Forgotten. - v0.113 // A mental health focused mercenary story. Updated: 20th of August

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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forgotten
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Left stranded in a city you don’t know, with a body you don’t remember having, and unable to even recall your own name, one cryptic note sends you spiralling into a grim world of death, torture and bad jokes. Uncover the truth, kill, create bad coping strategies, manage your failing mental health and maybe even fall in love along the way.

Do you push yourself to your limits by recklessly pursuing answers, to save others from the terrible fate you endured, your relationships turned broken, loveless from your lack of attention to your mental health, until you break down completely? Or do you try to reclaim your happiness, discovering who you are, finding answers with the support of your friends and not risking your mental health, but risk being too late to save them?

Forgotten is a game about dealing with trauma, suicide and mental illness. While it attempts to be humorous, it paints a (hopefully) very realistic and dark description of mental health, murder and the value of human life.

It’s most likely not as bad as I’m probably making it out to seem, but, just in case, here’s a short list of possible triggers:

Possible Triggers
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • PTSD-esque symptoms (No personal experience on this, so just vague symptoms.)
  • Death
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide
  • Unethical (and inaccurate) medical procedures/torture/both
  • Unhealthy and/or abusive relationships, one-sided relationships

This game hopes to feature:

  • A realistic mental health mechanic with actual consequences to ill health
  • Gameplay influenced by the characters emotions
  • Slight (and by that I mean slight) randomisation of chances to increase/decrease mental health
  • Mercenary/Assassination missions
  • Straight/Bisexual/Pansexual NPC Romance (or just platonic relationships, depending on player choices)
  • A Cisgender/Transgender/Non-binary Player
  • Straight/Gay/Bisexual/Pansexual/Asexual Player Orientation
  • Strength, stealth, instinct and skill mechanics
  • A protagonist that isn’t too annoying or bland
  • Characters that are at least vaguely interesting
  • Jokes that don’t make your cringe too hard
  • A storyline that can be classed as passably enjoyable

If that sounds like your thing, then stay tuned.
Fair warning though; I work with software, not hardware, so any advanced tech/surgeries/medical things are pretty much hand-wavy science and bits of internet research. Feel free to correct anything.

Current word count, including code, not including unplayable scenes (e.g: startup): 9.2K
Link: https://dashingdon.com/play/melancholy/forgotten/mygame/

Available Content
  • Prologue: Done! (latest patch: 20/08/18)
  • Chapter One, Introductions: Done! (latest patch: 20/08/18)
  • Chapter Two, Not-So-Forgotten Skills: Working on it!
  • Chapter Three, ???

Also, if you would be willing to do the huge favour of beta-reading/beta-testing, please feel free to DM me! This would mean you’d get access to unreleased chapters, and I will make sure to make a little easter egg in-game just for you.

That aside, any comments or criticisms you have on this game are very much needed! Feel free to nitpick as much as you want, from annoyingly phrased sentences, tiny bugs to this game’s entire premise, mechanics, characters and writing. (And thank you for reading this, and/or playing it!)

Changelog

v.0.113, tiny update:

  • Fixed some wording/bad writing
  • Added more content to the prologue
  • Added new asset for chapter two.
  • Patched a few bugs, then spent an hour fixing bugs from fixing those bugs
  • Crawling along with the next chapters

v.0.112, yet another patch:

  • Fixed a part in Introductions where a bit of text disappeared
  • This is the last one, I swear

v.0.111, 15/06/18 patch:

  • Added a feedback link
  • Fixed some grammatical mistakes
  • Fixed some odd wording

v.0.11, 15/06/18 update:

  • Added Chapter Two to public release!
  • Finally made a post for this game
  • Added more mental health mechanics
  • Added another asset (which is totally not the title pic cropped)
  • Reworded a couple of scenes
  • Added (small) random mental health events

v.0.08, 12/06/18 update:

  • Massive code optimisation (refs and subroutines make everything SO much easier!!)
  • Actual emotional story influence system introduced (good, because my fingers hurt from coding so much for so little content)
  • Went and reworded some stuff
  • Added stuff to the prologue (again)

v0.07, initial public release:

  • Basic mental health mechanics
  • Added new asset (the one and only pic. Looks so cool!)
  • Added mental health influencing choices
  • Added mental health influenced dialogue
  • Added ‘debug’ mode
  • Added the Prologue to public game version
  • Minor reworking/rewording of story
  • Major bug fixes
  • Code optimisation
  • Removed herobrine (shoutout to 2010!)
159 Likes
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Outstanding. You captured the confused state perfectly. I look forward to the continuation.

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Thank you! Since I can have trouble portraying emotions in my writing, I was worried that it wouldn’t be effective or was too overdramatic. I’m glad you think it turned out well!

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Indeed. I also face difficulty with relaying emotion in my writing. Especially when romance is involved. I have found the forum’s feedback to be very helpful while writing my own WIP.

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Speaking of which; do you have any constructive criticism/advice for this? I’m always looking to improve my work, if only by a little bit.

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The blur of movement is too fast to tell it’s intentions, and in the span of a second, you react accordingly.

The port allows the machine to connect with the mod and access it’s ‘files’

Should be “its” due to possessive usage. Also, there was a bit where “Ram’s Horns” lacked an apostrophe. Also, the bit where you define Avery’s gender:

“Avery? They seemed surprisingly pleasant, for… you know.”

This seemed a weird way to refer to trans people. I’m far, far from an expert but this is probably too ambiguous for the average reader.

Anyway! Super concept and really fresh introduction. Really liked the bit where the world breaks! It’s a bit early in the story’s life maybe to suggest this, as I assume you’re working heavily on moving the story forward, but I’d have liked more time to explore the full-amnesiac-alone-in-the-city state before reaching Matt’s pub.

Glad to see something similar to Paranoia but this is much more serious. Interested to see how intense and dark it will get after a few chapters; best of luck with this one. Hope to explore the finished product one day!

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Very interesting so far…I’ll definetly keep an eye on this

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awwweeeeeeeSSSSOOOOOOOMMMMEEEE!!! Count me the hell in.

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Release day patch! v.0.111 is out, with a link to this post at the end, a couple of grammatical mistakes fixed, and fixed some odd wording in chapter one. (Thanks @muffy!)

Please tell me if you find anything else!

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The only thing I would point out, is that the Debugging portion is a bit confusing. Unless this is intended, I might suggest adding instructions/explanations to the various options.

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I am VERY interested to see where this will go and will probably be watching this WIP closely :grin:

Due to my own heaping helping of trauma, subsequent mental illnesses and disorders, I find stories about those very things rather cathartic, both reading and writing them. It’s an important subject to me I guess.

I’m still processing what I read and going to look at more options, so I haven’t formed thoughts about the writing just yet, but I noticed this… awkward bit

Summary

Screenshot_2018-06-15-13-30-44
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Screenshot_2018-06-15-13-30-49
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These pages were one after the other, after I changed clothes. It said Matt wasn’t there and then suddenly he was lol.

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Ah, sorry. It’s pretty much for testing purposes only, so there are mechanics/options that I haven’t included/work behind the scenes. I can put a description for it if you want, I just didn’t realise anyone would be using them :blush:

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I just read this and I think it’s great, count me in if you need beta testing!

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v0.112 is out! Trust me to miss out a bunch of bugs. Just fixed a discrepancy in Introductions - I swear it wasn’t like that before, but there was just a chunk of text missing :confused: thanks @pandaboi!
Feel free (and by that I mean please, please do) to point out any bugs you come across.

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@Melancholy I have no idea how to DM. The topics you’re including I’m more familiar with then most people like to admit I’ve never beta tested not sure how helpful I’d be there but sharing info with you about accurate subject use I could definitely do

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Just finished the demo. Love it so much!! Can’t wait to meet Avery.

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Hey, you just click someone’s image or name text, and a lil popup thing with more info appears. Then just click the big ol’ blue “Message” button.

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Had to have “member status” (trust level 2) got it after that public reply go figure :sweat_smile:

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Movin’ on up in the world! : )

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Really enjoyed what you have so far and can’t wait to see where this goes.

At first I thought this would have a mute MC and Was slightly sad to see that wasn’t the case. But overall an excellent start.

One question though: will the MC be forced to in to fighting or will there be a more pacifist run

1 Like