This was my entry for ToastyTime’s game jam. It was developed within a week and has around 24,000 words. You can download my entry here.
The story revolves around a traveling inspector who goes from province to province within an underground world called Olde Tera, and each province is governed by Red-April, a crowned republic.
Muth Bleire, the protagonist, is assigned a missing children’s case that eventually leads to her getting wrapped up in local political feuds.
The game is written as a small disco-like, inspired by games like Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb and Zero Parades. You can read more about my thoughts on the game here, though it’s best read after playing the game.
The player character has 6 voices in her head:
- Self Preservation
- Strong Arm
- Reaction
- Enchantress
- Animal Transformer
- Postman
All of these are vocal in pushing and pulling Muth and the player towards making different choices, and the game features branching dialog paths that reward psychological exploration.
This game talks about mature themes, including the death of adults and children, class disparity, corruption, sex, consent, and manipulation.
Due to the limited development period, chapter 1 of 3 is more open-ended with dialog trees and methods of approaching the investigation, though there are a few moments that return agency to the player later. I recommend leaning into the choices that allow Muth to explore herself, as there is a lot of missable dialog in this game.
There are only three songs in the game (composed by me); I wish I had more time to write more songs for this game as I am a composer first rather than a writer or game developer.