Let me just start off by saying, I love to play side scrolling pixelated retro games. So when I heard about a game that's coming out which fits in all these areas, I’m there no questions asked. I first heard about the game Osmonds Great Day from a friend, his friend worked on development of the game. He was talking to me at school about how his friend was going to give him pre releases of the game, and a free copy once the game came out. I immediately asked him if I could play it when he got it, like I said I love side scrolling retro games like that.
Him being my friend agreed but was uneasy about it, as if in thinking ‘Its my copy! why should I have to share it with HIM’. When I got home from school I logged on my computer and searched up ‘Osmonds Great Day’ on Google. The first result simply said what I had searched up, and I clicked on it. I was greeted with a 5 page long article about the game, and a nice big picture on the top right
of the article. At first I thought ‘screw this, I’m not reading all of that!’ but my curiosity got the best of me and I had to read it all.
The first sentence read, “Osmonds Great Day is a side scroller retro style platformer game about a simple businessman who goes on a great adventure.” It went on to say a lot of stuff about how Osmond got sucked into a magic time portal or something it was very confusing. It still sounded very interesting though, although it spoiled most of the game for me, but I didn’t care it was still really interesting.
It was more of a non-violent feel good adventure game, and i liked that. I’m not much for shooting violent games, so this one looked right up my alley. But it didn’t say the release date, and i was hoping it would be soon. The next day at school I talked about it with the same friend whose friend was helping make the game.
“It looks pretty cool!” I said excitedly.
“I know right!” He replied to me. We talked through all of our classes together about the game.
“So when is this game going to be released?” I asked.
“Uh, he said a few months but i’m not so sure.” He said.
As the months crept past my anticipation grew. There was some nights where I couldn’t even sleep I was so excited for this game. After about six months I went on the website for the game again. What i saw shocked me, The title instead of reading ‘Osmonds Great Day’ it read ‘This project has been cancelled.’
“What the hell” I said under my breath. Then I grew in tone “What the fuck!!” I slammed my hand on my table. This couldn’t be happening. I called my friend on his cell phone. “Hey, have you heard from your friend yet about the game?”
“Yeah, he says he doesn’t want to talk about it.” he replied.
“Is there anything he did tell you?” I asked.
“Yeah, all he said was that the creator, Osmond, committed suicide while game development.” He replied.
“Osmond?” I said quietly. “Was the game named after him?”
“No shit!” He said sarcastically. “Apparently something happened with the game and the creator suddenly just couldn’t handle it and killed himself, I guess something went wrong and they lost something vital, and that was the creators life work. But thats just the tip of the iceberg, a lot of other shit happened that he can’t tell us.” I didn’t hear from my friend for a couple more weeks. Soon a page leaked onto the internet about what happened to the game, I found it as the first result. The article wasn’t that long and this is what it said:
The game Osmonds Great Day has been cancelled due to the unfortunate suicide of the creator, Osmond Dreary. We have a witness's statement here:
“The editing room wasn’t that busy at the time, I remember the pictures of Osmonds pixelated character pinned up on the wall, and the real Osmond hunched over his computer. I kept working on drawing and perfecting the characters for about 20 minutes. About 5 after that Osmond started lightly tapping on his computer screen. I remember him saying stuff like ‘Oh no no no no’ and ‘Hello? hello?’ between each light tap. Soon he was banging on the computer screen screaming ‘No No No!!’ a fellow editor came up to Osmond and said ‘sir what happened?’ Osmond turned to the editor and said
‘We have lost all the data of the game somehow.’ I could see a tear running down Osmonds cheek. I said ‘Sir its ok we can just postpone the release date and restart the thing.’ He turned to me and said ‘do you not understand, idiot?’ I stopped speaking then, Osmond never usually spoke to people like that? Osmond walked over to his desk and opened the drawer, he produced a pistol out of the drawer, ‘Holy shit!’ I had heard a editor say.
Osmond then turned to the picture of his character and said. ‘What a terrible day.’ He then placed the gun on his head and pulled the trigger. He fell to the ground dead. A little black object slid towards me, one of those flash drives. There was a note attached to it. The note read, To whoever shall find this. I keep that flash drive locked up in my locker in the editing room now.”
The flash drive has since gone missing.
And that's all it said.
“Wow” I said to myself. “Wow” I kept saying. Suddenly my phone rang. “Hello?” I said into the phone.
“Hey.” My friend said.
“Oh, hi” I replied.
“Meet me at the park, now!” He said and hung up. I got on my bike and rode over to the park. I walked over to my friend he had a sly look on his face.
“What did you do?” I said sternly.
“Oh nothing” he said slyly. “just this!” and he pulled out a little black flash drive.
“Where did you get that?” I said to him.
“I stole it from my developer friend!” He replied. I froze, that must have been the editor who was giving the statement.
“No way.” I said. “Is this a copy of the game?”
“I’m not sure? lets go back to my house and try it out.” He said excitedly.
“Alright...” I said a bit uneasy, I had a bad feeling, but i still followed him back to his house. He started up his computer and slid the flash drive in. When the computer faded in to his desktop he selected the ‘open folder and view files’ in the flash drive. Soon a file came up with only one application, ‘OsmondsTerribleDay.exe’
“Osmonds Terrible Day?” my friend said.
“It must have been a working title.” I said to him. He ran the game. The title started a bit strange, it was Osmond, but instead of the two blue pixels for his eyes they were dark grey. Instead of his brown hair it was just jet black. He was wearing a dark trench coat that went to his feet instead of his nice business suit, and the strangest part was that he was holding a gun in his hand. The music was still happy go lucky music, but with this picture the music added to the creepy vibe.
“Shit, was this supposed to be a horror game?” my friend asked.
“Beats me.” I shrugged. “Press enter.” My friend obeyed the blinking text which said ‘press enter to begin adventure’ The game flashed for a few seconds then faded to another text screen which kept blinking and the text kept changing for a split second. It mainly read ‘It was a normal day’ I could barely see the word normal changing to ‘Horrid’ and ‘Insane’ then the word day changing to ‘night’ or ‘moment’ then it faded to more text. ‘Osmond was sitting at his desk.’ but then for a brief second the words ‘sitting at his desk’ changed to things like ‘going insane’ and ‘murdering his friends’ The scene faded into a scene with the Osmond from the menu sitting at his desk writing something.
Then a text box appeared.
“I have finally done it!” He said. I saw him grab a gun from his desk.
“This game is awesome!” my friend said. He then assumed control of Osmond he got the controls down and started to proceed through the level, in the background were buildings on fire and planes dropping bombs and people marching into the city. Soon he came across an NPC the NPC did not look too good. My friend went up to the NPC and Osmond automatically stabbed him in the stomach. “Hey!” my friend said “I didn’t do that!” The NPC fell to the ground and a text box appeared above it as it’s last dying words.
“Why did you do this to us?” It said. He proceeded forward, soon a group of soldiers came into view from the right side of the screen. They tried to attack him, but my friend shot them all with the gun. He kept proceeding through the level killing more soldiers and NPC’s on the way, until he got to a cut-scene. In the cut-scene a smoke grenade hit Osmond in the face. Osmond fell to the ground as the smoke surrounded him. The screen faded to black.
The screen faded in, Osmond awoke in a car handcuffed. A text box appeared from the little cage where you could view what the driver was doing.
“You know, you didn’t have to kill us.” It said. Then Osmonds text box appeared.
“I didn’t mean to.” he said “Its just and urge”
“Hmmph” the drivers window said. The car came to a stop. Osmond was hauled out of the vehicle, and dragged down a long hallway. He then punched the guards, and grabbed their guns. My friend assumed control of Osmond again, this time Osmond had dual pistols. As he walked those random NPC’s came out of nowhere and Osmond automatically shot them. The word ‘insanity’ flickered across the screen. The NPC’s became more frequent, until they filled up the level, and surrounded Osmond. Then a man appeared before him. The text box appeared again.
“Why did you do this to us?” It said.
“I had no choice don’t you want to save this world!” Osmond said.
“No” The man said, and all the NPC’s started clawing at Osmonds limbs and face. “Not like this, Osmond Dreary, not like this.” soon hundreds of the word ‘Insanity’ filled the screen. All we could see were glimpses of Osmond killing all the NPC’s pretty... well beast! Then a text box appeared from the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
“You didn’t have to-” was all it could say then we could hear a little yelp. Then we could see Osmonds eyes, grey and lifeless. Then the credits came up. But they didn’t list developers, just told a story as a scene of Osmond trudging into the sunset played in the background. The Text read:
I have done what no other could have accomplished. I have purified this world. I must go on to other worlds, other lives, other Osmond Dreary’s. I must purify all the worlds, and i must construct all the others too.
At the end of that short paragraph The Osmond in the scene put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. Right when we heard the gunshot, the screen cut to black. Some text appeared saying:
Other world. Here comes Osmond. And that was it.