Even While We Sleep Demo [WIP]

Hiiii, I’ve recently posted the first go demo of my story, Even While We Sleep.

In the story, you play as a private college student trying to solve the death of a wealthy socialite and influencer who just happens to be your ex-bestie. It’s up to you to shine light on the truth of her sudden death, but soon enough you’ll come to realize you won’t like what you see.

As the mystery unfolds, you begin to realize that there’s more to this case than you initially thought. And you that you may merely be a pawn in a much larger game. Despite her passing, the spirit of Elizabeth lives on in the hearts of the people around her… even you.

It’s almost like she never even left.

Currently, it’s about 3 short chapters. Averaging about 3k words each… I plan to combine 2&3 in the next update and also have chapter 4 be a bit longer.

Current features

  • 4 ROs. One male, one female, two gender customizable.

  • Horror and supernatural elements. Mainly psychological, but I do plan to explore body horror later on.

  • Appearance and gender customization for the MC.

  • The option to build stats for Social, Intelligence, Combat, or Practicality.

  • Building and maintaining your rep and solving skills.

What I plan to implement

  • More choices to the chapters I’ve already published

  • Character and story art

  • An itch.io version of the demo.

  • A more rigid trigger warning system.

I would appreciate feedback, criticism, and bug reports. I also don’t mind suggestions or you sharing opinions and/or ideas for implementation or troubleshooting. I’m open to a lot.

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Here is my demo: https://dashingdon.com/play/potsticker/even-while-we-sleep/mygame/

Current TW Gore. Violence. Drug use.

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I like this story so much. It reminds me of earlier brighter days :heartpulse:
Can’t wait to read more :slight_smile:

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thank you!

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I’m love the setting, school drama mixes really well with mystery. The character’s reactions are realistic, it makes sense that most of them aren’t immediately onboard with conspiracies about a friend’s death. I like everyone’s personality and the setup so far, I’ll be keeping an eye on this WIP.

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thank you for your feedback i like that you liked it! i’ll be sure to try and update soon :slight_smile:

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The demo is pretty interesting, I actually love it :sparkles:

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this WIP!

Thank you for taking the time to check it out!

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I’m definitely with the others—you’ve already got me hooked on the potential of body horror! :upside_down_face:

Although, perhaps you could consider breaking up your paragraphs, especially those on the first page. I usually read on my phone, and I’d probably find smaller paragraphs easier to read and digest. I’ve also found that punctuations (the full stops) are a little inconsistent when it comes to choices, particularly those which are sentences.

Other than that, your WiP’s looking good so far!

Yesss thank you for telling me it does look a bit blocky, I’ll try to break it up in the next update. I’ll also try to work on the issue with full stops in choices I realized those were inconsistent as well.

Thank you for reading and sharing your feedback it means a lot to me.

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I like it! what if Elizabeth staged her death, or their family is unto occult thing and sacrificed her, or Elizabeth is a fuckingg cloneeeee by her none aging rich mother the real Elizabeth! lol I love body horror themes!

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WOW. Wowowowow. this is amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an IF with more vivid imagery and metaphors- I especially love the one about burning camera film, and the one about lemon disinfectant and soap… the writing is beautiful, even if it may flow a little oddly. It has a vastly different writing style to those i’m used to from IFs, but it’s definitely a welcome change.

Small suggestions: For the option in after getting a bunch of looks from people, the only two options are to Smile or to Glare back, and I was wondering if there could be an option to just ignore them altogether? Whether because of shock or something else, I feel like a lot of characters just wouldn’t be able to notice.

Another more general piece of advice is to make the options more telling, haha. I know it’s tempting to keep the descriptions succinct, but giving more information about what the FEELINGS behind the options- (For example, the option to Smile didn’t make it known that the MC was smiling to reassure the people until you chose it, maybe something like; “smile softly; you don’t want them to worry.” or the like?)

I’m going to repeat again, the DESCRIPTIONS!!! THEY’RE SO GOOD!!! ah. I just. You write imagery so well.

I’m really excited to see where this WIP goes!!

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So far I’m loving this WIP! The descriptions and imagery is phenomenal. I love School Mystery stories and it’s super exciting so far!

I’d like to just echo what was said about about making the options more telling. The part at the end when my roommate looks at me, I didn’t really know the emotion behind my choice so I chose to stare at them back, I assumed helplessly and desperate but apparently it was a stare down.

Aside from that I’m excited to see more! Oh one of the disclaimers at the beginning mention that there maybe stuff that triggers people, How steamy/violent/graphic can we expect the story to get?

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Thank you for complimenting my writing style I really appreciate it. I hope it’s not too jarring though jdnjcns

Also, thank you so much for telling me about making the options more telling I’ll be sure to try and implement that I just didn’t want the choices to be too long, you know? But I think you’re right, and I’ll try to assign feelings to each choice and maybe even the same/similar actions with different feelings (Did I phrase that right?)

Also I will be sure to add the option to ignore. I do intend for there to be more choices overall.

Thank you again for your feedback I’ll try my best to make it better! :grinning:

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@SpanishBrEaD lmaooo these made me giggle a bit I love the theories especially the last one. Thank you for reading. :heartpulse:

@Ceraphi Thank you for the feedback as well. I will try to make the options a bit more telling I realize that I did make it a bit confusing huh, that’s my bad.

I will update/upgrade the trigger warnings to be more specific but I do intend for it to be pretty up there without being straight up shock gore/horror… mmmm I’m trying to phrase it in a coherent way haha. I don’t plan to throw anything in anyone’s face or try to creep/gross someone out for the sake of it. I plan for the story to build up to those scenes so when they do come the reader will always know they’re coming. So, typical R-18/M horror stuff not anything that would land me anything below the surface on the disturbing movie iceberg.

Same goes for sexual scenes/themes, I do intend to be on the more explicit side and write them with detail and care but not full-on erotica. However, I’m also considering maybe writing alternative/less graphic/fade-to-black versions of violent, sexual and overall graphic scenes if necessary.

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Definitely a great start, I’m sucked in to the mystery. Agree that some of the choices were difficult to figure out the motivation/feeling behind them. Also, would love more details on the RO. For example, with Zion, only his eye color is described. For Mateo, only his hair. It would be nice to have a better sense of these characters to bring them more fully alive. Hair, eyes, height, body, clothes. So far, only Elizabeth is described in a way I can actually imagine her.

Looking forward to following this one, great stuff!

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Thank you for reading and leaving feedback I’ll try to weave in a little more description of their appearances into the story itself. However, I do have full descriptions on the ROs and MC on the stats page I think in case you wanted to know a little more about what they look like.

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Huh, interesting. Very interesting.
Well, this looks like fun so far. Wonder how this’ll go?
I think more choices and more descriptive choices would be nice. Most of the options come in just pairs and are either “patience of a saint” or “eternally blown fuse.” I think have the ability to do other things (even if it’s just not responding) woule be good, as well as the ability to tell what some choices are (i.e staring, I thought it’d just be a worried look but nope it was an annoyed staredown.)

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Thanks for getting back to me. Yah, I see what you’re saying. I failed to include more options cause I wanted to convert it after I finished Chap 1 and planned to add them when I eventually rewrite it. I’ll add more variety overall.

Thank you for taking the time to read it so far I’m reworking it rn.

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