The Bazaar's Shopkeeper (Chapter 1, 10k words, updated 9/30/26)

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Welcome. This is a thread to discuss my horror work in progress, The Bazaar’s Shopkeeper.

Summary:

You’ve been oppressed by demons for most of your life, but a mental breakdown left you possessed by them. In the waning age of serial killers, you have already murdered multiple victims, but you had to flee your hometown due to increasing suspicion and growing risks.

Yet you have your own small business, The Bizarre Bazaar, and special, arcane abilities granted to you by your demon tormentors. You also know how to select your victims and how to avoid drawing unwanted attention to your taboo proclivities. But how long can you survive living a blasphemous and violent lifestyle when a cop and an exorcist start prowling for you?

The Bazaar’s Shopkeeper is a thrilling interactive horror novel by Samwise Harry Young, where your choices control the story. It’s text-based, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

  • Play as male, female, or non-binary; romance men, women, both, or no one at all
  • Romance one of several characters, male, female, or both, for plausible deniability or genuine love
  • Try to resist the demons possessing you or embrace their influence for personal gain
  • Evade suspicion and capture as a serial killer in the waning age of serial killers

Will you redeem yourself or be consumed by an addiction to murder?

Content warning: Intended for young adult audiences. Contains violence, disturbing elements, drug use, and mild sexual elements.

Demo link: CoGDemos

For fun, you can also check out this playlist I made for the story. I selected some thematic songs and songs I’ve been listening to during the writing of Bazaar.

I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you liked, didn’t like, and if you found any bugs or typos. Thanks.

Want to support me? Check out my other works:

The Nascent Necromancer

The Magician’s Burden
The Mage’s Adventures

Trial of the Demon Hunter
Captive of Fortune
Foundation of Nightmares

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i see what you’re going for here and i like the concept but i do find how you’ve done the stats a bit odd

tying stats to gender, sexuality and even who you choose to talk too is somewhat strange. i’m not inherently smarter for being nonbinary nor am i tough for preferring men, it just seems like a weird way of doing it.

as for the story itself, its pretty short so far so theres not a great deal to talk about but the writing is solid and the main character is interesting

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I can understand your perspective. My reasoning with this is to give a slight effect for your gender or orientation. Typically, being male does make you tougher physically and more aggressive, being female does make you more charismatic (feminine charm), and being nonbinary, at least in my opinion, shows very complex understanding of oneself despite societal norms.

Now, the rest of the story decides where your stats will end up. You can choose to be a guy but end up with 1 Tough at the end of the novel if you choose to do so. As far as who you talk to affecting stats, most choices will effect stats, and this will be based upon what the MC is experiencing or doing.

Glad you’re enjoying the writing and MC thus far. It is just a bite to see if people enjoy the writing style and premise, and I will be updating the chapter soon.

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The Bazaar’s Shopkeeper sounds pretty mundane and doesn’t tell me much. Maybe call your game The Bizarre Bazaar? Has a nicer ring to it and also conveys the supernatural angle.

The stats page should list your name and gender.

Running a mysterious shop is a pretty interesting idea. Perhaps I should try one for a medieval fantasy setting. (Takes notes.)

Truthfully, I did gender based stat bonuses for an abandoned project in choicescript over a decade ago, but it could… rub people the wrong way now. I played as a male character (+1 tough), and it later made me tough for being gay, charismatic for being straight and intelligent for being asexual or bisexual. It could be risky to say that someone is strong or smart just by virtue of their romantic attraction.

Anyway, I’m not too sure. Just pointing out my subjective opinions here.

Good luck.

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@ChanceOfFire

This story is actually inspired by a documentary about serial killer Bob Berdilla called The Bizarre Bazaar, so that name is already taken. I did steal it for the shop in the game.

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I do not care to write essays on why you guys are wrong because I don’t care. But it’s plainly obvious to people who aren’t motivated by pure ideology that these attributes I’ve given to genders are broadly true, and it’s literally not even a negative thing.

Well considering humans are considered to have relatively low sexual dimorphism compared to even just other apes, its not really “broadly true”. humans are incredibly diverse in many ways, and dimophism is one of those. Bone density, muscle development, lung capacity, flexibility. All vary greatly and are tied to genetics, more than chromosomes and sex. Intersex people are, at the low end, around 2% of the population and even then we don’t full know due to the lack of data and full understanding of what the difference in each sex is. We are often finding that the difference between men and woman is a hell of a lot more societal and cultural than we think. Add to that, medicine has be decided and studied by rich white men for a majority of time, it leads to a good level of bias as we are learning. Women’s science is much further behind due to this, and such, our understanding of the female body has fallen behind. It is hard to find conclusive data on the differences in biological sex when on has signifigantly more funding and data than the other.

You ARE enforcing gender norms this way however. If you wanted to have a difference in each choice there are better ways. Plenty of IF’s have had the MC treated differently based on sex or sexuality. But by tying it to stats, you are making your stance on what a woman or man is more than allowing the world to demonstrate what they think of women or men. You are literally pushing your own ideology this way.

Hell one of my biggest advice to people onto how to actually make gender or sexuality feel meaningful in a story is to discriminate the MC (to a certain extent). If women or men are treated a certain way in your story, the MC needs to be treated that way too. You can’t exclude them from this due to being the MC as it takes the reader out of the story, leading to feeling like more of an observer than a character. But when you allow them to be treated the same way? Allow them to choice how they react or call out to this behavior, you reaffirm their agency while showing what your world is and how it treats these things. Without actually enforcing your own ideology

I’m done with this snowflake forum bro. Bye, y’all

You literally went off the rails the moment someone mentioned ‘gender norms’ and yet people with valid criticism are the ‘snowflakes’ ok

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Um, unsure of what transpired before me, but it does make me cautious when an author goes on a ‘snowflake’ and ‘common knowledge’ much reminiscent of a ‘common sense’ fallacy rant. However, I will carry on, as I quite like the premise.

I like the writing! Some of the use of commas and sometimes the lack thereof (comma splices) isn’t exactly grammatically correct, but that’s a nitpick. There’s also a part where it says ‘everything I do has a reason’, and it lists off the ways the MC avoids detection and suspicion but doesn’t state the main reason for it all, the motivation. It seems to be just psychopathic based on the current text, yet also seems to be unwilling and spiritually controlled at times. Maybe it’s a mix of both? I’m unsure if this will be made via the players’ future choices, but it would help piece together the plot in my opinion.

I’m unfortunately going to be talking about the stats, as they are a part of every choice you make currently. And it is critiquable, with the story being just a few words long, and the writing seems lovely to me. My character is not charismatic, quite the opposite, yet talking to Jonathan makes him add a point to that statistic automatically without having even chosen what to say to him. Or how being attracted to men makes me ‘tough’, I’m guessing, in the physical aspect. My character is not very tough at all; my sexuality certainly doesn’t change that? Bioessentialism is quite hinted at, with ‘toughness’ being innately a part of you if you are a man and ‘charismatic’ being innately a part of you if you are a woman. These conflate culture, upbringing and choices into gender, which is an essential part of bioessentialism. No non-binary person is born intelligent, no man is born tough and no woman is born charismatic. Sex, of course, plays a role in how your body develops via puberty, but these aren’t sent in stone and are influenced by outside factors and internal factors. Also, ‘charisma’ is not a puberty-influenced attribute like ‘toughness’ is. These also conflate sex and gender, as ‘boy’, ‘girl’ and ‘non-binary’ are all gender terms. While the argument you’re using for adding these stats is clearly sex-related. In which ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘intersex’ would be correct. Humans are very complex. Also, females having the power to cast lust strikes me as noticeable middle-age and partially modern bioessentialism as well. ‘Lust’, I’m guessing, in the sexual aspect here, is intense physical attraction not defined by sex, as it is the outer body which attracts in lust. So attaching it to a sex is a tad bit strange. Imagine me going, ‘All females are lustful,’ or that ‘femininity itself is lustful,’ which is actually unfortunately quite true in a modern sexist society; see pornography in general, but either way I’d be labelled an incel, probably rightfully so. Finally, where do intersex people fall under this? And how would a trans person on HRT and/or with gender-affirming surgeries fall under this category?

That brings me onto my last topic, which is really just a suggestion and perhaps a fun way to spice up the power system in place:

Is the MC’s ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ choice strictly cisgender, or will you be able to be a binary transgender person in this story? I’m trans, and I’d love to see how you’d incorporate it. I’d also think it’d help with your stats pradicament. Could do what some other stories do with ‘agab/assigned gender at birth’, and if they’re trans, perhaps expand on that with ‘has your character taken any treatment or surgeries, if so, which?’ Or simply ask if the MC is cisgender or transgender after the gender choice is chosen. Besides, if they are non-binary, they are trans, and you could still do the HRT and surgeries with those MCs. This might require more research, but any help needed with science, experiences and societal stuff relating to trans people, I’d love to provide you with to the best of my abilities.

With that, those are my critiques and suggestions. These are not personal attacks and do not mean to paint you in any brush, just observations seen in the text provided so far. Keep up the great work and love from me <3

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I think the Disney show Amphibia uses this name, if you don’t mind the association.

(Oooo.)

Do you have a list of content warnings? I want to try to play if it’s not upsetting.

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It’s always a good sign whenever a newly made wip has some drama

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Yeah, chiming in here. I really like the idea of fighting demon possession while running a esoteric shop. Will there be more backstory of how the MC came to be like this later on? It kinda just jumped right into the story and had a brief description of the past.

Ok, now the controversial topic. I think it’s very jarring to have the first choice and stat increase be your gender. That’s probably what’s bringing up the topic. Personally I don’t have a problem with it but know some readers will.

But tying states to sexuality is a very poor choice, unless you are going to tye stats to literally everything, such as eye or skin color. Straight women are more charismatic than Gay men? That’s complete nonsense. Almost all authors treat these as descriptive things such as your name, gender, sexuality or appearance, and have the readers CHOICES determine their stats. Your book, just giving some advice.

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This is the kind of feedback that is constructive. If others, which there were some, had communicated like this instead of insulting me and my integrity and really jumping the gun, I would have probably already changed this. I will soon, as it’s not a problem to remove three lines of code. I just wanted to add some more effect but I never intended to confuse or offend anyone.

I will be finishing Chapter One soon, and there will be more exposition there and sprinkled in other chapters

So, my idea was, as this is about serial killers and demonic possessions and is also trying to be horror and realistic, I am not endorsing this but just stating or exposing it, which I feel generally is what much of writing is. It’s actually in the Satanic Bible. It will also come up later in the story, so it isn’t a throwaway comment or anything.

@myeraland

I can definitely add content warnings.

Thanks for the offer for the advice. I may do this, although, I generally wasn’t going to make gender a main focus of the game. It will probably be like my other games and mostly effect pronouns

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To be fair it may not be obvious as Aletheia deleated their post so it’s not longer there to see which may be causing some confusion as no one can see what was said (including me). Anyway, sounds like the author is going to take a look at the start up sequence and has stated they didn’t intend to confuse or offend with the game, so we can probably go back to the game discussion or take it elsewhere off topic?

How do you feel about something like “The Bazaar’s Keeper” as a title? I think it might have a bit more mystical bite as it feels a bit more like you’re guarding something potentially dangerous rather than just managing a shop.

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I like that title. This is definitely more of a working title so I’ll kick around some ideas, this one included

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In case anyone wonders why comments are disappearing from this thread, I am deleting ones that are not relevant to the topic in an effort to keep the thread on topic.

If there are any further issues involving inappropriate attacks on individual posters rather than discussion of the WIP, please (as always) flag the post in question.

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Fair enough, it makes the choice a lot more interesting and gives me a little info; I didn’t know it was a part of the satanic bible. Which demons seem like a big point in this story, so it makes sense. And relating to the majority of modern Western society, I can definitely see that, however unfortunate it can be and how unfortunate it already is.

I’ll be around, hopefully not too late, as you can see I’m already late to your reply (apologies), so if you ever decide to do a deeper dive into trans + cis MCs, be it through intimacy, the way the story is structured with dialogue and choices, et cetera.

Hope my little rant, observations and nitpicks helped and didn’t come off as blaming. : ) Much love once again <3

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@CYBER1

I’ll definitely keep that in mind, thanks. I appreciate your feedback and support

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Update:

I’ve finished Chapter One and updated the demo. In the rest of this chapter, you do a demonic ritual and murder your first victim in your new city.

I hope you enjoy, and let me know if you found any typos or bugs, and what you liked and didn’t like.

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