is largely inspired by Hotline Miami.