Devour (WIP, Update 3/11/18; ON HIATUS)

This combo… sounds fun.

“This relationship of yours, it’s wrong, both people are supposed to be happy and benefiting from a relationship, this, this isn’t a healthy relationship, it’s parasitic…”

“…”

“Like you should be talking.”

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You manage to put Alice at ease, mostly because your suggestions are apparently laughably terrible. After you quote several popular song lyrics at her, Alice
isn’t this line supposed to continue instead of ending?

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Whoops!

And do you really need the stats as text there, as they are shown as opposed pairs?

I don’t know how you’re going to use it but how power is the opposite of influence?

The plot is going great though, i love the choices!!

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Thanks for the feedback! I’ve fixed the errors you mentioned.

Question: Do you think the brainwashing scenes are not psychologically impactful enough? I was hoping to give the impression of a sort of ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ where Alice becomes more loyal or more depressed after you repeatedly help or harm her in small ways.

Would you prefer to do things like forcibly turn Alice into a bloodthirsty maniac, as opposed to doing things like ruining her relationship with her first love?

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Whatever inflicts the most damage works, I guess…

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Then let me put it another way: how would you do the most damage if you were a brain-eating parasite?

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Well, hmm. :thinking:
If I were a brain-eating parasite, I’d slowly consume my victim in a manner which would destroy their mental state the most. To the point where they would probably suicide.

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So less ‘malevolent gremlin’ and more ‘degenerative disease’? I’ll give it some thought.

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I would prefer helping her. As a parasite it’s beneficial to you to help her too, if she tries to suicide you’d lose her body (though you wouldn’t die I think since you had multiple bodies). Kinda like how in the parasite anime he helped him to survive.

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I like the premise of this game so far, for now I am still holding judgement on whether I like the game overall or not.

My biggest confusion is my relationship with the host. And this is probably due to my small Neanderthal brain but it is really confusing me. I have three question to help clarify a bit:

  1. Did the parasite take over the host body or did it devour it and transformed into the host body with the host’s memory intact?

  2. What kind of control does the parasite have? I am not sure if I bodily control of the host or can manipulate the thoughts of the host (or both). I understand that I can control the host to do some action sometimes, like break an arm of an enemy, but also seemingly can access the memories of this host but I still have to wait for the host to willingly give me information (Emily case).

  3. What kind of parasite did you take inspiration on while writing this?

I have a few recommendations I would like to give, just my two cents:

  • My biggest problem so far is the voice of the narrator. I understand that this is a parasitic organism which is different from us mere humans, but it makes reading painful. I had to re-read this story game three times just to understand what was going on. I know, the term ‘voice’ is quite nebulous but that is how best I can describe this. I am really not sure the best course of action because writing to make it sound too human will defeat the point of the game.

  • The relationship between the host and the parasite is in my opinion, not fleshed out. I understand that this could be the author’s choice but I feel that since game has the potential to make us look at ourselves in the perspective of a parasite that does not understand the social norms of our world. And I think the host, Alice, is the perfect experiment subject for us to understand this creature, humans, that thinks of itself as intelligent :roll_eyes:. I really want to understand Alice a bit more as she is the direct source of knowledge for our understanding about these humans.

  • The pacing of this story is fast, please let it slow down a bit as to devour (lack of a better word) our new surroundings. This storygame has a potential to make fun of the things we take for granted in this world. Imagine countless social situation where the parasite has the potential to embarrass itself or make itself appear suspicious to others. I like that we get a chance to choose how to deal with the bullying incident but I feel it lacks a meaningful reason behind it. My parasite does not care about this bully nor the host, so the options feel like forced.

I know the game is still in early development, so I don’t expect it to be perfect. Anyway that is my two cents on the matter.

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Thanks for the feedback! Wonderful questions, @Darkner–let me try to answer them.

  1. The host’s memory–and consciousness–are intact, and become part of the parasite’s hive-mind. The body is broken down, and the pieces are absorbed into the parasite’s form.

I know this isn’t biologically sound, and I’m trying to think of a reason for it–perhaps Descartes’ idea that the soul had a physical location?

  1. You can control Alice’s body, but you have no access to additional knowledge unless you find a way to force her. The idea is that the host is forced to be a bystander as the parasite runs free in their body. I’ll have to make that clearer in the next update.

  2. Fun fact: it originally wasn’t a parasite, just an amorphous monster. I have little to no scientific knowledge, so I guess I was subconsciously inspired by stories of demonic possession.

As to your feedback:

You’re right about the relationship between host and parasite–we don’t know much about Alice yet. Our relationship with her will develop as the story goes on.
The same goes for social situations. In the next chapter, we will go outside and try our hand at this ‘social interaction’ thing. The current chapter is just an introduction to the parasite’s MO.

You do raise a good point about the voice of the narrator. I will consider it before my next update.

Speaking of which, I revised it this morning! It’s not lame anymore, I promise. Next update will be this Sunday, and from then on it should be on a weekly basis.

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At the start of the game it said you can have arms like scythes and things like that. Now that you have Alice as your host will you just be her or you’d have these arms too?

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You’ll still basically be the same; parts of Alice’s body will just be used to reinforce or repair your existing body. So for example, you might use some of her skin, but you’ll still have scythe arms.

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Wait so what happened to Alice then? Did you absorb her? How come she is still alive? This seems really confusing o.o

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yes, her mind become part of the hive mind.

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@Logan3000x is correct, but I’m thinking of changing that to make things make more sense.

Perhaps, after my next edit, you will be able to have Alice join the hive-mind only if you choose not to kill her.

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It seems weird though, if she is a part of you how come she can still go to college and find a lover. It sounds like it’s her own body and not yours.

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Those are her memories and we are manipulating the memories in order ease her mind in to the hive.

“When your first human host was very young, he had a pair of plastic toy binoculars that flashed images before his eyes (deer, rabbits) when he pressed a little lever. Alice’s memories flash the same way in your head”

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Could we have an customisation option to either name the host and/or the parasite? Alice could be the default name of the host.

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Can Alice become something like the Queen of Blades? :drooling_face: