Made in 48 hours at the Nordic Game Jam 2013 in Copenhagen, using the theme “Grotesque” as a guide. The team was me and my friends Alex Camilleri, Danny Calleri and Mattia Traverso.

In this game, you control the facial muscles of a young girl (Chenny) who wants to convince her father to buy ice-cream for her. She tries to impress by making crazy pain faces, so the player is in charge of replicating the expressions demoed by the red face, by moving the girl’s facial features within a time constraint. The game is played with an Xbox controller and each lever, button, trigger or d-pad controls one part of Chenny’s face.

Which muscle is which button – that is yours to discover.

Here is the gameplay:

I personally think The Chenny is one of the most experimental and spontaneous games I’ve made, and I have to mostly thank my teammates for that 👏🏻

Exactly one year after that game jam, we also found out that the game had been covered by popular French Youtuber “Squeezie”, as part of his coverage of Nordic Game Jam 2013. The video was titled (in French) “slapped for having wanted an ice-cream”. You can watch it here.

The game is available to try from my friend Alex’s itch.io page. An Xbox controller is required.