POCKET WORLD

Somewhere beyond the static... 

A virtual universe called World lives and breathes, pristine, built for the pleasure of its immortal Users. The only true commodities in this digital utopia are Memories: the priceless recollections that stitch together an identity. Users are careful never to forget these core fragments of truth that make them real people…

But you did. Whether by choice, coercion or the growing bitterness of a peace-less immortality, you cast aside the last remnants of your Memory, and the oblivion you found was deep and dark… But even that did not last. For Users bereft of self, for those who do not remember and can not die, there is only Pocket World.

Your search for a new identity has taken you into a Pocket Partition, a lawless dimension sealed away from the rest of World. Can you steal the memories within and reconstruct your persona before troubleshooters catch you or your battery runs out? Will the Partition collapse from the unstoppable Glitch that followed you here?

Can you escape in time?

Play to find out!

Pocket World is a "digital dungeon crawl", including rules to create a User, find out what's wrong with them, and see them through a season of connected Partitions, gradually gathering the Memories they need to escape and return to World, restored.  The core tension of the game comes from two competing clocks--ESCAPE and CHAOS--that drive players to take decisive action and risk losing everything in a madcap race for Memory as the Partition crumbles.

The Game Boy (or GB for short) has comprehensive tools to create the Partition ahead of time, or during play. Tables for room and threat generation follow the conversational flow of dungeon exploration, while prompts for terrain, mood, and environmental details allow anyone to imagine a fantastic and wholly unique Partition.  You can also use the prompts and tools of Pocket World to create a Metroid-style data dungeon for any game system.

Pocket World was a Kickstarter project for Zinequest 2 that funded in 2020. The game only exists in its current form because of the incredible patience and forbearance of its original backers. Thank you, always.