Posted October 28, 2021 by Rachel Helps
At the beginning of October, I was the "groundskeeper" for the tabletop game Bluebeard's Bride. The game's focus on psychological horror and the suffering of women in a gothic setting captured my imagination. I wrote Skillick's Bride to make the Mormon horror game of my dreams more of a reality. The mechanic where the player decides to be "faithful" or "unfaithful" to her obviously suspicious new husband comes directly from Bluebeard's Bride. I like that it allows the player to control how they interpret the weird events in the mansion.
It's my first time writing horror. The different rooms allowed me to experiment with body horror involved in childbearing and nursing, while I tried to make the horrors of infertility and obligation sex more abstract. It was satisfying to brainstorm, prototype, and finish writing the game in just a few weeks after working on Space to Grow for several years. I learned a little more about how to make Twine games, and I feel inspired to read more interactive fiction to learn more ideas for game mechanics.