AlphOns

Hey all! I basically grew up with Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf (playing them in secret in the classroom during classes). I always found it weirdly comforting how small the worlds were. A few hundred numbered passages, some dice rolls, a basic sword and backpack system, and yet a feeling of agency. I even think I feel more agency playing gamebooks than, say, a massive RPG like Baldur's gate 2, I can't quite explain why. I see game design leaning toward the endless with branching narratives and procedural systems and massive inventories. It's just that to me, the more stuff you cram in, the more mechanical it feels sometimes. In the eighties and nineties, there was a kind of elegance to knowing that everything in the story was hand-written and that your choices, even though limited, mattered because Ian Livingstone (or some such pioneer) wrote them.

2022-2023 I tried recreating this feeling in digital format, resulting in Greymarsh. I followed it up with Bloodwood Dungeon. These titles are basically love letters to those old gamebooks.

Needless to say, input from serious gamebook lovers would be very valuable as I continue to improve and update these titles (which I do quite frequently), so I’d love to hear what fellow fans think. I’ll be happy to send a free key (in a chat) so you can download either Greymarsh or BD for free (but I'd then expect some honest feedback :)).

Here are the link's: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2367690/Greymarsh/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2929130/Bloodwood_Dungeon/

Hey all, I recently finished a side project that grew out of my fascination with Lovecraft's way of using broken up sentences to signal cognitive/mental disintegration. Many of Lovecraft's stories start with intact grammar, and indeed the grammar is intact through most of it.... and then, at the end, it often breaks down. So language is something fragile and easily broken.

I think the effect is increased by Lovecraft's long, winding, meticulously constructed sentences in the tradition of the nineteenth century and the contrast in comparison with the "modernist" fragmentary exclamations ending the stories.

Anyway, I made a game exploring this. The result is the short, minimalistic puzzler called The Stamp.

It’s centered around a childhood symbol game that gets "tainted" by introducing elements from the Pnakotic manuscripts, and involves mirroring sentences using esoteric or mundane symbols. As it's a text-based game, there’s no combat or jump scares, just a slow descent into dissonance and seeking patterns in vain.

I really wanted the some of feel of stories like The Whisperer in Darkness and The Haunter of the Dark, where perception and language begin to slip.

If this sounds interesting, you can find it on Steam: 🔗 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3079840/The_Stamp/

Nothing could be more valuable for me than input from Lovecraft aficionados, so I'd love to hear what fellow fans think. I'll of course be happy to send a free key (in a chat) so you can download the game for free (provided there's some brutally honest feedback in return :)).

Hey all, I made a lovecraftian game centered on text and symbols, exploring the disintegrating mind a la HP Lovecraft . The result is the short, minimalistic puzzler called The Stamp.

It’s centered around a cursed childhood symbol game and involves mirroring sentences using esoteric or mundane symbols. As it's a text-based game, there’s no combat or jump scares, just a slow descent into dissonance and seeking patterns in vain.

I really wanted the some of feel of stories like The Whisperer in Darkness and The Haunter of the Dark, where perception and language begin to slip.

If this sounds interesting, you can find it on Steam: 🔗 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3079840/The_Stamp/