Impressive amount of content here,

I smoke a lot of cigarretes, all of them ...

made the worst choices and was carried by the shadows ...

I was wondering what these pink things were:


and this


@velvetlobster Those are syntax errors on the game-logic bits I missed while testing! If you remember where they were I can fix them.

they were just before the ending both in the same page, in my ending I ended up pretty dead lol


@velvetlobster Ah, at the Columbarium ending then. Found the error and fixed it!

what was supposed to be there? I don't remeber how I ended up in there

oh yes I was curious about this columbarium thing

Interesting story game that really fit the theme. The writing is well done and really added to the mood! Keep on making games :)

Cool!

I also got Columbarium'd lol

cool story, probably the best interaction fiction i've read in a ludum dare

Nice mood, reminds me of real bad vibes places I've been to irl. Well written, uses the theme in a good way.

very well written!

Fantastic story, excellently written especially in such a short time. Congratulations on it.

very good writing, that's an impressive entry !

Great writing, the lack of graphics and audio makes it somehow better... like a book almost! An impressive and great entry overall

Unexpectedly enjoyed it, maybe even will check out other endings. Well done

As a writer, I really appreciated that this was done in Twine! I can also tell that a lot of time, effort, and consideration went into crafting this narrative. Overall, really well done! That said, the one piece of feedback that I do have is that it felt a little too long to get to the cemetery. Still, really great work!

@kristirose88 Thank you! It *was* a lot of time and effort (~23 hours of work over the duration of the compo averaging 500 words per minute is absolutely draining) but I'm not sure if frantically vomiting out words while in a fugue state can be called "consideration". I'm grateful that my muse came along for the ride to the cemetery, or I'd have produced something unintelligible.

It does start a little slow. I could have reduced the action limit in the truck by one more to carry things along sooner, it's just tough to know how much is needed to set the mood.

Wow great storytelling skill!

Nice story! I enjoyed this quite a bit

Neat idea, I didn't have the time to go down more than a path, but I like seeing something different.

Really good writing, and it sent me down a wikipedia rabbit hole when my uncultured ass had to look up what a "corpse road" was lol.

The story itself was interesting. I never quite figured out what the guy was trying to do, but I guess that's the point? The mystery and mood definitely kept me wanting to keep trying different routes despite dying many times. I finally stopped when I reached an ending that didn't end with me dying, which I assume was the good ending? That was alright (even though it left me with too many questions!), but the high point for me was definitely the part where you do a very video gamey thing to an old man. That was fun :D

Anyways, great job on the submission, I enjoyed it a lot!

**Contains Spoilers *** That was really well done. How many endings are there? What does it mean to the character if i can just undo my decision when something happens to me. I died after i summoned the creature in the Columbarium. The story ended after i drew the knife on the pastor in the church. I dont think i died there. Story ended after the pastor summoned the huge creature with wings. I don tthink i dided there etiher because i was outside. Each time i was allowed to go further back and make another decision. If it has no bearing to the story why not have the reader start over again or at least start from a "save point". Still, it was well done and i enjoyed it. Good job.

Excellent. Mysterious and well-written. Typos galore and some routes were certainly more expertly written than others, but nothing more than I would expect for a compo entry. Satisfying to unpick what was going on here, interesting magic system, good stuff. The wonderfully witchy magic reminded me of J.C. McCrae's *Pale*.

**SPOILERS**

The ending I settled on was the one where I convinced the willow tree to ward my glyph and successfully summoned the creature I was trying to. It seemed like a 'good ending,' but it was left to interpretation in a way I liked a lot. I liked how the reveal of backstory was handled; simple but effective. I liked the initial implication that Anna left our perspective character in a more traditional sense of the word, only to reveal that she died in a ritual. Neat.

The only moment when I felt fully taken out of the story is when the shadows on the wall of the columbarium said "BLOOOD MAGIIIIC" -- it felt a little goofier than the tone set by the rest of the work.

Besides nitpicks like that though, this was completely excellent. I adore text-adventure stuff like this, and this is exceedingly well done. You should be really proud of this. Mysterious; moody; magic; masterful. Good.

Oh, not used to see IF games here!

@untitled-studios I felt a bit weird about the screeching shadows too, but I had so little time to put on my editor's hat and still submit in time for the compo. Most of the time any words that came to mind just went to the page, and if I was lucky I read them again in a test run and touched up whatever sounded awkward. Honestly, I'm grateful it came together at all. If I do more revisions I'll rewrite that piece for sure. Anyway, thank you for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed. 🖤

@vivid-hallucination Please let me know if you ever add on to this!! I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed it and how immersive and mysterious I found it.

Quite a nice story, would be interesting to know more about the world.

Some interesting storytelling and a really great mood and world building.

thats just crazy! wow

That was retro!

The writing and the mood was mood excellent. Definitely one of those entries that takes you by surprise. I felt very immersed the whole way through. Great job!

Great IF! I enjoyed it very much, thanks for this.

Played through one path. I found a rather positive ending by happenstance and thought that was a nice place to end things. Extremely atmospheric, and lent itself well to being read aloud - which I did, since I was streaming it while I played.

The cadences and shapes of the writing felt good in the mouth, and worked well with the subject matter, dark as it was.

@brainbetter
As with cooking, mouthfeel is an oft-overlooked quality in writing that can make or break the experience. Thank you for lending your voice to my words 🖤

Wait, the End? The end???


I love to see a story game, and as I usually do with visual novels and stories with choices, tried to go through my "natural" playthrough, choosing everything that feels right and accepting the result. (Then I usually use walkthrough to get other endings x)) But I am not sure - it seems the summoning was a success, and then it's open-ended? So I assume I was pretty much successful? I wonder what other endings are. Smoked all cigarettes in hopes of some kind of "passing out" ending but nope x)

Overall, it was a pretty cool experience. I got to emerge myself into the story and put myself into the main character, like summoning my soul into her body (as it's "you", I imagined myself as a woman), and was genuinely trying to guide her right. Her lover's name being Anna, which is my name, strangely made me feel even closer to the characters (with the power of *connection* through *something familiar*).

I would be infinitely thankful if you provided some sort of "walkthrough" with endings. Last Jam I made a Twine game too (it's a bit different as I used Twine 1, not 2) and made a walkthrough document in case someone needs it; I realize that maybe you would prefer everyone to discover all the endings by themselves, but with so many different choices involved, I am afraid I would require at least a list/number of endings available :')

**Edit: few random thoughts**

I liked the writing and found that demon(?) character in the end properly creepy.

My girl lost a lot of blood during that playthrough, I wonder how she has any left.

@kanity Aha sorry for the cliff hanger but I had less than an hour left when I got to the end and I still needed to try and clean things up to upload in time for the compo. I'm glad it left you wanting more, I do plan on writing more. And I'd call your ending a success. You didn't die.

I purposefully left the gender up to the player to decide. You are whoever you are, and I want the story to feel personal, intimate.

There are some scenes that add detail to what you're looking at or change slightly depending on how you've acted up to that point. Your blood loss could come up in the chapel, for example, if you follow the chill in your spine. Depending on how much you've lost when you get there.

Things like that would make it difficult to write a thorough walk-through. Here are the endings though.

1. Columbarium Ritual: you will most likely die here, but it's possible to successfully complete the ritual if the spirits there aren't angry at your presence. They're picky though.
2. Willow Ritual: can also kill you if you've angered the willow, but she will protect you if she likes you.
3. Both ritual locations are affected by your having your duffel bag or not, but only slightly.
4. Die following the ache in your heart
5. Die stealing a doll from the willow
6. You can be attacked and die if you look for an alternate path into the cemetery
7. The event at the chapel kills you if you go there, stay, and don't stop it.

The Fifth Seal's physical description and demeanor was inspired by its appearance in a book, _Our Share of Night_ by Mariana Enriquez. Its height and shadowed face are from there. The game's concept was inspired by that scene in that book.

I enjoyed that I got what people are calling the good ending on my first playthrough :sweat_smile:. The writing was very dark and heavy in a good way, but it did mean my soft ol' self couldn't handle doing multiple playthroughs to get different endings haha. My one suggestion would be small bits of audio triggering in certain situations, like a radio static effect when you select the fiddle with the radio option.

I really enjoyed the writing in this one. You crafted a story that begs to be replayed, as I keep wondering "And what would happen if I did this instead". There is attention to detail and an ominous, dark atmosphere (even without any music). Very well done!

I have been swallowed by the earth. That will teach me to touch strange creepy dolls :wink:


@vivid-hallucination Thank you for the list of endings! It seems I've indeed found a good one. I think you did really well dropping the hints here and there (if you take the bolt cutters, you might not be able to take the bag... willow feels as if it's missing something... etc etc) that helped me figure out the right path without it being heavy-handed on the hints. Everywhere I tried to read the energy of the place first, and I think that really helped.

I have to complain that you sent me into OCD state with the "choose your own music" remark, and it took me a while to digest the very first sentence as it's a bit complicated, while at the same time considering if I made the right choice of music or is it too distracting. But after getting over that it was smooth sailing.

Got the "good" willow tree ending on the first play, I guess anyone who is making reasonable decisions will get there so maybe it's a psychological test in a way. With all the blood magic going on it reminds me at parts of some Clive Barker stuff but you probably had different inspirations. Anyway, it's great that you chose to experiment, Ludum Dare is good for that, though "jam" might be more suitable when there's too much unknown. I'm sure you noticed writing is hard work, and 48 hours is quite a deadline. All in all you did manage to round it up, it was enjoyable expierience, I did try other options for a bit as well.

@kr4ft3r Aha sorry about the music. I'm glad you managed to enjoy the experience anyway.

Writing a cohesive work in two days was a mad dash. I appreciate your giving it a go and taking the time to leave feedback.

I know the idea was to do it silently but this game needs background music. It's a very cool and immersive CYOA game concept.