Haha, yeah, I felt a sense of urgency because I saw a French streamer playing ECTOCOMP games, and since I plan to translate mine for my in-laws anyway, I thought I’d make it available sooner to catch the streamer’s eye. But the translation is taking a bit more time than expected, so I’ll just wait.
But thank you for your quick response and your kind accommodation!
Hello! Thanks for organizing! I’ve wanted to participate in this jam for a long time, and I’m happy to have finally done so this year!
I have a question about localizing my game. I want to make a French version available ASAP, but I also don’t want to break the “no updates during judging” rule. I’m assuming that means I can’t upload a version of the game that includes a translation—even if it changes nothing else about the game itself.
So assuming that’s true, is it okay for me to make a translated version available elsewhere and link to it from the description on the comp entry’s Itch.io page? And also add French to the languages available (despite the French version not yet being incorporated into the comp entry itself)?
Thanks!
Nice bit of atmospheric exploration.
And the glowing human figure was mysterious, but seemingly inert beyond its one-line description? Maybe I didn’t get the right verb.
This is a great start to what could be a fun story if developed further.
Fun game! And I’ve definitely been there—writer’s block, postured broodiness, and all.
There are a lot of impressive mechanisms at play in this Petite Mort! Well done!
I really like being able to see my concentration wax and wane, as well as the poem I’m building—very clever mechanics.
I wrote my Petite Mort in ChoiceScript, and have discovered how effective the percentage bars can be. I love how you use that here to weigh on our choices. It’s also useful for uncovering all the endings!
Because the poem writes out onto the sheet of paper, and we get to see the final product at the end, I wish there weren’t lines that get second-guessed and replaced. It’s true that’s an authentic part of the writing process, but the second-guessing winds up giving us a less distinctive poem at the end—without the funny stuff we tried to add. If you’ll revisit this, maybe add the possibility to second-guess the second-guess and re-insert the moments of levity.
I played it pretty straight and broody the first time, so I didn’t even see your custom lines of poetry until my second play. They’re great! You kept the style and meter of Poe’s poem while writing about farts and cheery chamber doors!
Also, I’m a sucker for existential psychedelia, so the ravens ending made me want to keep playing in that story! haha
Fun idea!
Also, you got me.
But maybe there isn’t one, and it’s just a brilliant distraction to draw our focus into exploration. In which case, it’s effective.
This was fun! And I agree with others, the font/colors may be hard for some players to read. But I personally didn’t have trouble and thought the stylistic choices were nice. So if you do opt to make it more accessible, go for something in this vein.
And the puzzle was nice. I got stuck for a moment, but eventually figured it out.
I got the feeling that this game was written to get to the song, but enough little details were sprinkled in there about Narthex’s progression that it made me wonder about Narthex and their world, and who the “others” are at the party. Speculation is fun.
With all those drawings, too, nice work in four hours!
I love how the choices all explore different aspects of the PC’s condition—embarrassment, pain, fatigue, social interaction, basic needs.
I’d definitely be interested in reading a longer work exploring this condition and its ramifications. I’m a sucker for stories about adjusting to extreme (and in many ways bizarre) circumstances. Of course, there’s a lot in here that rings true for those suffering from chronic physical or mental illness as well, which deepens the reader’s experience.
Great idea for a Petite Mort, too!
I love this. The choices led down interesting paths, the story took an interesting shape. I played through as many paths as I saw were possible, and it was fun to see how they changed.
You’ve struck an interesting balance between scary and sweet that I haven’t seen before, and it’s not really a switching between the two—they’re both a constant throughout.
I bought Never Gives Up Her Dead, and I’m excited to play more of your work!
The music/sounds are a really effective addition.
Then came the other twist I expected, about Bucky.
And then the one I didn’t expect about Bucky.
And then the one I didn’t expect about Charlie.
I’m torn about this one, because any resentment is only very slightly hinted at before this. And it’s such an intense tonal shift it suddenly felt like I was reading a different story.
Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, or it can’t make sense as a plausible mood shift for this PC. But it pulled me out of the spooky, contemplative, wistful sadness the first half had cultivated in me.
Great writing, and I agree with lowtides, the pacing is perfect.
And sorry, the “deleted post” below is mine. I’m new to commenting on here and didn’t know that would happen.
Some creepy moment in this! And a great concept.
If this were to be expanded beyond a Petite Mort, I’d love to know more about the POV character, and make some decisions that influence that POV in relation to our existence within Godot’s flashback. But that’s beyond the scope of a PM, this is well-executed considering the short dev time!
And the multiple endings were fun to discover!
This is one of the best intros of all the ECTO games I’ve played so far. I love the premise.
HINT told me the ghost is in the bedroom, but when I go there it’s just Flora and Effie, who tell me to go away. And there’s nothing else to interact with. OPEN BOX doesn’t work here either, so I must be missing something…
I also wanted catching the ghost to be more of a puzzle, like putting the food in the box to lure Angus into it. But this is a Petite Mort, so maybe that’s for a more developed version. I’d definitely play that!
It’s cool how many different branches there are to this thing! And those descriptions are intense.
The “disease” is very well-characterized. I feel like it’s missing a bit of context or insight into who the woman is, and the human interactions and dialogue feel a bit easy, simply existing in service of the story—which, sure, is one of the story’s themes, but there’s very little dramatic resistance, and aside from an overall (and overwhelming) fatalistic nihilism, there’s not much to want or root for as a reader except destructive (or creative, from the POV of the disease) takeover. Which is fine, that’s how disease “thinks,” if it has to be personified. But if the humans felt more real then the destruction/survival drives of the 39 trillion versus the 1 would be all the more immersive and profoundly felt.
The writing here is effective, but I’ll admit it’s almost too much. Not in the sense of “too graphic,” because I’ve got a strong stomach, but some of these descriptions are so powerful only to get lost in the over-the-topness of everything around them. So this is another positive point that ultimately overwhelms the potential profundity of the story’s impact.
There was also one point when the woman gets to choose whether to be Its instrument of destruction, and the switch of POV in this one choice is jarring, since all other choices are from the perspective of the disease.
The feeling of isolation and the descriptions of infestation are super strong in this.
I would’ve loved to know more about the mission and/or the PC’s background. For example, on my second play I picked “It doesn’t hurt at all,” which gave me text about how all the pain from before is over, which made me want to know more about what pain, and what people I’d hurt and how.
This of course reaches beyond the bounds of a Petite Mort, but if you are thinking of developing this further, that would be something to focus on.
Even something as simple as using the “window” screens to show block colors instead of reproduced space felt like something that I wanted to choose rather than have decided for me. And that choice leads to deeper connections in the text to the themes of “letting the outside in,” curiosity about the Other, etc.
And a formatting nitpick—this probably works best on a phone, because reading lines of text across my whole computer screen can be tiring, even for short paragraphs in a short story like this. Some kind of margins and text wrapping would be welcome.
All in all, this is full of chilling, beautiful descriptions.
This was fun! I’d never seen an IF story formatted this way before, it’s a cool way to do it. I will say, early in my first play-through I missed some of the choice text because I scrolled a bit too fast. I don’t know if there’s a way to get the scroll to auto-stop for a moment so the reader can’t just roll through without realizing there are choices to be made.
This choice system can be tricky to implement without getting some combinations like this: “You lean to the up,” and this type of choice in particular made me confused as to how much my choices actually mattered. The shoot T-rex or monument choice, or the fire or dive choice were clearer.
I find this sentence hilarious in a perfectly-over-the-top way: “The White House is only a short jog away.”
I love the concept, like a demented “Galatea” (IF by Emily Short).
I also love the voice of the presence.
This happened to me (to a lesser extent) in “Dark and Deep,” though I chalk it up to me at first not understanding what the “gameplay loop” of that story would be. And the story/environment of that story were more immersive, so it would’ve taken more to actually pull me from the experience.
But this one is already so immediate that I very quickly reached repetitive responses that chased their own tails, and trying every word from them never cracked open the next moment. So I got the impression that there was a single word or concept I probably saw but unwittingly chose something different to enter, and now to make progress I’d have to revisit all my previous entries and whittle down the words from each.
So the concept is wonderful, and a great idea for a Petite Mort, but I think it could benefit from some more time and a bit of expansion of its possibilities and prompts to help maintain the conversational aspect.
I acknowledge that this isn’t an easy task, so also kudos to you for taking it on. And I’ll add that the conversational aspect of “Dark and Deep” is much more successful, possibly because it feels like the conversation with the old woman has more subjects to explore.
The slippery nature of the conversation in “An Admirer” makes it hard to feel it’s building toward something (your possible murder or takeover by the presence?) and so despite the presence’s expressed desperation, quitting feels like an easy out for me as the subject of its affection.
This is gorgeous!
I’ve read a little Frost, but haven’t retained enough to make any of the connections. So I’ll say as someone who only recognized one line of the poetic inspiration, this story stands as its own beautiful experience.
The flashbacks are well-integrated, a clever mechanic, and the hallucinogenic quality of their descriptions is so effective.
The writing in general is so good. The idea that the bones may reappear not in their original humanoid configuration but as something like a chandelier—incredible. With a little poking, I see that this is one of the bits pulled from a Frost poem. But this takes nothing from the fact that the gathering and assembly of these lines of poetry and ideas are smoothed into a cohesive and effective story and atmosphere.
Re: the author’s notes. I always love reading about authors’ thoughts and process, so these were appreciated. And I otherwise wouldn’t have picked up on the Frost inspiration. I can’t speak to dissatisfaction with the ending of “The Witch of Coos,” but I can say that this game’s ending is satisfying, and leaves me with a trailing question of spookiness.
I’ll probably read some Frost and come back to this at some point.
Loved it.
Fun, clever idea. Can’t believe you did that in two hours in collaboration!
I also love the different ways the Guest reappears to you, and the ways they become more sinister.
And the use of “It” is a subtle and brilliant way of keeping us unsure of this thing we’re dealing with.
Also, Aster, I happened to watch your NarraScope 2023 talk on thematic puzzle design recently, because I’m trying my hand at IF puzzles (not in my current Petite Mort entry, but otherwise). Your talk was extremely helpful! I love “Erstwhile,” and your other examples were well-chosen. So thank you for that as well.
Wow, this is fantastic. Now I have to play the others in the series!
I love the ethereal and surreal shell around the real-world contemplations of these characters, and how those two aspects bleed into each other. The mantras repeated in each section. Very effective. I felt as lost as them.
And the “ending”? Haha, wow. I’ll be playing the others before I revisit this entry.
Really strong stuff.
The pacing of the days is super effective.
The first time I played I didn’t expect the interactive part that presents itself later. So here I am for a second time playing through from the beginning with the knowledge that I must pay closer attention.
It’s a fantastic premise, reminiscent of Annihilation and J.G. Ballard’s Crystal World.
“His limbs are twisted inward like a spider’s, and the ground is singed as if struck by lightning.” <— chef’s kiss
I survived on my first play, then tried some of the other routes. It’s strange, I feel like I relied on my gut more than anything else, despite having succeeded.
And given the beautiful but understated first death of the story, I did want a bit more from my own death in the “bad ending.”
(I say this while fully acknowledging that my own Petite Mort submission could use a more developed ending. This is how it is.)
I’ll also say the moment when the runes are read and outline the rules of the curse/ritual it takes a bit away from the mystery. In a possible subsequent draft, you might try to find a way to make the translation of the runes feel more approximate and/or less complete, so as to maintain the obtuseness of the horror around the column and cave.
But these are nitpicks about a piece that is impressively complete given the time in which it was written, and which is otherwise satisfying and knotty in its experience.
A well thought-out little puzzle box that feels equal parts Strange Tales and New Weird. Fantastic!
Thank you! I take that as a compliment. And after playing The Depths of Madness, I feel like you enjoy questions more than answers too.
But I’ll add that if I had more than four hours, I would have loved to deepen some of the questions in mine. Maybe I’ll take it further in a later version.
Thank you for playing!
Good to know! Okay, I’ll dive back in to see the other parts—and other games—soon. I can already tell from what little I’ve seen that there’s a lot going on in this series that will either get explained or remain mysterious as I play. I’m open to both—it’s fun to discover the origins and workings of something mysterious, just as it’s fun to only guess at those same details.
This is so cool. I haven’t played any of the other games in this series yet, but you have my attention.
That said, would you prefer I start at the beginning, or is it interesting for you to see how people react coming into the middle like this?
Also, forgive me if this question would be answered by playing the other games, haha.
Very cool so far, and I’m always impressed by how much a simple but clever interface can up the immersion of a piece.
I don’t have Excel, but I crossed my fingers and tried it in Numbers (Mac).
Unfortunately it thought all my commands (even “x”) were too many words, haha.
So cool that you managed this, though! The next time I’m near a PC, I’ll give it a shot! My brother isn’t an IF person at all, but he uses Excel a lot for work. I might sent it his way too, just for fun. :)
I also love Lovecraft, and there’s something cool about how a lot of his stories were about people becoming obsessed and haunted by old manuscripts, and your game is an example of you being “haunted” in a way by his old stories.
There are some really nice descriptions in here (I won’t quote them to avoid spoilers), worthy of Lovecraft.
I played it a couple of times, and noticed when parts of the text and/or the stat table changed, but I would’ve loved to see stronger differences result from the choices. That’s how the petite mort goes, though. This was my first time, and I learned that lesson the hard way.
But this was very cool, and I appreciate the terror of the situation, and the Lovecraftian direction (in a literal and figurative sense) it takes.
I’d written something more specific above, but am changing it to avoid spoilers, sorry.
Well done!
-Zac
