itch.io

(Skippable intro ramble moved afterwards so this leads sensibly.)

 tldr: feeling sad and weird and existential; decided to get up and read through some of the games/not-quite-games I’ve not yet engaged with. Stumbled on this one and read the whole thing and man.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️;  😭 with potential future😳 🥵

skippable intro ramble: it just clicked onto my mumblymumble (no, wait, fuck that! 40th. 40th!) birthday after an long few months capping off a Very Tumultuous few years (such that I’m proud of myself for getting here). I woke up right before from a dream where I was trying to explain a love story/character study I wanted to write using intentionally coded / indirect language —and people kept talking over me, dismissing the project as depressing, explaining the queer/trans/neurodivergent experience *to* me, otherwise making me feel unheard and shitty. 

I decided to get up and read through some of the games/not-quite-games I’ve not yet engaged with. Stumbled on this one and read the whole thing and man. What timing. It made me cry. In a good way. On the appropriate list it goes.  

There’s a song that Patrick Wolf put out on his last album that asks, rhetorically, “how many years can you disappear for before they call off the patrol?” Heard and over-related to, sir. This game provides an answer, though: you may be long past where “missing” becomes “presumed dead”; hell, you may never really have been allowed to exist at all, but you can still resurrect yourself. Sometimes, maybe much of the time, you’re your own best search and rescue.
(And clearly, sexiest.) 

As for the ghost-fucking, prurient readers… I need to get to know and tend to my ghost a little better first. Whether or not I ever get to full necromancy (or necrophilia!) this one is definitely coming back off the…file hierarchy.

Now to figure out what to do with “a game you want to send your therapist because the somatics are just — chef’s kiss — and it has great visualization instructions and a fun but very touching premise plus it’s super geared toward their client base: and you just think they’d enjoy it bc they’re rad… but it’s a sexy game and they’re not That Kind of therapist and - yknow??”. Hmmm. Maybe we start with ‘how much do you know about solo RPGs’. 

Haven't played yet but I spotted this while hastily downloading the stuff in my library in the wake of itch going puritanical. Hoping you have your profitsharing down to 0 and get all the benefit of this $5 being handed back around, this looks AMAZING; I loved TYOV and this is a fantastic spin. Anyway, just wanted to say I'm excited and also, hellll yes to that Watership Down quote <3   

i loved this. i think it makes the concept incredibly personal and relatable, and (i'm trying to be vague here) especially, choosing to go through it at 10:30 at night when i had a rough day and decided -- you know what, no, i didn't have the energy to write things down, i'd keep it in my head -- adfsjd the *dread* it evoked, and also just my own intrigue: 'but we might miss something cool or interesting!'

(agh this IS hard to speak about without feeling like you're giving things away. which is, itself, a really interesting reaction to a piece about signifiers.)

it's especially evocative because of the really fantastic design -- the minimalist but feeling of 3-D on a 2-D layout and the use of space is its own discussion but i'll stop rambling at you now. really, really well done though <3

Exactly as advertised! Possibly not quite enough to get past my fear of plate tectonics, but makes me feel "why didn't I just do that" enough that it might just be. 

I forgot that ratings go straight to the dev and can't be seen by others. For the purpose of other people being able to see what I said (paraphrased, tho still rambly):  Rated five stars! 

Simple, to the point, and works really well for any Jenga-using game, not just Dread! I'm thinking specifically of The Wretched / The Wretched & Alone particularly, which was the first encounter I had with needing "tower" *cough* blocks  -- I've been looking for a tool ever since so I wouldn't have to hunt down a set of blocks (or annoy half the household knocking them over by myself repeatedly) ;D 

I will say it's a totally different SKILLSET from tower blocks. So people y'know, hypothetically, no one I know,  who are really good at Jenga   block towers bc they can figure out strategically which blocks are weight-bearing and slowly, carefully remove the others without bumping anything necessary will not (necessarily) be as good at this game, because it relies on very fast reflexes. 

(In the context of Wretched and Alone games -- haven't played Dread -- being fast CAN transfer over to the situation, but since you're usually doing a block tower to see if you survive some kind of epic death threat, the strategy of block towers is a good analogy and it would be cool to have an OPTION of what amounts to strategic stealth over fast reflexive action.

Buttt that said, that  combination of identification and precision is hard to replicate in a simple game! Ultimately I'm happy to have ANYTHING with a mechanism as to how to count block falls and will definitely link this on my solo game journal etc. ...Even if I end up dead slightly more often.

Oddly excited to play with fire this — also, I can see this working EXTREMELY well as a solo game, since ultimately the choice to push through the fire is your own, not the GM’s. 

This is awesome! Do you think -- and this isn't necessarily a request of you, as much as something I'm willing to work on on my own, but you have two mods that address opposite parts of this feature -- it'd be possible to make a mod that makes certain jobs more prevalent in certain areas? 

I know that I (or whoever) would have to do a LOT of restructuring to make that a played feature, since unlike the previous games, you can pretty much join whatever career you want -- it's not like there are only so many jobs to have (although I think there ARE mods out there that do that). But could NPCs that spawn in certain areas be more likely to have certain professions? I'm imagining like -- San Sequoia having more programmers and hackers, Sulani having more retail/food (it's a tourist area) and conservationists, etc. 

[Edit: if this is a thing you think can be done, just don't want to do yourself, any tips on where to dig in are welcome!] 

You are way too nice and if/when (*fingers crossed*) the discretionary income improves I'll absolutely be back to buy a copy! <3 

...omg I was about to ask this same question and I just saw I missed it by a week and a half. 
(The community copies system is super appreciated, even if my timing is bad.) 

Oooh this is FUN.

Wow, I need to find a partner a bit better at crafting arcs without guidance than I am, and also some fanart/OCs/more content in this universe STAT. This looks FANTASTIC. 

I love everything about this <333

Welp, I'm tearing up just reading the guide, which means it's doing its job.

I know this will be hard for me to pitch to anyone who would take it as seriously as I would want to but I think that, with the right partner, this could be a really good, solemn contemplation of the way it is we live. Honestly I think just the written instructions and introduction could and should be read by -- everyone, maybe around high school age, even if they don't go so far as to play out the game. Which I think I saw someone else say (rightfully) about Together We Build Private Cathedrals, and is often true about your (/Roswell's/who am I talking to it's always weird to write comments that are addressed to everyone) work. 

I absolutely love the Battleship mechanics as a way of picking questions.

Printing this on a mug is SUCH a good idea! 

This hit home in a lot of places I didn't realize it would and don't know how it knew to, but I think I need to go fix some things. <3 

i am a total stranger but this is such a gorgeous comment. i'm so happy FOR you.

oh, it's a glacier that left millions of years ago! no mountains, just a very Great Lake (in this case, Michigan, but I was born next to Erie and my grandmother lived just north on the shores of Ontario...so apparently this is my destiny in some weird way). but i will whisper a hello to what's left of it and maybe the mountains will hear. i miss them too! <3

and now i'm in tears. gorgeous. 

i want to go visit the ocean too. maybe tomorrow i will visit one of its relatives in the footprint of a glacier, a long time ago. 

I love this - the encouragement to get a little more personal is ALWAYS both necessary and beneficial in my personal opinion (I know it's not shared by all, but I would much rather too much story/character development and not enough combat than the reverse), and I also appreciated the exhortion to address some of the societal issues that are already being put in front of us with Blades but are maybe not being given their proper due by the design.
You can tell someone loves a game when they critique it by writing a supplement!  The vignettes are great and super helpful and the point of view is absolutely in line with things I'd want to address in play. 

Forgot that ratings don't show up as comments and I wanted my praise to be on the front page: 

Beautiful poem, that through both its words and its formatting does a phenomenal job bringing one into the experience and frustration and longing of a writer with dyslexia. As someone who's not dyslexic but DOES have aphasia that has worsened with age (and/or maybe just stress), I found myself not just empathizing but really thinking about my own struggles with words and my struggle to hold-on-tight. 

(SPOILER WARNING HERE, WHICH I THINK DOES APPLY HERE)

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I wanted to add something about the form. As I and most others have noted the form itself gets the point across perfectly, but it's not just the shape or readability of the letters. At first, I was fascinated that it was written as "hypertext" literature, since it's a very simple, kind of "traditional" form (are we old enough to call things old in digital non-linear literature?), and therefore most people choose something cooler looking these days. But the simple typeface (like a console) and the links are a clear invitation for you to not just click forward but very literally engage with the text -- and once again that specific choice really hammers home the awareness of every word. 

I feel like students will be writing essays about this poem, or could. It's amazing.