Sanctuary Pocket Adventures
Gaming Room
Sixteen short retro adventures, one for every era room. Each is two to four minutes: an era to walk around, a villain who wants the songs, and an arena battle at the end of it.
Unofficial fan-made fantasy with original artwork and dialogue. The villains are invented caricatures, not real people, and their backstories below are fiction written for these games. Sound is off until you switch it on.
All sixteen games
Mariah Carey · 1990
Demo Tape Debut
Nobody in the building has heard the tape yet. One executive has already decided what it sounds like, another has booked the meeting to tell her, and a third is drafting a press release about a singer who does not exist. She has one demo, one afternoon, and no intention of being explained to.
- Villain
- Boardroom Baron
- Arena
- Monochrome recording studio
Play this era
Emotions · 1991
Rooftop Octave
The rooftop is the only floor without a rulebook, which is why they put a locked door in front of it. Somewhere below, a committee has ruled that the octave above the seventh is a legal risk. The Octave Ogre was hired to enforce a note. He has never heard one.
- Villain
- Octave Ogre
- Arena
- Violet rooftop at dusk
Play this era
Music Box · 1993
Clockwork Labyrinth
Every corridor in the building ticks. Meetings are scheduled to the second, songs are timed before they are written, and a car waits at five to take her back to the house she has started calling Sing-Sing. Somewhere in the labyrinth there is a winding key that runs the whole machine, and it turns both ways.
- Villain
- Clockwork Executive
- Arena
- Ornate clockwork hall
Play this era
Merry Christmas · 1994
Defrosting Season
The square has been ready since August. The lights are up, the cocoa is on, and one gremlin made of torn calendar pages is sprinting between houses confiscating tinsel and insisting it is still October. He answers to a man who has never enjoyed a December in his life.
- Villain
- Calendar Goblin
- Arena
- Snowy lit village
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Daydream · 1995
Remix Rooftop
The rooftop mix is finished, and it has a rap verse on it. Radio has been told to expect something sweeter, shorter and safer. A gatekeeper with a stopwatch stands at the stairwell door holding a memo about what her records are allowed to sound like. Sunrise is in four hours and the long version is cued.
- Villain
- Remix Gatekeeper
- Arena
- Gold skyline terrace
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Butterfly · 1997
Velvet Cage Garden
The cage has nine bedrooms, seven fireplaces, a ballroom and a recording studio, and everyone keeps calling it a home. The Warden has a ring of keys he has never once needed, because the gate was never locked — the trick was convincing her it was. This is the morning she checks.
- Villain
- Velvet Cage Warden
- Arena
- Moonlit garden
Play this era
Rainbow · 1999
Boardwalk Prism
A critic who files his reviews before the music arrives has forecast a disappointing era, and the weather machine on the boardwalk has been set to grey to match. The forecast is not a prediction. It is an instruction. She has brought eight colours and no interest in either.
- Villain
- Storm Cloud Critic
- Arena
- Prismatic boardwalk
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Glitter · 2001
Mirror Disco
1983, a club made entirely of mirrors, and a diva assembled from the shards who has been told she is the only star the room can hold. Downtown, a label boss is testing whether audiences will forget this one if he waits long enough. Twenty-five years later the mirrorball is still turning.
- Villain
- Mirror Diva
- Arena
- Mirrored disco floor
Play this era
Charmbracelet · 2002
Charm Garden
They said the quiet era was the last one, and wrote it up that way before she had finished. A troll the colour of old newsprint follows her through the garden whispering over every sentence. Each charm on the bracelet survived something. So did the person wearing it.
- Villain
- Whisper Troll
- Arena
- Glass conservatory
Play this era
The Emancipation of Mimi · 2005
Liberation Stage
The paperwork said finished. It was filed, countersigned, and circulated to people who never listened to the record. The house is full anyway, the lighting desk has every fader pushed up, and a doubter with a clipboard is standing at the footlights genuinely unable to explain the ticket sales.
- Villain
- Comeback Doubter
- Arena
- Champagne stage
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E=MC² · 2008
Neon Laboratory
A gremlin covered in chalk dust has proved, with working, that she cannot chart again. The laboratory was funded specifically to produce this proof. The equation is elegant, peer-reviewed by nobody, and about to be tested against an actual dance floor.
- Villain
- Equation Gremlin
- Arena
- Blue neon laboratory
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Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel · 2009
Diary Maze
Her story has already been written by someone who was not there, approved by someone who did not ask, and printed by a phantom made of headlines who drifts through walls mid-sentence. There is a locked diary at the centre of the maze with a different version in it, and only one key.
- Villain
- Tabloid Phantom
- Arena
- Diary gallery
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Merry Christmas II You · 2010
Midnight Tinsel
A tyrant in a pressed grey suit is going house to house with a clipboard, confiscating tinsel and enforcing a strict limit of two decorations per household. He has done the arithmetic. He has not accounted for a street that can switch every light on at once.
- Villain
- Tinsel Tyrant
- Arena
- Midnight holiday plaza
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Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse · 2014
Sunset Gallery
A machine on brass legs prints a fresh label every second and expects an entire identity to fit on each one. The gallery walls are papered with the ones that did not stick. At the centre, unlabelled, hangs a crayon drawing she made as a child, which is the truest thing in the building.
- Villain
- Label Maker
- Arena
- Sunset gallery hall
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Caution · 2018
Neon Subway
The last train is going exactly where she is, and a critic wrapped head to toe in caution tape is standing on the platform reading his own barrier aloud. He stopped listening in 1999 and has been filing the same review ever since. The tape is only tape.
- Villain
- Caution Tape Critic
- Arena
- Neon subway platform
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Here For It All · 2025
Rose Gold Encore
Thirty-five years in, a naysayer as crusty as the contracts he arrived in shuffles into the light to ask whether this is finally the last encore. He has been waiting three decades for her to stop. The confetti cannons were loaded years ago and keep going off early.
- Villain
- The Final Naysayer
- Arena
- Rose-gold encore stage
Play this era
Original artwork created for the Sanctuary's era games. Not a photograph and not album cover art.