Immunity Curse (WIP)

Hi, I’m working on a project called “Immunity Curse” (which is a tentative title).

The demo is here.

And there’s a tumblr here if you’re interested in such things. Honestly I’d prefer feedback there, but I will absolutely take it where I can get it and won’t neglect this thread.

Summary Blurb

As an outlaw on the remote continent of Sybaris, you can rarely afford to dedicate your efforts to much beyond mere survival. Still, you must be doing something right; not long after you manage to earn significant notoriety you receive a surprising offer: gainful employment by a powerful noble family.

You accept, and as it turns out, high society isn’t remotely as different as the stories would have you believe. You are still asked to kill, and you are still asked to work in secret against the law, but this time you are provided with support far exceeding what you have ever had before.

And yet, you haven’t even officially completed your trial job before things go sideways in a way that you haven’t ever experienced. Now, your ability to survive against the odds will be tested like it never has before, and even should you manage to avoid the worst, you will never be the same again.

Current Word Count & Overall Vision

Current word count: ~130k

Rough estimate for words per playthrough: 37k

Progress: Chapters 1-3 released.

Essentially beginning as a relatively grounded story about crime in a pseudo-medieval setting, this game will shift towards low fantasy and eldritch-horror-adjacent by chapter 5ish.

Personality stats and skills are tracked and will have consequences, but the intention is not to challenge the reader. Rather, I want to facilitate customization of the story, reward consistency, and make exploring different options interesting on repeat playthroughs. If the player doesn’t act as they normally do, I want NPCs to notice. If you fail, it’s because you thought failing would result in a more interesting story. Et cetera, et cetera.

Romance isn’t a focus of this story, but there will be some options for it. There are four—only two of which you will meet in the current demo—and each will be a distinct brand of romance.

Content Warnings

Some of these are avoidable, and some are not. If you would like more detailed information, or if you feel that something should be added to this list, please either post here or contact me via tumblr.

In this demo:

  • Violence and murder, witnessed, experienced, and performed by the player character.
  • Paranoia.
  • Sadism and cruelty.
  • The implication of torture.
  • Gore.
  • The maiming of the player character.

This list will be updated as more content is added.

AI Disclosure:

No — This project does not contain the output of Generative AI
Yes — This project contains the output of Generative AI

31 Likes

This is really excellent. I regularly found myself unsure what would happen, not because the choices were vague or misleading, but simply because the situations were so dynamic. There are choices I made that I felt good about in the moment but later questioned, which adds a fair amount replayability. This is also already quite a lot of writing, which really gave it a chance to establish itself.

I love what you’ve done and I’m looking forward to following your progress. Great work!

6 Likes

so is the mc evil?

Great so far :+1:. but maybe you can consider showing the swordsmanship and sharpshooting skills percentages in the stats page as well and their description

@TheAbyssalGodOf

I’d say they’re in a morally grey area, with options to lean either way. The MC is an outlaw, but we don’t have a lot of the backstory that led them down that path.

The job you’re hired to do involves murder, but you’re murdering people who are described as the worst of the worst. It’s unclear, though, how accurate that description is.

I’d say that what you’re doing seems to be largely predetermined so far, but you get to decide how you do it and how you feel about it. I was playing more of an honorable thief type, but there were choices available that definitely seemed darker.

1 Like

I’m liking this so far. It feels refreshing to read.

Slowly plodding my way through.

No pressure—code viewing is off by default on CoGDemos. If you turn it on, it helps with playtesting and letting us spot errors or bugs. Some authors don’t, and that’s okay, too.

thank you :slight_smile: at the moment, assuming it’s working correctly, there’s text that mentions your particular MC’s comfort with the respective skills, but i agree it’s probably something that’d benefit from being reflected at a glance. i’ll add it to my editing notes to consider for next update.

thanks for saying this, ‘refreshing’ definitely feels good to hear about one’s work.

i think i would like to enable code viewing at some point, but at the moment a LOT of my organizational notes are in the comments of the scene files, and i’m not super comfortable showing those—if only because i’m so new to this and am quite self-conscious.

i’ll sit with it, and probably end up enabling code viewing by the time of next update.

1 Like

Fantastic start! Lookin forward to seein where this one goes!

1 Like