In the Grave Wood
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
This game was created for Bit Bridge Indies Halloween Game Jam. It was started on 17/10/20, and completed a week later on 24/10/20.
IntheGravewood 1.1 features improvements across the board and is the polished, 'final' version, and the one I recommend downloading!
Gravewood 1.0 is the raw Game Jam version.
EDIT: Between March 2022 and May 2022 a bugfix for 1.1 was uploaded that inadvertantly removed the easter egg ending. It's since been put back in, sorry about that! Please let me know if you run into any trouble with this build.
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You're a young woman living in the heart of a dark and dismal swampland.
It's time for the ritual of Season's End, and the Elder of the village selects you to fulfil a special mission: you have to find four Pearls of the Earth, special stones that emerge from places of suffering or grief. To help you with this special task, a senior warrior accompanies you as your companion - an upbeat, earnest woman whose past and values you can learn through the course of the story. Tolerate her or treat her with care to determine different outcomes.
Thanks to the parasitic tree planted in your spine, you're ready to protect the village from the dangers of the outside world at any cost.
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Explore the open marshland via a map!
The narrative is modular and can change depending on when you visit certain areas and what you do there! Many choices and engagements depend on your route!
Five Endings!
A walkthrough is included with the Readme file for added convenience, and in case you need some help! Three of the endings follow a similar route, and two are wild deviations.
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Content Warnings.
The game has a splash page that will warn you of its content! The visuals are not very grisly, but some of the writing is moreso. Please take care with your own comfort and limits!
The game features: Horror, body horror, parasitism, corpses, death, insects, monsters and physical trauma. The writing is often gory but the art is minimal for these sections.
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In the Grave Wood was produced by Cacoethic, of the microstudio Inkethic. If you like this, please check out our other titles!
Please note that as this was a Game Jam game and was also the first Ren'Py game coded by Cacoethic, you may encounter typos, grammatical errors, visual aberrations or coding anomalies. Please report them, and I'll fix them as soon as possible! Also, please forgive some default settings on the 1.0 version. The game is very long and heavily-illustrated for a week-long Jam, and time was very tight for me at the end.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- In the Grave Wood Post-Jam Update 1.1 Released!Oct 30, 2020
Comments
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The true ending was very touching, and the easter egg was very novel.
In a way, that ending turned out the way I thought it would, given how the Scavengers were acting up. Only so many ways for that sort of scenario to resolve, given the horror setting. Though, I really liked it.
Very nice game.
Thank you so much for your kind comment and for playing this lil game jam! I'm really glad if the game was a positive experience, and I'm so happy to hear the true ending and the easter egg felt appropriate! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and for giving it a try.
Found a bug! I tried putting the game on fullscreen in the settings menu, and the game completely disappeared. It looked like the game closed, and doesn't show up in my taskbar, but still seems to be open somehow since I can hear the menu music playing
Oh gosh, my apologies for this nuisance of a bug, especially if you tried to fullscreen before turning down the audio - I've been experimenting to see if I can figure out where this came from. I'll do my best to resolve it asap, and thank you so much for letting me know!
Update: Sorry to spam you a bit, but I believe the problem should be repaired! I'm uploading the new files now. Thank you so so much for making me aware of it. A very weird issue had occurred where the gui was angry it couldn't find a particular image, and for some reason only going to fullscreen on the prefs menu made it realise it was missing!
If you continue to have issues, please do let me know! I'll do my best to handle it if it's still a problem.
what age rating would you give this visual novel and for what content?
Hi Marklord! The text is about on par with a YA novel's level of heavier violence, so suitable for 15+. The imagery is mild and there's few CGs for any of the harder violence described in the text. It features (across some or all routes) violence, blood, death, body horror, injury, monsters, and corpses.
Here is your participant's badge for the jam!
Very cool! I played through and kept getting medium endings, so I looked at the walkthrough for the best ending. I think I didn't keep watching so I kept missing the best ending. The easter egg ending was very interesting. I liked the character and environment art with all the lore. Nice job!
Oh no! I think maybe I could do more to telegraph the right answer with that particular question or alter the point range for it. Since it follows her getting offended about being fussed at, it's a bit of mixed messaging that I've been worried about! I'll go back in and have a look, make sure it's more cohesive or that the distinction is better explained.
(Although to be honest I'm also a bit relieved that the medium ending is still accessible, as I had some worries the point range might be too fiddly!)
Thank you so much for giving my game a go, it really means a lot that you kindly read all that stuff! And thank you so much for the sweet badge!
thank you for the bug warning lol
You bet! Full transparency on what to expect is always a priority.
Very good and artistic game.
Thank you so much, Hammer Games! I appreciate you checking out my little game very much.