What Do You Hear In These Sounds?

This game was originally written for the Shufflecomp in April 2014. The competition had two halves: first people would submit songs and pseudonyms, and then they would be assigned a random list of songs and pseudonyms from other people to make their game. 

I received the following prompts (from the following people capitalised):

JASON LAUTZENHEISER - Mr. Bojangles - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - 

JAKE WILDSTROM - Billy Chambers - Fallout Shelter

PAPERBLURT - Lorez Alexandria - Send in the Clowns

CHRISTOPHER BRENT - Kill la Kill - BlumenKranz

A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER - Wire - Another the Letter

A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER - Dar Williams - What Do You Hear In These Sounds

ZACK JOHNSON - Warren Zevon -I Was In The House When The House Burned Down

CALEB WILSON - Robyn Hitchcock -- Adventure Rocket Ship

Pseudonyms: Dragon's Breathmint, Team Ambivalence, Word Girl, Tim Facility, Lady Envelope, Wasser Leben, Sipho Ngoepe, Wren Carlow

My concept for the game was one in which someone in therapy had the problem where they understood everything through malapropisms, spoonerisms, and mondegreens. This idea wasn't very well fleshed out. As far as I can tell, upon experimenting with this ten-year old half-baked game file, you can only interact with a few things in the room. Talking to the therapist generates three song-inspired mishearings at a time, from a large list (of famous misheard lyrics and mishearings from some of the other songs I was given). Eventually the turn counter runs out and the sessions ends. I don't think there's a way to win, but I might be wrong.

Several of the songs I picked were taken up (you can see a mix including the picks I was sent). One of them appeared in Caleb Wilson's commendable Holy  Robot Empire. As a coda, ten years on, I ended up obliquely collaborating with Caleb Wilson and others on the mega-collaboration game, Moondrop Isle, which (among other things) is an adventure with a rocket ship.

(Cover art made in CANVA with some public domain vector graphics.)