For a free to play indie platformer relased in the year 2008 it's pretty freakin cool
I dig the artstyle and the mini slide show cutscenes in the beginning and end of the game
The gameplay could've been better but it's good for what it is
I just think that jills jump is too floaty at times and that's all
Overall? A pretty good experience and a must play if you dig 00s indie games

Anna Anthropy is an envelope-pusher for queer viscera in gaming most prominent during the late 2000s to the early 2010s. Her domain used to be Adobe Flash, and she used its rudimentary framing as a vessel to highlight queer reality. No blockading, no paywall, all you needed was a computer, internet, and some time. In this sense I have nothing but admiration from her, especially considering how unabashed her presentation of sapphic sexuality and transgender existence is.

Among her earlier opuses was 'Mighty Jill Off', a game in 2008 that had no shortage of BDSM theming in a sapphic relationship. To put that into perspective, most of society as a whole were introduced to the deluge of hardcore or esoteric kinks through Fifty Shades of Grey, a book of heterosexual fiction that developed from a Twilight fanfiction. It came out in 2011. While 'Mighty Jill Off' is a comparatively light and brief stint into the activities of a masochist-submissive dyke meant to climb a tower to lick the boots of her trans dominatrix, I think its context and brevity leads it to be more transcendent of the trappings of petty relationship drama and endless catering to the male gaze.

The tower itself is a cascading set of spikes and spiders, no doubt scarring the flesh of many a player piloting the leather-clad bootlicker and cementing the struggle as one that’s self-imposed. You even have the option to use a ‘safeword’ in the form of the Escape key (which quits the game), so the only real drive to continue up a gradually intensifying and cruel journey is one that transcends the game’s allure itself and crosses into the bounds of the player’s taste for the ‘masocore’ genre of platformers. Jill can jump with the acrobatic zen of a supersonic rubber ball, but this comes at a detriment when launching herself anywhere with a roof. There are learned behaviors to be gleaned here that become mini-puzzles to pull off, each death just a splash in the rush of dopamine that folds into the wave.

The conclusion of this entire debacle is getting thrown down again (or drawn, quartered, and gagged depending on which mode), simultaneously unsatisfying and expected of a queen that cruel and a servant that willing. It’s the type of ending I expect from a cheesy cartoon, or the type of ending I expect in an erotic roleplay designed to be replayed on loop and variated upon in a couple’s DMs. Comfort in stasis, comfort in sadism, comfort in masochism.

Since I’ve gotten on this site I’ve been meaning to dip my wings into Anna Anthropy’s catalog. Before this, I only knew of the titular Jill from her cameo in Super Meat Boy, a title that I played a lot of. I’ve played a lot of indie platformers, considering platforming has never really been my thing. As in, I’m not very good at them. Mighty Jill Off is a game about platforming games; the desire we have for punishing challenge, all for a satisfaction we sometimes cannot even define. No matter how grueling the task or the obstacle, there is an end point that we so desire the company of.

“And what happens after you get to the end?”

“I don’t know… I guess, I’ll just do it again.”

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (11th Jul. – 17th Jul., 2023).

Perhaps more than any other genre, erotica and pornography can be used to educate as much as to indulge desires. The exploration of BDSM is often rooted in complex and intimate experiences, making it difficult to capture or describe all the factors that lead to the pursuit of certain practices. Its popularisation in recent decades, which accelerated sharply following the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), has led to certain practices being coded into the collective imagination, while simultaneously increasing the prevalence of toxic behaviour. In the words of its creator Anna Anthropy, quoting a review by Kieron Gillenn, Mighty Jill Off 'isn't about just that "games players are masochists". It's that "games designers are sadists", in the sense of a Master/Slave relationship. In that, it's a question of trying to punish your slave in a way which makes it a relationship' [1].

     Adapting BDSM to videogames: using repetition to stimulate obedience

There is something virtuous in this vision, emphasising the negotiated aspect of a BDSM relationship. However, Mighty Jill Off quickly sidesteps these concerns by delivering something almost cruelly sadistic. The gameplay is modelled on Mighty Bomb Jack (1986), with an emphasis on platforming and verticality. Perhaps intentionally, the controls are a little uncomfortable, and it is not uncommon for Jill to accidentally hit an enemy or a spike. Thankfully, the title mitigates the frustration by offering regular checkpoints. Jill's horizontal movement allows some interesting design ideas to be explored, especially when climbing the second tower, which requires a much tighter execution: on several occasions, for example, the player has to achieve pixel-perfect positioning to stand next to a flame without being hit.

Taken in a vacuum, these micro-challenges are effectively a way of making the player feel uncomfortable in the face of the Queen's and the game designer's sadism. Yet there is something disingenuous and heartless about the implementation. Repetition is a common motif in games exploring BDSM. Text adventure games use multiple choices to force the player to carry out a punishment: Gloss's Lost in Laminate (2019) and Stables of Cyn (2021) sometimes require the player to click on the same choice dozens of times to simulate the effort of concentration and submission required of the protagonist, occasionally using tricks like varying the length of the text to change the spot to click. Similarly, line writing, inherited from school discipline, has become a common punishment in online BDSM circles, thanks to sites that check the accuracy of the typing and can punish the submissive by giving them extra lines if they make a mistake.

     Simulating and negotiating consent in a video game

The central element of these games and practices is negotiation, or the invention of negotiation, between the parties involved. In the case of the written lines, the framework is contractually defined between the dominant and the submissive in order to adapt the rules to the needs and boundaries of each party. Stables of Cyn places considerable emphasis on the negotiated nature of the BDSM relationship between Violet and Cyn, and the title constantly comforts the protagonist and the player by regularly checking in on them and providing the necessary aftercare in the narration. A BDSM relationship is a shared affair, and submission to authority must be balanced by tokens of affection – or at least closeness – if the experience is to remain enjoyable.

Mighty Jill Off fails to create such an ecosystem. The Queen is relentlessly cold and almost ungrateful in the face of Jill's enthusiasm to please her, whose quest served to 'earn' the Mistress's presence. Jill is immediately subjected to seemingly cruel acts, such as being pushed away again despite her ascent of the tower. The endings show that she derives genuine pleasure from this, but for the player, who lacks the precise context of the relationship between the two women and what has been agreed, it feels toxic and slightly abusive – all the more so because they may identify with the protagonist. The complete lack of aftercare after enduring several minutes of precise platforming is aberrant and conjures up a fantasised idea of BDSM relationships. Punishment is not necessarily its own reward. Having never been given the opportunity to express my limits, even fictionally, I have rarely had the opportunity to feel so uncomfortable and disrespected by such a title.

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[1] Kieron Gillenn, 'Whip It: Mighty Jill Off', on Rock Paper Shotgun, 8th September 2008, consulted on 12th July 2023.