Memento mori, the greatest gift of the Roman Empire and one which we have, regretfully, let fall by the wayside.
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Blurb sounds good but iirc thereās a another WIP with this name.
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Remember, You Will Die sounds amazing. Iām a big horror fan and I love writing horror. If you need any references for this, Iād be glad to help 
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thank you! im trying to dig deep into horror and I think iām deeeeceeentttt (?) enough at it, but Iād love all the help/advice I could get! <3
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Ah damn, really? So itās a race to see who completes it lol?
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Have you played Cry of Fear before? It delves very heavily into the same themes youāre working on. There are more recent examples of course, such as Sweet Home.
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Pretty much for Date a god lol, except without them being actual horrible beings like most from greek mythology lmao.
And I agree, so many meaningful but short phrases from the past have been forgotten!
I have not! I donāt play many horror games , but House of Horrors is based heavily inspired by the game Cooking companions! I love the cutesy art starting out and how it lulls you into a false sense of security. The premises are entirely different and thereās no chompettes, but the cannibal killer with the ghosts lurking in a home is taken from there. Iām also basing it off of other indie horror games and some horror mangas iāve fallen in love with recently!
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In that case, youāll love Doki Doki Literature Club, and Iāve taken immense risk here in recommending it to you since to even do so would risk spoiling it. This example is very relevant here seeing that itās a visual novel.
A less relevant example would be Spookyās Jumpscare Mansion. But it has the same tone as the one you described.
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ive heard of both and i ADORE DDLC! Itās been a while since Iāve heard anyone talk about Spookyās jumpscare mansion! I almost forgot about that game lol. I love the monsters and the detail to making it horrifying without having like one coherent plot with a deeper meaning. I mean, the monsters have lore, but youād have to actively search for it. Iām going to make you able to learn the backstories of the ghosts living in the mansion, but I just donāt know how youād get it. Iām leaning towards talking to them or the killer having souvenirs as most do irl.
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In that case, Iād say weāre in for an amazing IF then. Canāt wait to see what you come up with. I donāt think horror is common in Choice of Games, but Iād love to see it fill a niche. Thereās a chance I might help out with that.
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Ahhh, I know! Horror is so underrated in this platform, Iād love to see more stories like those!
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One more thing. House of Horrors interest me as well. I think that has a lot potential. 
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Thank you! Iām glad someone likes the concept!
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Hi all! Long-time lurker ā but Iām trying to turn a new leaf over and am considering really pouring my heart and soul into drafting out a game this November. I have a couple of narrative projects going that werenāt originally interactive story-choice games, but I feel that they would make interesting threads worthwhile fleshing out. Getting any kind of positive feedback regarding interest in seeing one of these in-the-game-flesh would mean a lot to me.
CW: Some of these ideas touch on apocalyptic violence, depression, psychosis, suicide, and addiction issues. Immediately below in the summaries, nothing is talked about explicitly. In the MORE DETAILS section, there is a veils-style (in the Ron Edwards Lines and Veils meaning) engagement with some (if not most) of the aforementioned themes.
- PLAY-PAUSE-REWIND; a rogue-like repetition of a day that needs to be dusted off, searched for meaning, and taken apart in order for the player to be free from its curse ā because every other pathway apart from the right one leads to the same thing: the end of your life.
- Red String; time-traveling detective obliged to try and track down a disappeared informant by searching a sleepy road-side gas station across the ages, and in doing so, receives clues that reveal the mystery of the informantās vanishing.
- Ill Humour; you took a year off college to get your life together, but as is becoming more and more apparent, thereās something different about you. You have a living, manifested connection with your bodies humors ā blood, phlegm, black & yellow bile. Your body speaks to you ā and not metaphorically. It is both a gift and a curse.
MORE DETAIL:
- PLAY-PAUSE-REWIND is a really exciting idea to me; itās also the most action-driven, a lot more like an old-school choose-your-own-adventure than the rest of these because itās meant to illustrate the problem or the nature of its puzzle through incorrect player choices (in fact, since the player remembers each life, wrong choices afford them knowledge points that open up choices that wouldnāt have otherwise existed for them in ignorance, so failing is still progress). Itās also the thinnest plot-wise. I want to say youāre a delivery driver in a big city, on your e-bike, and itās the last dispatch of the night via UnderEats, you accept the job, and you go through it mindlessly, most of the dialog talking about your frustrations over money, what youāre studying, hopes and dreams, and the way that working 16, 17 hours a day just to make $120 a day (before taxes) is zapping your body slowly and surly of all the energy it needs to keep hope for better times alive. You realize as you pick up the order, based on the order and the name, that youāve had this customer before. This premonition is confirmed when you arrive at the building, and you begin to wonder why she stuck in your mind. You canāt remember, really ā and the exhausted side of you hopes to hell itās not because sheās a shitty tipper. You get upstairs, hand off the pizza, and she gives you a smile; itās surprisingly genuine, and it comes with a cash tip. A good one. Itās a nice change to the pace of the evening, and you realize you probably remember because sheās kind. It helps, a little, against the frustration thatās been seeding itself in the pasture of your day. Youāre back on your bike before you realize that thereās a slip of paper in with the cash tip ā quick glance at it, you think itās a receipt. Maybe from whatever purchase the cash was used for before it became your tip. You shove it in your pocket. You go home, your partnerās in bed already, you go to the kitchen. Thereās leftover tamales in the fridge, and you pluck one out, debating whether or not to microwave it before eating it cold. Half-way through you realize the ACās broken again ā or at least not running; thereās sweat running down your back thatās foreign to you inside your own home. You get up to turn it on when thereās a knock at the door. Three slow, sharp knocks. You glance back in the kitchen to look at the time ā itās 01:13 AM. Before you can do much more than frown, a voice comes from behind the door. Hello? Mr. Oquendo? Itās Liliana from across the hall ā did your power go out? I canāt get anything in the kitchen to turn on! The words are in Spanish, the voice is familiar enough, you think, and it offers an explanation ā maybe the breaker that runs your AC connects to your neighborās apartment. It shouldnāt, you tell yourself, walking towards the door, but the electricians your landlord hires cut corners. You open the door, and there is a woman ā young, in her late twenties ā standing there. Youāve never seen her before. In her hand, she has a gun, and itās pointed at your head. Before you can finish your next thought, she pulls the trigger and youāre surprised no pain comes with the sudden, deafening rush of black. You blink. You blink again. Youāre back on your bike, summer night thick on your skin. Your phone goes off as a delivery order comes in via UnderEats. You decide this will be the last order of the night, especially if youāre falling asleep while waiting for work. Weird dream, you think, as you look up directions to where youāre going. The customerās name rings a bell. A shiver works its way down your spine as you dismiss the half-remembered memory away as deja vu. You think you remember her because sheās a good tipper, actually, so thereās a plus to end your night.
(And so on, and so on.)
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Red String started out as a podcast idea, actually. I like the idea that a temporally mobile detective has very little to go off except a place and a time. Not a date, mind you, just a time. And keeps looking over and over again at the place listed at different times, hoping that the clue sheās received will one day turn up some kind of thread on an informant (maybe a lover, or a sibling) thatās gone missing. The day that she realizes sheās picked up on a clue, she doesnāt even realize what sheās seeing at first. The place is a gas station ā the kind with a general store attached to it; and before it was a gas station, it was a small market place, a gathering, a nexus of transient human activity. It always has been, except for when humans werenāt around, and even then, the place has some kind of pull on the animals. The natural well of the gas when the station gets built is housed in the bones of a watering hole that flourished well through the Bronze Age. She arrives one rainy February day in 1911 and thereās a red string on the ground where thereās never been one before. She follows it, compelled oddly, and finds it attached to something buried in the ground. She digs it up, much to the chagrin of the owner, and itās tied to a cell phone from 2002, a Hiptop Sidekick of all things. Thatās when she knows the hunt is really on.
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Ill Humour is a really compelling story to me, and itās very much inspired by games (the ones that come to mind are Disco Elysium, The Stanly Parable, Night in The Woods) where the relationship the player has with its narrator is one that can grow and change and develop in positive and uplifting, stabilizing ways, or in more pessimistic or outright delusional ways, and often the way in which the player develops a relationship with their in-game self is the tool through which theyāre able to accomplish the solving of the mystery. Itās tricky to do: I think anytime you gamify symptoms of psychosis, you have to be careful with what youāre trying to get across here, and I think itās important to say, the Four Humours are, in effect, a type of curse or gift given to the player through family blood. Balancing them is billed as the the best way forwards, rather than make choices that strengthen one or two over the rest, but balancing them to figure out the mystery plaguing the protagonistās family requires that they do some heavy lifting in being honest and vulnerable in interpersonal relationships. Giving in to the pull of one particular humor allows them to skate by and retain a far more alluring sense of fatalism. The mystery concerns an estranged best friend. Your best friend through-out high school stopped talking to you out of the blue at the beginning of your last semester at school. It was difficult, because they were still pretty much your best friend ā a talisman of familiarity and comfort as things got progressively more out of hand at college. Then ā nothing. One day to the next, ghosted. It contributed heavily to a sudden depression, which it turn lead to the decision to take a year at home. The advice youāve been given by your therapist is to leave it alone, but youāre not satisfied with that. A return home is enough to awaken the Voices of your Humours as well, and they give your nagging dissatisfaction a power and energy it otherwise might not have.
And thatās the three I have! Thoughts welcome.
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I like the second one the best: Red String. I like the idea of being able to explore a single location from multiple time periods. However, I feel that the idea would work best if this extends to more than one location, and is used more as a gameplay mechanic thatās accessible throughout.
I find that Iām making this decision based on limited info though. For the first idea, Iām given what looks like an excerpt of the story and for the third, it looks like just one of many gameplay mechanics within a game I know not the plot of.
Based on the info you gave me though, the Repeat idea looks like it could get stale if handled poorly. I still have no idea about Ill Humourā¦
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Thanks so much for the feedback.
I apologize that it didnāt feel like I didnāt give enough info regarding Ill Humour. I was torn between trying to give a concise blurb about everything and being unsure whether mechanics or plot would be of more interest to people in terms of expressing potential engagement with the idea.
Iām glad Red String spoke to you though, and I appreciate knowing that having one location would feel too restrictive.
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I guess it depends on how long the story itself is going to be. If its going to be a short story at maybe 40k words (short for Hosted Games), then one location works the same way the cabin in Evil Dead works. If itās going to be a full-blown criminal case that could span a series if itās a series, to the tune of maybe 400k words, then multiple locations work best.
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Interest check in an Attack on Titan esque dark story game that is very choice and branch based
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House of horror or Date a God sound the most interesting to me
Interest check for an esports based around Smash Bros with choices that highly matter for endings and winning games
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