Pageant
The sequel is out now: New Year's Eve, 2019
Your name is Qiuyi (Karen?) Zhao, and you’ve just been signed up by your parents for a beauty pageant. You’re not ready, not even close, but you don’t have a choice. But perhaps you can make the best of it. Maybe it’s the one opportunity to create a “hook” for your college application. Maybe you can reinvent yourself, get rid your anxiety and become someone new. Or maybe you can find true love (or some approximation thereof).
Features:
- Be a socially anxious Asian-American lesbian teenager. Deal with stress, anxiety, and loneliness.
- Form deeper bonds with one of your three friends, and maybe start a romance?
- Prepare for and compete in a beauty pageant! Try to change yourself, for better or for worse, or don't. Pick your outfit and style!
- Participate in a full range of extracurricular activities, from science competitions to science research. You can even learn some actual science!
- Learn Chinese history and geography from your parents!
The story is complete, with about 79k words, but might still receive updates. An average playthrough will be around 25-30k words.
Source code link: https://github.com/aucchen/pageant
Cover image source: https://www.pikist.com/free-photo-sjpjl/ (public domain)
Cover font: "Parisienne" by Astigmatic - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Parisienne
Feedback form: https://forms.gle/9QpFnEzftGXHckaY6
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.4 - Achievements, bug fixesJan 01, 2023
- v1.3.1 - Minor fixes, BeeSep 05, 2022
- v1.3 - Minor updatesJun 01, 2022
- v1.2 - minor updatesJun 05, 2021
- Pageant survey responsesApr 09, 2021
- Feedback, beta testing for a sequelMar 08, 2021
- v1.1 - minor updatesJan 25, 2021
- Design Notes and PostmortemNov 29, 2020
Comments
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i was glued to my laptop for three evening trying to see everything in this game. this is awesome!! i liked it very much, thank you <33333
Came here from the Social Democracy game. Remarkably relatable. And I could somewhat make out how the author went from this to making the socdem game
Enjoyed this a lot. Love Emily and Karen so much
Compelling slice-of-life interactive narrative about a gay Chinese-American high school student who must juggle high expectations in many areas, including science and a beauty pageant. CN: social anxiety, panic attacks. 5/5 stars - outstanding.
this was wonderful. I mostly focused on Emily, since I had a feeling she would be like me and well, I was right! it makes me happy to be able to relate so much to her, even though so much of what happens is so hard.
I was honestly uncomfortable with how Qiyui thought about Emily at first, most notably with how she notices something about her voice. it made me anxious about what Emily's portrayal might be like. but that tension went away as the story progressed. and it helped to realize that Emily was being viewed from the perspective of a teenager who didn't understand yet, but had a non-judgemental attitude. I remember being a confused teenager who didn't understand ourselves or others like us, but being accepting with an open mind, like Qiyui. despite my initial anxiety, it feels good to reflect on our past like this.
I'm looking forward to playing the sequel next :)
As someone who is also like Emily, and who has plenty of anxieties around voice, I also worried a lot about how she should be portrayed here. I went back and forth on this, but ultimately I was aiming for something like realism. I’m glad it seemed to turn out alright in the end.
Thank you for the comment! I hope you’ll enjoy New Year’s Eve 2019.
the relatable scenes... 🥲
ahh so much to say about this one... felt painfully relatable in some areas, which means you're doing something right
honestly the best written representation of closeted asian queer kid struggles, and i felt a lot of parallels to the south asian experience
looking forward to a sequel if you plan on making one :)
Thanks, and I’m really glad this felt relatable!
There’s already a sequel! It’s New Year’s Eve, 2019.
Good to know, I'll be checking that out then!
they cannot make the judgement call
Bee (the Dendry port, at least) was one of my favorite game experiences, and this absolutely felt like a worthy successor. The theme and mechanics worked together very well – I felt the protagonist’s stress staring at the list of options for the week and knowing that I had only three choices. (I also tried to do everything and so only did mediocrely at each thread, which maybe wasn’t a win but was a satisfying narrative ending). I’m excited for the sequel!
(I’m also excited that you’ve revived and extended the Dendry framework. I’m hoping more people will use it now too!)
Thank you so much! Bee was one of my favorite games too, and it’s nice to hear that this game might live up to Bee’s very high standards.
I’d definitely love to see more people using dendry. Although realistically, I’m not sure if it offers anything more than twine/twee…
I am so glad that I clicked this! It's one of those 'couldn't put it down' stories! You are a wonderful author and a fantastic game developer. Thank you! <3333
OMG thank you so much!
What a great game, I can't wait for the sequel!
Thank you!
such a fascinating story, I love it. Gotta ask tho been playing around with twine lately, how did you get such a simplistic but Aesthetically pleasing design on your story, and how did you make the choices like that. It’s so cool.
The story isn't written in Twine, it's written in dendry. But it should be possible to make a similar style with CSS; you can look at the web page's CSS with developer tools, or check out the source code link.
I honestly can't get this game out of my head. I want to play again but I love my ending with Emily (and winning) so much. I can't wait to see what else you do with this story in sequels. You're a very talented story teller!
Thank you!!! If you're interested in beta testing for the sequel, feel free to contact me in the links in the latest development log.
Awesome work! I definitely can see the influence of both Bee and Love Nikki Dress-Up Queen, which is not a combo I ever thought I would be experiencing! XD
Great writing -- It's intense at parts! I'll have to play in sessions so I don't get too stressed~
Thanks! I hope you enjoyed it.
great so far, allready know I will replay after I am done.
Typo : stress event says “you can go bac home” instead of back home
thanks! just fixed it.
Excellently written, and painfully relatable! I was really attached to all the main characters by the end, I hope they all end up okay ><
I was fairly happy with what I got, but definitely want to replay it and try out the other options too!