Hello Charlotte EP1: Junk Food, Gods and Teddy Bears

About Hello Charlotte EP1: Junk Food, Gods and Teddy Bears

Junk Food, Gods and Teddy Bears is the first episode of Hello Charlotte and etherane's first game, released free on itch.io in June 2015. The same episode is also on Steam, as Hello Charlotte Demo, downloaded from the store page of EP2. Two more episodes, Requiem Aeternam Deo and Childhood's End, followed with the same characters.

The game greets you as the new Puppeteer. Charlotte is the puppet you control, and around her are alien friends, a maggot cat and a certain Observer. When her new friend goes missing among the static, she has to go into another world after him, which the maker sums up as the horrors of junk food, TV, religion and romance novels for middle-aged women.

It plays as an RPG Maker adventure on flat pixel maps. Charlotte's own room is almost bare, white and minimal; the world beyond it is a collage of checkered floors, red-streaked walls, giant strawberries, staring eyes and blood-spattered creatures. You talk, explore and get through what the maker calls familiar puzzles: codes, chases, word puzzles and math.

The horror sits between a joke and a nightmare. The maker promises a B-movie sci-fi plot with a slight hint of meat and humorous bad endings, and wishes you fun dying; under that, it calls the episode a story about the memory of long-gone gods and the loss of individuality, where one wrong step makes the truth of the world begin to unravel.

It suits players who like strange, talky RPG Maker games such as Yume Nikki or OFF, and anyone who wants to start Hello Charlotte from the beginning before the longer second and third episodes.

How to play Hello Charlotte EP1: Junk Food, Gods and Teddy Bears

1. Download it free from itch.io for Windows, in English or one of the other official languages, or get it on Steam from the Hello Charlotte EP2 page as Hello Charlotte Demo.
2. Unzip it and run the game, then start a new game from the title screen.
3. Move Charlotte with the arrow keys and press Space or Enter to talk to people and examine things.
4. Follow the lost friend into the TV world and solve the codes, word puzzles and math problems that block the way.
5. Save from the menu with Esc, and expect to die more than once.

Tips

• Save often: one wrong step can end the run, and the bad endings are part of the fun.
• Examine everything in a room, since puzzle answers are often written somewhere nearby.
• Hold Shift to run, which helps in the chases.
• Play it before EP2 and EP3; they keep the same characters.

Questions