Mighty Jill Off
Encyclopedia
Mighty Jill Off is a 2D
platform
independently developed
freeware
video game designed by Anna Anthropy
, with art by James Harvey and music by Andrew Toups. It stars a submissive
named Jill, who has a boot fetish and is forced to climb up a tower after her Queen kicks her down it as punishment. Jill does this by jumping and gliding past obstacles. Jill can be defeated in one hit by these obstacles, but will return to the last check point. The game serves as an homage to the 1986 arcade game Mighty Bomb Jack
.
The game's BDSM
and lesbian
themes were implemented by Anthropy, a lesbian BDSM practitioner, for the purpose of providing legitimate "dykes" in video games. She also made the game difficult, to fit in with its BDSM theme. Mighty Jill Off has received praise for its BDSM themes from critics of websites such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun
and Game Set Watch. It was also praised for its high level of difficulty by editors of GamesRadar
and Bitmob. 1UP.com
included it in its list of favourite free PC games of 2009.
lesbian
named Jill who has a boot fetish. She is kicked to the bottom of her Queen's tower for acting like a "greedy slut
". Jill attempts to climb back up the tower and return to her Queen; once there, she is given affection, constricted and gagged, and made to do it again.
Some of Mighty Jill Offs gameplay is borrowed from the 1986 arcade game Mighty Bomb Jack
, such as the jumping mechanics, as a tribute to it. Players control Jill in three ways: moving, jumping, and gliding. Once in the air, players cause Jill to glide by rapidly pushing the jump button. There are three types of obstacles: spikes, fire, and spider
s; the latter can move to attack Jill when she comes close. Coming into contact with these obstacles kills Jill instantly, forcing her to start at the most recent checkpoint—typically located at a change in room. Jill has infinite lives, allowing players to play as long as they like without having to start the game over.
, also known as Auntie Pixelante, in 2008. It was also developed by James Harvey and Andrew Toups, who provided the artwork and music for the game, respectively. Anthropy designed Mighty Jill Off to feature "dykes and perverts" to make up for "the distinct lack of real dyke characters and dyke desire in games". She argued that while "supposed dykes" are seen in commercials, these characters are "written and drawn by men". She said that "they don't look like us, they don’t express themselves like us, they don’t lust like us." Anthropy compared the challenge of players who lead Jill through the game as similar to the challenges of a top who leads the bottom through a scene.
-themed; he felt that it was easy for something that is both cartoony and sexual to make viewers feel uncomfortable and used the Japanese harem anime
genre as an example. He added that there is a "fine line" between "cute and funny" and "repulsive". He wanted to design the relationship between the Queen and Jill in a way that people in the BDSM community could identify with it, while also avoiding putting people off who were not into BDSM. He used European comics as a model for his art work, which he admired for the "permissive attitude they have to sex in cartoons". He also cited as inspiration specific Japanese cartoonists who he felt had successfully portrayed sex in animation such as Monkey Punch
, the creator of Lupin III
.
Harvey designed the Queen based on a loose description by Anthropy. He wanted to make her "sexy and authoritative" and to look like a "fully grown human with relatively realistic proportions". He designed her to be an "amalgamation of every lesbian friend" he had been "secretly been attracted to". He initially designed her with a veil, but felt that this was too superfluous and girly; he decided to adorn her with spikes instead. He attempted to design the title screen's background to "emphasise the drama of [the] situation, or to expressionistically[sic] symbolise the characters in the scene". However, there were some hurdles; he originally envisioned the Queen's tower to be a smooth, straight one, but felt that it would be too phallic
, which would be meaningless symbolism given the game's content. Anthropy and Harvey held a contest for people to contribute fan art for the game; the five winners won hand-made Mighty Jill Off activity books, which included activities such as creating make-out partners for a group of "repulsive, tongue-waggling oafs", as well as writing a poem for the game's Queen. He scanned one of the books and posted it online, allowing others to contribute and send in their drawings. The book features several BDSM-related themes.
Harvey was split between two designs for Jill. He either wanted to depict her as a "funny little megaman
character" or a grown woman; however, both approaches had their own pitfalls. He felt that the former could come off as too much like Japanese lolicon
-styled art, while the latter could make the story seem too serious. The Queen's more realistic design made him question whether a child-like Jill would be appropriate. He designed several versions of Jill with different proportions and sent them to Anthropy so she could pick her favourite. He compared two of the designs to Nintendo
characters Mario
and Link; the Mario-like design he called a "standard video game design", while the Link-like design he called "slightly realistic". The Link-like design was the most realistic design that he did because he felt that making it too realistic could make it too difficult for players to identify with, and could diminish the humorous elements of the game. He also intended to design her as "dumpy and podgy" to make her more "lovable".
Anthropy told Harvey that she preferred characters with more realistic proportions; as a result, he ended up with a design that was three and a half heads tall. Due to her submissive position, he designed her to be an "innocent" who looked "eager-to-please", with "benign, wide eyed facial expressions". The evolution of her design resulted in Harvey having to redesign her appearance on the title screen. He employed different colors to demonstrate Jill's feelings for the Queen; he used a rose tint to demonstrate her "blissful display of affection" while using a grey wash to demonstrate her sadness. Harvey intended to add some red to her rubber body suit
order to make her stand out from the background; however, he felt that this made the suit look more like a "crazy wrestler costume". He later thought to include grey in the design or to put her initials on her chest, but decided on using an all black design. One of the difficulties of designing the suit was to make it look shiny without resembling "gross lolicon manga porn".
which was noticeably more difficult than its predecessor, Super Mario Bros.
She made it with the intention of reusing assets from the original game such as sprites and backgrounds but making sure that none of the challenges were recycled. She also made a follow-up called Jill Off with One Hand, which features "OneSwitch" gameplay, a type of gameplay which requires only one button to play. It was created over the course of Buy Nothing Day
and was created with the intent of making it playable on mobile phones. The protagonist Jill was featured in the 2010 platform game Super Meat Boy
along with several characters from other games.
good. 1UP.com
's Scott Sharkey listed Mighty Jill Off as one of his favourite independently-developed freeware games in 2009. Gamasutra
listed it as one of their runner-ups for the top five best indie games of 2008. On two separate occasions, IndieGames' timw listed Mighty Jill Off as "game picks"; first for the original version, and second for Mighty Jill Off - Jill Off Harder Edition. GamesRadar
's Nathan Meuiner listed the game as one of the "most ruthlessly punishing indie games" and wrote that the difficulty level may make players question whether the "pain of a million deaths is worth the pleasure awaiting" players. Bitmob's James DeRosa called it "tough-as-s***" and gave credit to Anthropy for coining the genre "masocore".
The game has also received praise for its insight into BDSM and the dom/sub relationship. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
's Kieron Gillen called it an "interesting examination of the master/slave relationship". Rock Paper Shotgun's Alec Meer described it as a "wry, subversive examination of why videogame protagonists put themselves through a torturous amount of struggle to reach their objectives". James DeRosa praised Anthropy for her implementation of elements and ideas that most games do not cover and called it a "hypersexualized, bondage-themed platformer" with which Anthropy "explores the power dynamics of sexuality and disassembles essentialist male and female sex roles as portrayed in video games -- as well as the significance of difficulty and reward as a design method".
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
platform
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
independently developed
Independent video game development
Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large firms can create independent games, they are usually designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the...
freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
video game designed by Anna Anthropy
Anna Anthropy
Anna Anthropy is an American video game designer and critic. She has developed a number of freeware games including Mighty Jill Off, REDDER, and Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars, and is a co-founder and associate editor of The Gamer's Quarter...
, with art by James Harvey and music by Andrew Toups. It stars a submissive
Bottom (BDSM)
In BDSM, a bottom or submissive is the partner in a BDSM relationship or a BDSM scene who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or dominant....
named Jill, who has a boot fetish and is forced to climb up a tower after her Queen kicks her down it as punishment. Jill does this by jumping and gliding past obstacles. Jill can be defeated in one hit by these obstacles, but will return to the last check point. The game serves as an homage to the 1986 arcade game Mighty Bomb Jack
Mighty Bomb Jack
is a 1986 arcade game that was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987 by Tecmo, and later for the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. The NES version was released on the Wii Virtual Console on May 7, 2007...
.
The game's BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
and lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
themes were implemented by Anthropy, a lesbian BDSM practitioner, for the purpose of providing legitimate "dykes" in video games. She also made the game difficult, to fit in with its BDSM theme. Mighty Jill Off has received praise for its BDSM themes from critics of websites such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a UK-based PC gaming blog written by Alec Meer, Jim Rossignol, John Walker, and previously Kieron Gillen and Quintin Smith. Rock, Paper, Shotgun launched in July 2007. In 2010 the website partnered with Eurogamer...
and Game Set Watch. It was also praised for its high level of difficulty by editors of GamesRadar
GamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
and Bitmob. 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
included it in its list of favourite free PC games of 2009.
Gameplay and scenario
Mighty Jill Off incorporates several BDSM themes. It stars a submissiveBottom (BDSM)
In BDSM, a bottom or submissive is the partner in a BDSM relationship or a BDSM scene who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or dominant....
lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
named Jill who has a boot fetish. She is kicked to the bottom of her Queen's tower for acting like a "greedy slut
Slut
Slut or slattern is a pejorative term applied to an individual who is considered to have loose sexual morals or who is sexually promiscuous...
". Jill attempts to climb back up the tower and return to her Queen; once there, she is given affection, constricted and gagged, and made to do it again.
Some of Mighty Jill Offs gameplay is borrowed from the 1986 arcade game Mighty Bomb Jack
Mighty Bomb Jack
is a 1986 arcade game that was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987 by Tecmo, and later for the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. The NES version was released on the Wii Virtual Console on May 7, 2007...
, such as the jumping mechanics, as a tribute to it. Players control Jill in three ways: moving, jumping, and gliding. Once in the air, players cause Jill to glide by rapidly pushing the jump button. There are three types of obstacles: spikes, fire, and spider
Spider
Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
s; the latter can move to attack Jill when she comes close. Coming into contact with these obstacles kills Jill instantly, forcing her to start at the most recent checkpoint—typically located at a change in room. Jill has infinite lives, allowing players to play as long as they like without having to start the game over.
Development
Mighty Jill Off was designed by Anna AnthropyAnna Anthropy
Anna Anthropy is an American video game designer and critic. She has developed a number of freeware games including Mighty Jill Off, REDDER, and Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars, and is a co-founder and associate editor of The Gamer's Quarter...
, also known as Auntie Pixelante, in 2008. It was also developed by James Harvey and Andrew Toups, who provided the artwork and music for the game, respectively. Anthropy designed Mighty Jill Off to feature "dykes and perverts" to make up for "the distinct lack of real dyke characters and dyke desire in games". She argued that while "supposed dykes" are seen in commercials, these characters are "written and drawn by men". She said that "they don't look like us, they don’t express themselves like us, they don’t lust like us." Anthropy compared the challenge of players who lead Jill through the game as similar to the challenges of a top who leads the bottom through a scene.
Art design
While the character artwork for Mighty Jill Off was created by James Harvey, Anthropy first designed Jill in sprite form. Harvey was initially wary of doing work that was BDSMBDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
-themed; he felt that it was easy for something that is both cartoony and sexual to make viewers feel uncomfortable and used the Japanese harem anime
Harem anime
Harem, , broadly speaking, is a loose subgenre of anime and manga characterized by a protagonist surrounded, usually amorously, by three or more members of the opposite sex. The most common and practically tantamount scenario is a male surrounded by a group of females; when this is reversed it is...
genre as an example. He added that there is a "fine line" between "cute and funny" and "repulsive". He wanted to design the relationship between the Queen and Jill in a way that people in the BDSM community could identify with it, while also avoiding putting people off who were not into BDSM. He used European comics as a model for his art work, which he admired for the "permissive attitude they have to sex in cartoons". He also cited as inspiration specific Japanese cartoonists who he felt had successfully portrayed sex in animation such as Monkey Punch
Monkey Punch
Monkey Punch is the pen name of Japanese manga artist Kazuhiko Katō , creator of the successful Japanese manga series Lupin III...
, the creator of Lupin III
Lupin III
, also known as Lupin the 3rd, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kazuhiko Kato under the pen name of Monkey Punch. The story follows the adventures of a gang of thieves led by Arsène Lupin III, the grandson of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief of Maurice Leblanc's series of...
.
Harvey designed the Queen based on a loose description by Anthropy. He wanted to make her "sexy and authoritative" and to look like a "fully grown human with relatively realistic proportions". He designed her to be an "amalgamation of every lesbian friend" he had been "secretly been attracted to". He initially designed her with a veil, but felt that this was too superfluous and girly; he decided to adorn her with spikes instead. He attempted to design the title screen's background to "emphasise the drama of [the] situation, or to expressionistically[sic] symbolise the characters in the scene". However, there were some hurdles; he originally envisioned the Queen's tower to be a smooth, straight one, but felt that it would be too phallic
Phallus
A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...
, which would be meaningless symbolism given the game's content. Anthropy and Harvey held a contest for people to contribute fan art for the game; the five winners won hand-made Mighty Jill Off activity books, which included activities such as creating make-out partners for a group of "repulsive, tongue-waggling oafs", as well as writing a poem for the game's Queen. He scanned one of the books and posted it online, allowing others to contribute and send in their drawings. The book features several BDSM-related themes.
Harvey was split between two designs for Jill. He either wanted to depict her as a "funny little megaman
Mega Man
Mega Man is a video game franchise from Capcom, starring the eponymous character Mega Man, or one of his many counterparts. The series is well-known and comprises well over fifty releases, easily making it Capcom's most prolific franchise. As of December 31, 2010, the series has sold approximately...
character" or a grown woman; however, both approaches had their own pitfalls. He felt that the former could come off as too much like Japanese lolicon
Lolicon
, also romanised as lolikon or rorikon, is a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex". In Japan, the term describes an attraction to underage girls or an individual with such an attraction...
-styled art, while the latter could make the story seem too serious. The Queen's more realistic design made him question whether a child-like Jill would be appropriate. He designed several versions of Jill with different proportions and sent them to Anthropy so she could pick her favourite. He compared two of the designs to Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
characters Mario
Mario
is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...
and Link; the Mario-like design he called a "standard video game design", while the Link-like design he called "slightly realistic". The Link-like design was the most realistic design that he did because he felt that making it too realistic could make it too difficult for players to identify with, and could diminish the humorous elements of the game. He also intended to design her as "dumpy and podgy" to make her more "lovable".
Anthropy told Harvey that she preferred characters with more realistic proportions; as a result, he ended up with a design that was three and a half heads tall. Due to her submissive position, he designed her to be an "innocent" who looked "eager-to-please", with "benign, wide eyed facial expressions". The evolution of her design resulted in Harvey having to redesign her appearance on the title screen. He employed different colors to demonstrate Jill's feelings for the Queen; he used a rose tint to demonstrate her "blissful display of affection" while using a grey wash to demonstrate her sadness. Harvey intended to add some red to her rubber body suit
Latex clothing
Latex rubber is used in many types of clothing. Rubber has traditionally been used in protective clothing, including gas masks and Wellington boots. Rubber is now generally being replaced in these application by plastics...
order to make her stand out from the background; however, he felt that this made the suit look more like a "crazy wrestler costume". He later thought to include grey in the design or to put her initials on her chest, but decided on using an all black design. One of the difficulties of designing the suit was to make it look shiny without resembling "gross lolicon manga porn".
Follow-ups
A harder version called Mighty Jill Off - Jill Off Harder Edition, was released in October 2008, 8 months after the original version. Anthropy compared it to the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros.: The Lost LevelsSuper Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
, also known as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, is a platforming video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Family Computer Disk System...
which was noticeably more difficult than its predecessor, Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...
She made it with the intention of reusing assets from the original game such as sprites and backgrounds but making sure that none of the challenges were recycled. She also made a follow-up called Jill Off with One Hand, which features "OneSwitch" gameplay, a type of gameplay which requires only one button to play. It was created over the course of Buy Nothing Day
Buy Nothing Day
thumb|Buy Nothing Day demonstration in [[San Francisco]], November 2000Buy Nothing Day ' is an international day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. Typically celebrated the Friday after American Thanksgiving in North America and the following day internationally, in 2011...
and was created with the intent of making it playable on mobile phones. The protagonist Jill was featured in the 2010 platform game Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy is an independent video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes and developed by Team Meat. It is the successor to McMillen and Jonathan McEntee's October 2008 flash game Meat Boy. Super Meat Boy was released on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade in October 2010, on...
along with several characters from other games.
2011 Atari 800XL Demake
In 2011, an Atari 800XL demake of the game was programmed by "morons of HAR" and made the second place in the 2011 ABBUC software contest. Most of the BDSM content (i.e. the splash screens except for the title screen) had to be deleted in order to fit into the Atari's 64KB of RAM.Reception and promotion
Mighty Jill Off has received generally positive reception. Retronauts' Jess Ragan praised Anthropy for her understanding of what made Mighty Bomb JackMighty Bomb Jack
is a 1986 arcade game that was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987 by Tecmo, and later for the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. The NES version was released on the Wii Virtual Console on May 7, 2007...
good. 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
's Scott Sharkey listed Mighty Jill Off as one of his favourite independently-developed freeware games in 2009. Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
listed it as one of their runner-ups for the top five best indie games of 2008. On two separate occasions, IndieGames' timw listed Mighty Jill Off as "game picks"; first for the original version, and second for Mighty Jill Off - Jill Off Harder Edition. GamesRadar
GamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
's Nathan Meuiner listed the game as one of the "most ruthlessly punishing indie games" and wrote that the difficulty level may make players question whether the "pain of a million deaths is worth the pleasure awaiting" players. Bitmob's James DeRosa called it "tough-as-s***" and gave credit to Anthropy for coining the genre "masocore".
The game has also received praise for its insight into BDSM and the dom/sub relationship. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a UK-based PC gaming blog written by Alec Meer, Jim Rossignol, John Walker, and previously Kieron Gillen and Quintin Smith. Rock, Paper, Shotgun launched in July 2007. In 2010 the website partnered with Eurogamer...
's Kieron Gillen called it an "interesting examination of the master/slave relationship". Rock Paper Shotgun's Alec Meer described it as a "wry, subversive examination of why videogame protagonists put themselves through a torturous amount of struggle to reach their objectives". James DeRosa praised Anthropy for her implementation of elements and ideas that most games do not cover and called it a "hypersexualized, bondage-themed platformer" with which Anthropy "explores the power dynamics of sexuality and disassembles essentialist male and female sex roles as portrayed in video games -- as well as the significance of difficulty and reward as a design method".