Mighty Jill Off

Mighty Jill Off
Developer(s)	Anna Anthropy
Publisher(s)	Independent
Designer(s)	Anna Anthropy
Platform(s)	Windows
Release	2008
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player

Mighty Jill Off is a 2D platform indie freeware video game. It was released in 2008 by video game designer Anna Anthropy. It stars a submissive named Jill, who has a boot fetish. She is forced to climb up the tower after her Queen kicks her down it for, in her words, being a "greedy slut." The gameplay requires Jill to jump and glide through obstacles, and is noted for its high level of difficulty. However, Jill has infinite lives, allowing players to keep playing from the checkpoint. She was featured in the 2010 platform game, Super Meat Boy, a game also noted for its high level of difficulty.

Gameplay and scenario

Mighty Jill Off has several BDSM themes in the game. It stars a submissive named Jill, who has, in particular, a boot fetish. She is kicked to the bottom of her Queen's tower for acting like, in the Queen's word, a "greedy slut." Jill then attempts to climb the tower and return to her Queen. Once she reaches the top, she is given affection from her Queen, only to be be told to do it again after being constricted and have a ball gag inserted into her mouth.

Some of Mighty Jill Off's gameplay is lifted from the 1986 arcade game Mighty Bomb Jack, such as the jumping mechanics, as a tribute to it. Players can control Jill in three ways - moving, jumping, and gliding. Jill must climb the tower, using all of these abilities to get through. For example, in a room where Jill has to leap over a series of spikes, she must glide through it slowly, accomplished by tapping the jump button quickly. There are only three types of obstacles - spikes, fire, and spiders. Touching these things will kill Jill instantly, and force her to start at the most recent checkpoint, typically defined by a change in room. Jill has infinite lives, allowing players to die as many times as they like. The game length is estimated at 10-20 minutes for a player's first time through.

Development and promotion

A harder version, entitled Mighty Jill Off - Jill Off Harder Edition, was released some time after the original version. The protagonist Jill was featured in the 2010 platform game Super Meat Boy, which featured several characters from games, many of which are noted for their intense difficulty.

The character artwork for Mighty Jill Off was created by James Harvey, though the character designs were already designed by Anna in sprite form. He was reluctant to do something that was BDSM-themed, citing how something both cartoony and sexual can make people feel creepy from watching it. He used Japanese anime in particular as an example of it, talking of young characters who "get it on." He adds that there is a fine line, in something like this, between "cute and funny" and "completely repulsive," and that if it seems like the artist was "getting off" from drawing this, he is "probably going to want to throw up." In designing the BDSM relationship between the Queen and Jill, he wanted to design it in a way that people in the BDSM community could identify with it. However, he also wanted to avoid alienating people who were not into it, which included himself. As such, he used European comics as a model for his art work, showing admiration for their permissiveness of sexual content in cartoons. He also cited specific Japanese animators who properly show sex in animation, such as Monkey Punch, the animators of Lupin III. Jill's design was between two ideas - a "funny little megaman character" or a grown woman, both he says having faults to them. The former could come off as too much like the Japanese lolicon-styled art, while the latter could make the story seem too serious. At the time, the Queen's design was mostly finished, with Harvey wanting to have her be "sexy and authoritative," as well as a "fully grown human with relatively realistic proportions." This made him question whether a child-like Jill would be appropriate considering.

He designed several versions of Jill, all with different proportions, and sent them to Anna, asking her to pick her favorite, choosing to avoid "over-thinking it" by allowing Anna to use her instincts in picking the best design. One of the designs he compared the proportion to Mario, described as a "standard video game design," while another he described as having "slightly realistic" proportions, which he compared to Link's of The Legend of Zelda series. This is the most realistic that he went with the designs, believing that going too realistic could make it too difficult for people to identify with them and diminish the humorous elements of the game. Due to her being almost entirely black in her rubber fetish suit, He intended on adding some red to her design in order to make her stand out from the background. However, he felt that this compromised the idea, making the fetish suit look more like a "crazy wrestler costume." Instead, he had the backgrounds changed to allow her to stand out instead. He also intended to design her as "dumpy and podgy" to make her more lovable. He added that due to her submissive position, it may make more sense for her physique to be more "babyishly proportioned," commenting that she is "unable to help herself." An idea that he wanted to execute was to, similar to how the eponymous character in Mighty Bomb Jack had the initials "BJ" on his chest, Jill could have "JO," but it was never approved. In one design, he compared it to that of Batgirl.

James Harvey held a contest for people to contribute fan art for the games; the five winners won hand-made Mighty Jill Off activity books, which included creating make-out partners for "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.

Reception

Mighty Jill Off has received positive reception, in particular for its difficult gameplay. Retronauts editor Jess Ragan gave note to Anna for understanding the quality of its inspiration, Mighty Bomb Jack. 1UP.com listed Mighty Jill Off as one of their favorite 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.com listed Mighty Jill Off as "game picks;" first for the original version, and the follow-up to it, Mighty Jill Off - Jill Off Harder Edition, the latter described as a "delight." GamesRadar's Nathan Meuiner listed it as one of the "most ruthlessly punishing indie games," commenting that the difficulty level may make players question whether the "pain of a million deaths is worth the pleasure awaiting" players. James DeRosa did a similar list, though limiting it to games referenced in Super Meat Boy. He included Mighty Jill Off in this list, giving credit to Anna for coining the genre "masocore."

It 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, with her in the domme position," though he called his words "art wank." He comments that a common thing to say about people who play certain games, particularly difficult games, one has to be a masochist. However, he adds that Mighty Jill Off demonstrates that the characters are masochistic as well. He compared the Dom/sub relationship to the player/game designer relationship, pointing out how similar to how the Queen makes Jill go through these ordeals, the game designer makes a game for the player to go through. Another Rock Paper Shotgun editor named 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." Bitmob's James DeRosa praised her for implementing elements and ideas that most games do not cover, describing it as a "hypersexualized, bondage-themed platformer" which Anna uses to explore the "power dynamics of sexuality and the hegemony of male and female sex roles in video games -- as well as the significance of difficulty and reward as a design method."