neverdream is a literary translation of the story told throughout our ongoing, twenty plus game releases. Featuring almost all of the protagonists and antagonists from our games, with the story being directly based off the plot being told through our games as well.

From the initial completion and multiple proof readings of our book neverdream, we have spent a fair amount of time attempting to find a literary agent and publisher to represent it. Due to the duration of this process and its impending failure we have decided to publish the novel early, as a digital PDF for free until such a time as the book can be monetized and sold as a physical copy.

That aside, now that the story is published we would like to document our journey to its creation for the sake of the very few readers who may actually be interested in such history.

The first trace of the story of Smiles Incorporated was born four years ago. When we first began considering game development, we wanted to create a three dimensional pixel horror game to start. This led to the birth of Mr. Smiles, a tall dapper creature with a massive grinning face who would be the featured antagonist in our horror game. The protagonist would be a child left behind at school after hours, attempting to escape only to be followed by this strange tall creature who would write notes on the wall to taunt them.

Due to the heightened complexity of three dimensional game design we were unable to find a software which enabled us to create such a game without an extensive knowledge for coding. We spent many weeks attempting to learn the process of syntax ourselves from reading books, but it was simply not suited for us. Thus the project was abandoned.

Our second attempt at game design was in RPG Maker, in which we made a ramshackle game from existing assets, called Asylumation.

The story of Asylumation followed a transgender protagonist attempting to escape from an asylum, while trying to rebuild their consciousness and find their lost twin. After the game was completed, we attempted to make several others but discontinued all the projects from lack of interest.

Our third attempt at game design was years later with Quest, a text adventure creator where we built The Game of Lives. 

The story followed a girl attempting to find her twin, who she believes was taken by a tall smiling stranger. The girl travels across a dark, macabre land avoiding various warped creatures and visiting all manner of strange locations. After it was finished, we began creating a sequel however discontinued it from loss of interest, and dissatisfaction with the limitations and glitches associated with the engine.

It was later that year in which we made our fourth attempt at game design using Construct 2, an extremely versatile two dimensional engine which entirely uses premade commands. We created The Oblivion Parable, our first fully fledged and independent game.

Featuring our first pixel artwork, the game told the story of a small cloaked figure. Travelling through a land that had come under the control of a society that slaughtered its neighboring civilization, to which the cloaked figure was a part of. This was the canonical beginning of the story that became Smiles Incorporated.

After that we continued using Construct 2. The Oblivion Parable was expanded twice, received a sequel, and from there we branched into making pixelated horror games.

Our first pixelated horror game was I Am Alone, which was about a girl with one arm who was exploring her own house.

The story extended into two other games, which eventually introduced the main antagonist; a phantom murderer known as The Face. There were several smaller games which branched from the same story, but eventually we grew tired of horror.

We later created our first action game, Last Day, which has been our largest game release since.

Last Day told the story of a nameless girl working at a business called Smiles Incorporated. She was fired, and on her last day of employment she decided to kill all the other employees; who transform into twisted entities when she confronts them. Ascending to the highest floor in the building to face her cruel boss, Mr. Smiles.

It was around this time that we once again considered other artistic options besides game design, having already written a novel years ago titled The Columbria Ultimatum: The Game of Lives; which was never monetized or physically sold. We opted for writing a cartoon sketch, which would feature a group of adolescents and children working for a miserable office corporation known as Smiles Incorporated. The business run by a tall grinning creature named Mr. Smiles. The cast of children and adolescents was racially diverse, and each character had a different physical or mental condition along with the receptionist Jamie Phraser being openly transgender. The cartoon was designed to be an off-kilter, pseudo-dark comedy which would introduce children to the concept of racial diversity, gender diversity, mental health and unique physical conditions.

Unfortunately the media industry can be extremely inaccessible, and finding a way to pitch an idea for a cartoon to a major company is virtually impossible; without having strong connections or becoming their employee. We attempted to contact popular cartoonists and cartoon companies to arrange a pitch for the idea, but they all ignored us. So the sketch never went anywhere, and we continued to explore different genres of games.

Eventually we created Smiles Incorporated, a comedy visual novel directly adapted from our cartoon sketch.

The plot followed a transgender girl named Jamie Phraser, who worked for a miserable business called Smiles Incorporated which was controlled by a snide and bitter creature named Mr. Smiles. It also featured a familiar girl now called Chantelle Fauxheart, who only had one arm. As well as a small, no longer cloaked girl named Sam Fairwell.

After that we began directly extending the story through multiple successive games, with Jamie Phraser and Mr. Smiles becoming more heavily recurrent as time went on.

Should The Stars Have Eyes was our final game prior to writing neverdream, and we believed that with it we had reached the peak of our emotional story telling capabilities.

In the game, players must protect Jamie Phraser while she walks through the woods, encountering strangers who collectively attempt to convince her to kill herself.

After that we retired from game design, and began to write neverdream. Although directly translated from the original cartoon sketch, the story of neverdream puts significantly more emphasis on tragedy over comedy. Including virtually all of the characters from our games, with the plot being a combined adaption of the stories told through them. Although the story neverdream tells is significantly different from that which is told throughout our games, they are both canonical.

Once the novel was written and revised, we began searching for agencies and publishers to represent it. After approximately half a year, we failed to encounter any agencies in the English speaking part of this planet that were willing to adopt the book. While we are still sending emails to agencies, we decided it was time to make the book public as it is of major significance to the gallery of works we have created. As one can read the book and experience the entire story in writing before playing the games directly based off said book, or can play our games and then read the book written based off their plots.

Thus it has been an approximately four year journey since we first started developing games and releasing our creative works to the public, yet we are almost just as anonymous and unconnected as we were when we made our first game.  Based on the current rate at which our popularity is growing, mathematically it would take over a hundred years for us to amass a following even remotely impressive.

We will never stop creating, as creating is simply what Portrait Prophecies does; regardless of whether or not there is an audience to experience our creations. However, with more resources and recognition we could take Smiles Incorporated so much farther. It could finally become a fully fledged cartoon, or be adapted into a film. We could even direct more experienced developer studios to build much more impressive, ambitious games based off it. 

But for now we remain helpless and anonymous, financial struggles and all. Our popularity remains a flat line, as approximately only one in every hundred players is empathetic enough to leave a nice comment or rating to support our works.

But as said, we will never stop creating. Even after the story of Smiles Incorporated runs its course, there will be a new story to take its place.

Art is made for the dream, not the reality.