Seven Kisses

This game was created for the 1929 Game Jam “Gaming like it’s 1929”

This download contains an illustrated gamecock (only the first 3 pages (excepting the cover image) are the gameplay, the rest of the pages are the card charts & notes on safety tools).It also includes a plain text pdf for screen readers, for accessibility purposes. 

Initial Inspiration: The Kiss, 1929

Secondary Inspirations: Madame X, Her Private Affair, Big Time and Spite Marriage, all films from 1929. 

The focus is on tales of affairs, illicit kisses and forbidden romances (primarily due to infidelity or class differences) and how they can lead to tragedy and ruin, but written in this game in a way that’s fun and dramatic to act out. I’ve also been watching a lot of the Marc Cherry’s (creator of Desperate Housewives) show Why Women Kill and can’t say it doesn’t explore many similar themes to these, in my opinion, proto-erotic-thrillers of the 1920s (if we adjust for thematic inflation from changing social norms since then).

 The choice to make it a card game RPG came from wanting to incorporate elements of gambling, both narratively thematically relevant and a pastime often associated with the era. In the gameplay I wanted a lot of chance to balance out the role playing/storytelling mechanics, to take the place of how much in life and fate is out of our control, which was also a theme I saw a lot of in these stories. If the wrong cards are pulled by the wrong people, you might not even get to see what the rest of life could hold for you before it’s cut short. 

Them’s the breaks. 

In regards to my inspiration to the title I also read up on a couple other films from 1929 and noticed the number 7 jump out a handful of times, Seven Footsteps to Satan, Seven Keys to Baldplate, Seven Faces etc. so I thought well, to wreak some havoc Seven Kisses ought to do the trick. 

I also designed this game to be relatively quick to pick up and play, even if learning a new card system can seem daunting at first. I've played both the full narrative RPG and a bunch of small, quick pick-up games where we scaled back the roleplaying and enjoyed a simpler story in favor of quick rounds and honestly both were a hoot! 

Illustrations & Layout by me, Cutestpatoot Games

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To be Added (at a later date):

- a custom deck of cards, I did all the illustrations except for four but decided to finish it at a later time when I can actually print and offer a limited run of them as a special edition pack for the game

- the free full audiobook of this game, added to this page like I do for free for all my games for accessibility purposes