Anytown - Garage Sale Monsters is an Indie RPG which melts two distinct genres in one pot, while still abstracting them completely from each other: Card Collecting Game & Narrative Adventure. It achieve this abstraction by using distinctive spatial user interface iconography and keeping them in separate emotional settings with contrast moods. For this reason, game takes place in two different atmosphere that reflects these contrast moods of the game:
The Reality: It is early 90’s serene and almost boring town which the setting heavily based upon relationship between the townsfolk and daily emotional small events of their life. They all have unique motivations and problems. All look from different perspectives to the life they share. The real world has an emphatic and emotional mood where most of the drama and the magical moments exist. It majorly hosts the “Adventure Mode” and its related game elements. It involves intellectual and spiritual conflicts between possessing and letting go, meaning of life, death, family, love, etc.
The Imaginary: It is actually not exist visually, but staged in the dialogs of some weird costumed kids in town. These kids role playing as they are monster summoning wizards in this alternate setting. They all play a card battle & collecting game and they challenge each other by clashing their monster cards which awkwardly look like daily household stuff. They form different guilds and perform imaginative quests. This setting has a sarcastic and funny mood where most of the deadpan humor and absurd moments exist. It involves pythonesque events that criticizing many things, such as promotion of animal slavery in (especially Pokémon series) Monster Raising genre, RPG games that offer an annoying/grinding gameplay which heavily depends on compulsively collected possessions, clichés of the monomyth. It also ask cynical questions about contemporary game industry debates such as Free-To-Play, Gamergate, etc.
