The Fair Folk of Ridianfa by unpronounceable
A short text based rpg/choose-your-own-adventure style game inspired by legends of fairies, brownies, and other such creatures. Read carefully, there are subtle hints about what is happening that can be missed.
Controls: Arrow keys to move your cursor. Enter to select an option. There is an in game help screen you can show by pressing 'H'.
Issues With Window Size
If the display looks odd or you aren't seeing the options at the bottom of the screen it's most likely because the console is too big. This games uses a non-standard console size (80x50).
If you're on Windows 10 or below you can click on the console icon on the top left corner of the console window, click properties. In the new window click on the Font tab. From there you should be able to adjust the font size until everything fits. This will only change for this console window and once you close it out the next one you open should use the old font size (or at least mine did while testing).
Windows 11 is a bit trickier and I haven't found a good method of doing it. Every way involves making system wide changes and that seems overkill just to play this game. Will poke around with it a bit more.
Spoilers below
If you're confused on what's happening around the fair folk there are explanations below about how to tell if they are there and how to deal with them.
!> Basic Fae Mechanics - When starting the game four random fae will be assigned to your farm. This is in addition to the Torather, which is the "boss" of the game and will always be there. To get access to most of the fae interactions you'll have to choose the "Spend some time with your family." option during the afternoon, then choose to read the book.
!> The Timthirid - Based on brownies, hobs, and other tutelary spirits. The sign that you have one on the farm is if you see a bit of text talking about brushing away some acorns after eating breakfast. It will make taking care of the house easier as long as you leave milk out for it (use the 'Leave Milk' action while in any scene in which you're inside your house). Leaving out salt will make it leave. Doing the address respectfully action in the house will anger it, making taking care of the house more difficult.
!> The Meraige - Based on modern depictions of fairies. There are two signs that you have them. If one morning you find your boots filled with cheese that means you have one. If your boots are filled with oatmeal that's the child pulling a prank. Also if you hear laughter when chasing off the Orrach Fer. In order to keep it happy you have to laugh when your boots are filled with cheese, yelling at your kid will anger it. After angering it there is no way to make it happy again. To get rid of it use nails while in any of the scenes that are inside your house. There are no bonuses to keeping it happy, but if it's angry it will make the farmhouse, animal, and family upkeep more difficult.
!> The Fidbaid - Based on dryads. The only part where you can interact with it is when you go to clear out some wood for your cropland. Knocking on wood will have you knock on the trees. If one knocks back then you have a Fidbaid. Cut down all trees but the one it's in and it will make working the crops easier. Cutting down it's tree will cause it to leave.
!> The Derbshiur - This one is made happy by performing the spend time with family action. You'll know if it's angry if you find cobwebs during the start of the afternoon scene. There is no way to get rid of it. If it's happy it will make the family upkeep action easier and increase the chance your family will heal wounds while sleeping.
!> The Foirmeacha - Based on the domovoy and tonttu. You'll know you have this fae if your barn is described as ancient and sturdy. To keep it happy you have to address it before committing to something in the animal upkeep action. If it is there you should see the difficulty of the upkeep action lower. If you assign a family member to take care of the animals they won't change if it's happy or angry, so if you're unsure if you have one on the first day it can be a good idea to send a family member to take care of the animals.
!> The Orrach Fer - Based on the fear gorta. It's obvious if you have him since he'll knock on your door one night and ask for food. You can tell it's him and not the Torathar (who will also knock on your door) by it's yellow eyes. Feed him and he'll bless your farm, making your Statuses decay slower.
!> Ginach - This fae is only part of the well problems scene. If you look down the well and see nothing instead of an animal corpse that means you have a Ginach living there and it's angry about you stealing it's water. Toss a coin into the well and that will make it happy. As long as you don't your family will gain a Wound each day from the bad water.
!> Torathar - There are two scenes with it. The first should happen on the night of day 9, it will knock on the door and want to be let in. The red eyes are the main sign it's the Torather and not the Orrach Fer. If you do let it in it will kill and eat you and your entire family. It will also make an appearence on day 21, the final day of the game. If you have 3 or 4 friendly fairies on the farm they will protect you from it and you'll find it's body. If you have 0 or 1 friendly fairies it will kidnap your baby, most likely to eat it. If you have 2 friendly fairies they'll distract it long enough for you to get there where you'll have to fight it. After beating it, or dying to it, the game will be over.
Ratings
| Overall | 234th | 3.237⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 290th | 2.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 186th | 3.237⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 251th | 3.158⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 187th | 2.824⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 204th | 3.211⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 5🗨️ |
Overall, it is alright. Nothing that bad, and some parts (from just pressing enter) were pretty enticing to read.
@brotherbrody There's a help screen that can be accessed by pressing 'H'. It explains some of the mechanics of the game. Some of the effects of actions are purposefully opaque to simulate dealing with something you're not sure even exists.
@ellaris The help screen mentioned above talks a bit on how the the family members work. During the morning you can assign them tasks which they will do. Not sure what you mean by tthe title screen being formatted incorrectly. It can look odd if the window gets resized and I haven't been able to find a way to lock it.
@kr4ft3r When testing I was able to get through the game in about 10 minutes because I knew everything to to look for, figured it would take about double for other people to play. Seems my estimates were woefully inadequate. Should probably cut the time in half again. Some of the lack of feedback is purposeful, trying to simulate the feeling of dealing with something that may or may not actually exist, as well as trying to make the player a bit superstitious and doing things that aren't necessary, while leaving the farm sim as a kind of backing where the player is getting constant feedback on what they're doing. Was an experiment but from the the feedback so far it seems like it's not accomplishing what I set out to do.
@nazariglez There is a bit of something you could call an engine behind it pulled from some previous entries I had made with a similar style. Most of the work was done in the baseScenes.c file, along with a bunch of stuff that was ripped out because it wasn't needed, and a few changes to handle some different assumptions.
@jimbly Sucks to have the rug pulled out from under you so late in the game. Doing damage is definitely better than just ending the game but might lead to a frustrating death spiral if encountered early or mid game. Better UX to draw players eyes to how low they are instead of just a number would help some as well. Thanks for that info about the console. Seems like a good reason to use something like Bearlibterminal, libtcod, or a custom solution for that in the future.
@h1soka Some of the decisions are purposefully vague, and the impacts of some of your actions are not directly seen to try to create a sense of dealing with something that may or may not be there. Like in an earlier post I wanted to make the player a bit superstitious, knocking on wood and leaving out bowls of milk because it might do something. Maybe doing something similar to how the Meraige and Fidbaid were handled with single scenes might be a better way to handle it.
@triggthediscovery Glad you liked it. No shame in using the spoiler info, just saves people time from having to dig through the source code if they really want to know how things work.
@sdcorpse One of the keys that made this game possible was to make things wide and not too deep. The fae don't interact with each other much which keeps lots of interactions with possibly nasty side effects from happening. Given more time though creating depth is good and having more interactions between them would be nice to have.
@philstrahl Looks like the issue mentioned above about size of the console. Messed around with it a bit on my Windows 11 machine and wasn't able to get it looking like it should. There seems to be a way to use the legacy console mode, but that is system wide and don't feel like messing with peoples machines like that should be necessary just to run an LD game. Will need to look into something else to emulate the console feel while not being an actual console.
This was a really nice little RPG. I enjoyed all the lore here and the different fairies. Only spawning some of them was also a very nice touch - until I read about it in the spoilers, I kept expecting more to show up eventually, which really fit the superstition theme. I ended up having to read the book twice, since I forgot most of it the first time, but that was mostly on me for not taking a screenshot (I did in the second one). And then being able to tell who was the Occorach Fer and who was the Torathar thanks to it was an awesome moment, made even better when the Occorach Fer saved me at the end! I never realized farm life was this dangerous :)
Nevertheless, the game did feel a bit too luck-based and repetitive. Even after I realized some Foirmeacha were haunting my barn and made sure to thank them every single time, I kept getting wounded there, sometimes without even increasing the animal status... There were only two times where I actually managed to take care of them properly. Also, when doing the "spend time with family" action, I didn't see any reason to not just always pick the first option? In the end, the days ended up being almost the same to me - always leave some milk, take care of the lowest-score house part, and thank the Foirmeacha before entering the barn, with very little variety (outside of the events - which were very cool! - but were too far and few in between).
And as some others have said, the game also felt a bit too long for its content. Around day 12 or so I thought it might even be endless, since interesting stuff stopped happening, and read the spoiler to see whether there was ending. Still, this kind of pacing issue is very easy to make in the compo :)
Overall, I still greatly enjoyed this! Awesome entry!