After releasing There’s Always a Madman: Fight or Flight about the male superspy Franklin Benjamin, I wanted to turn my attention to the female superspy Virginia West (only ever referred to as Virginia, no last name, in the first game).   For too long, I have consumed stores about capable female spies who go overlooked because her male counterpart steals the limelight, whether that’s all the way back in Get Smart for Agent 99 or more recently in Marvel’s Secret Wars with Maria Hill.

Although I don’t like this trope of underutilized leading ladies in spy stories, I chose to lean into it with There’s Always a Madman: Fight or Flight.  As a video game, I felt it best to focus on a single character for the initial outing - namely Franklin Benjamin - so I made his partner Virginia a capable spy, perhaps suspiciously capable, so that players would suspect she’s a mole driven by her lack of recognition by Franklin Benjamin.  I even went so far as to purposefully withhold her last name as a sign of how overshadowed she is by Franklin Benjamin.

Now, in the second game, There’s Always a Madman: Do Your Worst, I want to flip things on their head by doing the unthinkable - I am killing off Franklin Benjamin as the inciting incident.  From there, we focus on Virginia West and how she handles being the star of the show.  This is not the story of a male main character where the female sidekick gets “fridged” as motivation for the main character.  No, this is the opposite - the male main character is the one who gets “fridged” so that the female sidekick can become the main character.  The way I see it, in a world full of spies, turnabout is fair play.

I should mention that there are plenty of great spy stories where a female agent takes center stage, such as Alias, Spy, Salt, and Atomic Blonde.  And in the video game world, there are already female-led spy games like Perfect Dark, No One Lives Forever, and Neon Struct.  So I definitely see a place where I can switch from a male spy at the heart of the story in the first game to a female spy as the main character in the second game.

What I don’t want is a series that is tied to a single main character and their adventures.  Instead, I want to explore how this world of espionage is viewed from different perspectives.  Those perspectives can shift from one game to the next and even within a single game.   I sincerely hope you enjoy getting to play as Virginia West in this game.  But don’t get too comfortable - you never know when things may change.

So go ahead, agent.  Don’t do your best - do your worst!

You can wishlist and play the free demo for There's Always a Madman: Do Your Worst on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2960890/Theres_Always_a_Madman_Do_Your_Worst