Weird. (a game)
Dec. 12th, 2025 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureHey, I posted my game! You can find it here.
Playtests welcome. It is a solo storytelling/journalling/story creation horror game. It uses a simplified version of solitaire to drive the story.
[ETA] From the writeup:
And yet the sun rises.
Weird. is a horror game about a flawed protagonist confronting their worst nightmares.
I, a troubled character, am alone on the longest night of the year.
You, a storyteller, use prompts and the inevitability of card order to tell a story for me, driven by fear and fate.
I am tormented by unfinished business, which, as you know, is a great way to become the target of supernatural forces.
Enjoy bringing about my nearly inevitable and almost certainly miserable end, but also maybe final moment of grace, redemption, or transformation, in Weird.
* * * * * *
Title-wise, I went with Weird, as an archaic synonym for fate, styled with a period: Weird.
I liked the suggestion of Patience quite a bit, but this isn't really a game about being patient. I'd want waiting, duration, something like that, in the mechanics somewhere. Actually, maybe I'll try to make such a game, since I still seem to have Game Fever. Maybe it's to play in waiting rooms.
As predicted, the game jam I made has not posted to the Itch calendar, so I am the only person who knows about it or has submitted anything. But I tried!
* * * * *
Weird. is a game with a pretty heavy telos towards doom, which is hopefully the fun of it, like Ten Candles.
But the telos doesn't have to be doom. Because of the solitaire mechanic, you are led inevitably to an ending, but there are four options, because four suits. You just need a story that is focused on driving towards an end state or resolution.
Like I wondered if you could do a paper/storytelling dating sim, and that sounded very silly and possibly fun. I haven't played a lot of dating sims, but I think of them as modern variations on the marriage plot. Does that seem right? For sure, I think the marriage plot would work. Although -- this mechanic stresses fate rather than choice, so maybe something Fated and Tragic would work better -- Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde.
That would be fun, because (if I used this exact structure), the game would allow for one possibility of a happy ending, making that available yet very unlikely and kind of duplicating the sense of hope you get when you watch a really good tragedy, even when you know the outcome, that things will somehow go better this time.
And then I thought -- what about something like a battle, the end of a war, where you are doomed to lose or at least attain only a pyrrhic victory?
Like -- there might be a potential for something more profound in this mechanic of tragedy, if I could locate it.
* * * * * *
Qua writing tool, I find the game a pretty decent method for creating something between a detailed outline and a rough story draft.
§rf§
Playtests welcome. It is a solo storytelling/journalling/story creation horror game. It uses a simplified version of solitaire to drive the story.
[ETA] From the writeup:
And yet the sun rises.
Weird. is a horror game about a flawed protagonist confronting their worst nightmares.
I, a troubled character, am alone on the longest night of the year.
You, a storyteller, use prompts and the inevitability of card order to tell a story for me, driven by fear and fate.
I am tormented by unfinished business, which, as you know, is a great way to become the target of supernatural forces.
Enjoy bringing about my nearly inevitable and almost certainly miserable end, but also maybe final moment of grace, redemption, or transformation, in Weird.
* * * * * *
Title-wise, I went with Weird, as an archaic synonym for fate, styled with a period: Weird.
I liked the suggestion of Patience quite a bit, but this isn't really a game about being patient. I'd want waiting, duration, something like that, in the mechanics somewhere. Actually, maybe I'll try to make such a game, since I still seem to have Game Fever. Maybe it's to play in waiting rooms.
As predicted, the game jam I made has not posted to the Itch calendar, so I am the only person who knows about it or has submitted anything. But I tried!
* * * * *
Weird. is a game with a pretty heavy telos towards doom, which is hopefully the fun of it, like Ten Candles.
But the telos doesn't have to be doom. Because of the solitaire mechanic, you are led inevitably to an ending, but there are four options, because four suits. You just need a story that is focused on driving towards an end state or resolution.
Like I wondered if you could do a paper/storytelling dating sim, and that sounded very silly and possibly fun. I haven't played a lot of dating sims, but I think of them as modern variations on the marriage plot. Does that seem right? For sure, I think the marriage plot would work. Although -- this mechanic stresses fate rather than choice, so maybe something Fated and Tragic would work better -- Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde.
That would be fun, because (if I used this exact structure), the game would allow for one possibility of a happy ending, making that available yet very unlikely and kind of duplicating the sense of hope you get when you watch a really good tragedy, even when you know the outcome, that things will somehow go better this time.
And then I thought -- what about something like a battle, the end of a war, where you are doomed to lose or at least attain only a pyrrhic victory?
Like -- there might be a potential for something more profound in this mechanic of tragedy, if I could locate it.
* * * * * *
Qua writing tool, I find the game a pretty decent method for creating something between a detailed outline and a rough story draft.
§rf§
