THE 2025 PROJECT
Forum Festivus AuthorityThe Official Video Game
The making of the 2025 invitation
The Idea
While 2024’s ambitious invitation was still hot off the presses, questions arose over how it would be topped. After months of interrogation and brainstorming, the idea arose to make the 2025 invitation interactable.
With the ongoing experience gained each year in writing, asset creation, and technical skill, a more robust format of invitation seemed not only exciting, but also relatively achievable.
The decision was made: The Annual Invitation was about to go digital.
CHAPTER 01
Planting the Seed
The domain ForumFestivusAuthority.org was first acquired in late 2023 with the intent of using the website as a digital portfolio in tandem with the at the time unexplored 2024 Invitation. As the scope of the 2024 invitation ballooned into the arduous magazine, the portfolio website was put on the back burner to be revisited at a later date.
Eventually, that later date came: In February 2025, the website entered construction using the archival documents from previous years. Utilizing the sometimes simple and oftentimes frustrating Squarespace Website Builder, the basic website was built out, with pages for each complex invite, photographs, anecdotes, and some easter eggs here and there.
The website launched officially on March 4th, 2025, with the Archive and Contact pages remaining nearly entirely in their original state today. On the home page, visitors were greeted with the eye of an ominous goat. By clicking “Learn More”, they were redirected to a page labelled “2025”, which had a mysterious timer counting down to April 1st that prompted no speculation from the terminally uncurious members of the Forum Festivus Gift Exchange.
Once the countdown reached zero, it was automatically replaced by a Typeform Survey that collected members’ information, availability, and participation status for the year. It also collected physical information about each member, for use later in asset creation for the real project, as well as completely useless junk data that would never be used again.
With all the preliminary information collected, all that was left was to make the invitation.
CHAPTER 02
What’s in a Game?
Concept
Originally ideated as a text-based Choose Your Own Adventure game developed on Twine, Forum Festivus Authority: The Game was to be a mystery themed RPG wherein the player, as a fictionalized character, would solve the dark mystery at the heart of Hooves Magazine. Upon game completion, the player would be rewarded with their gift assignment.
As development got underway, it became clear that the game would be more satisfying with a stronger visual element and more personalization. Soon, it was decided the player would not play a fictional character but rather a fictionalized version of themself, and that the text-based approach, while achievable, would be a worst-case scenario product if a more visually stimulating gameplay could not be achieved.
Feasibility
Coming from a non-technical background, it was of the utmost importance that Forum Festivus Authority could be constructed without much experience in coding or programming.
Fortunately, a program called RPGMakerXP exists, a code-light software that allows users to create simple RPG-style games. Released in 2003 and still utilized by a very dedicated community of fans and creators, RPGMakerXP has been used as a platform for hundreds of fangames and parodies of major franchises, including Pokemon Essentials, a basic package that mimics the Generation 3 Pokemon titles for GameBoy Advanced.
By using Pokemon Essentials as a launchpad, Forum Festivus Authority was able to utilize core gameplay, access pre-made mini-games, and delegate a significant amount of asset creation to premade, fair use fan assets that are credited in-game while also capitalizing on Players’ nostalgia for the early 2000s gaming experience.
Setting
Roughly based on an environment familiar to Participants, the gameplay takes place at the Forum Festivus Authority Office, purposes and location unknown. As development time dragged and stalled, the narrative began forming meta-textually around the delay, eventually incorporating it as an integral part of the main quest.
A palette of different sprites for structure, furniture, and decorations was compiled from the base Pokemon Essentials v21.1 package as well as from resources found on fan-game websites such as eeveeexpo.com and, of course, DeviantArt.
The mini-maps below, taken from the in-game debug console, display the main playspaces of the game. The FFA Office includes a wide breadth of facilities you may find in any average office space, including an R+D Laboratory, a Daycare facility, a Server Room, and an Inventory Lockup, among other oddities. These rooms were specifically chosen to accommodate the cast of characters.
Characters
Characters were created to represent loving caricatures of each Participant and Non-Participating Member to curate an immersive environment. Effort was made to ensure each NPC interaction with players authentically represented their real-life personalities, and Office Roles were designated based on Members’ vocations, hobbies, and attributes.
For example, members with backgrounds in STEM have been placed in either the Server Room, for those in Technology and Engineering, or the Laboratory, for those in Science and Medicine.
Custom Sprites were created by altering and kit-bashing the overworld and full-body sprites included with Pokemon Essentials v21.1, using the above mentioned biometric information as reference to ensure features like hair and eye color were accurate to real life for recognition and readability.
Gameplay
Shown here with the generic player character, gameplay was designed to be a simple walk-and-talk, linear RPG with skill-check minigames, fetch-quests, and Visual Novel elements. After map creation and NPC placement, a rough, standard plot outline was laid out from zone to zone, with dialogue and specific quest elements and assets added as development progressed.
Once the Generic Game was fully developed using a placeholder Main Character, “Red”, and a corresponding Trophy, the game package was copied once for each Participant and personalized to their Player Character.
During individual gameplay, as Players assume their avatar, certain roles and interactions had to be shifted between “NPCs”, non-player characters. Special care was taken to present each Player with a unique, immersive experience, complete with custom dialogue for each Protagonist based on their connections and relationships with their playthrough’s NPCs, who stood in for their real life friends and acquaintances.
Skill Check and Minigame Gameplay were designed for Members of all gaming ability to be able to complete.
Mini-Quests
Several secret Mini-Quests are hidden throughout the game, triggered at different points of gameplay based on the player’s achievements and progression. Completion of each Mini-Quests provides a different reward; some present the player with unique scenes and dialogue, others with in-game trophies, and some with material assistance to the final encounter.
Rewards
Once the game has been completed, players are rewarded with an in-game trophy that provides them their assigned recipient.
The design of this trophy was one of the earliest stages of asset creation, as it would be the lynchpin of the invitation. The trophy design was eventually modeled around the concept of a Golden Ticket to both capitalize on the game’s Willy Wonka-inspired themes and also provide a basis for a satisfying physical replica.
CHAPTER 03
Distribution
Announcement Site
After the game packages were finished and ready for distribution, a Webpage was made to announce the invitation to all participants. This webpage includes a Trailer, a brief description, selected artwork, and an FAQ.
The Trailer, set to era-accurate music curated from the Title Screen of Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, placed on a matte image of a GameBoy SP, introduced by the classic GameBoy Advanced jingle. Unfortunately, due to time limitations, a custom parody jingle-screen was unable to be fabricated, and the trailer had to be shipped with the original attached.
The announcement webpage is linked below for archival and access purposes. The Windowless Video can be viewed on this page.
Physical Packaging
Due to software limitations regarding the Game Program, the game could not be played in-browser. Avenues for physical distributions were considered, with the Pie-in-the-Sky objective being a physical handheld game device distributed to each Member with their game copy encoded. Unfortunately, similar software limitations prevented this from happening.
The third, most viable, option was to somewhat uninterestingly load the game onto a flash drive for distribution. This thankfully evolved into the slightly less boring Forum Festivus Authority: The Game: The Welcome Package, which was sent out to each Participant and included the following:
USB Drive Necklace containing a Participant’s game copy for both Mac and PC with an attached ReadMe file containing information on how to install the game
A commemorative poster including a Map Key with NPC locations, Art, and redundant information from the ReadMe file on the USB in case a participant needed prophylactic assistance
A Combination Code Lockbox with a unique, randomized combination for each Participant containing a Physical replica of their trophy
All Instructions and accessories for the Lockbox so the Participant may reuse it in the future with a code of their choosing
The in-game Trophy Tickets each included the proper combination for each Participant’s Lockbox, allowing them to redeem their Physical Trophy once the game had been completed. The Physical Trophies were printed on Holographic Cardstock to give them a unique shine.
CHAPTER 04
Additional Materials
Character Sprites
Want to Try it Out?
Forum Festivus Authority was made with the intent of being personalized for a specific array of members with each player character and their interactions tailor made to each Participant. As such, the individualized versions of the game will not be re-distributed at any time.
Forum Festivus Authority is a not-for-profit, parody fan-made game and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Nintendo, GameFreak, or The Pokemon Company International.
Dedication
Very soon after development began, a beloved member of our community passed away peacefully, surrounded by all of her favorite people at the age of
13 Years, 2 Months, 4 Days.
Inara was born in 2012 and was a puppy the first time we all got together and exchanged gifts. She joyfully hosted the event each and every year from its inception as the celebration grew, shrank, and grew again, always visibly delighted to spend time taking care of her friends.
2025 was the first ever Festivus held without our very special mascot. She will be sorely missed.