Submissions by LawlerW tagged ghost

"The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings." -Pittacus Lore

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Evening light shines through the windows of the empty house, casting a jagged shadow on the kitchen's cracked tile floor. Water stains seeping down from the sink blur into something dried and red. Cupboards hang ajar. A lone lightbulb swings loose from its socket, dulled and powerless. Something terrible happened here long ago.

You are a ghost, and that's all you know of yourself. Drawn to this abandoned house, unconsciously, you found yourself awaking as you spent time inside its broken walls. There are memories everywhere here, and you want to remember...

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::Warning: sensitive content follows. Please read at your discretion.::

In this game, you play as a nameless ghost inhabiting an abandoned house, drawn to it by the threads of memories from the departed which still cling to objects; objects like a broken window, a fallen flower vase, a shattered picture. If you come close, these objects project glimpses of the events surrounding the memories, overlapping the physical with the ghost world to show portions of the past: a small body thrown through the window, a domestic dispute that swept the vase to the floor and scattered the roses, a lover scorned who destroyed a dear photograph amid their weeping.

As a disembodied ghost, you look in on these snapshots of lives once lived, disconnected from them; it is not their story you were drawn to. Amid the wreckage and scattered fragments of the tragic tale that played out in this house are small details and hints that remind you of something in yourself, tiny pieces that whisper to you who you might have once been.

Different rooms contain different fragments of memories to uncover or avoid, with varying danger depending on what happened in each one. But should you draw near to their objects, the unresolved memories of the two previous inhabitants as well as your own will emerge in the ghost world, replaying their scenes once again. As they appear, they may come alive and lash out at you, or wander off to roam the halls, stopping only to erase anything that would interrupt their drifting. Your purpose here in the now is to collect trinkets and talismans that reminded you of your own life when you were a living thing, sorting through the grief and the violence hanging in the air to find moments that make sense. When you find a memory that stirs you, you must carry the object it is tied to carefully back to the room you dwell in, upstairs; safe from the malevolent reach of the dangerous remnants yearning to unleash their grief on something. It is your altar, your place of refuge, and as you put together these precious fragments you also try to remember who you were and the life you lived through pieces of theirs, knowing that if you can just figure it all out, you may be free of this curse and be ready to move on from the threads of memory binding you here.

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Personal note: I do not endorse or condone fictional or especially real-world instances of domestic abuse, and understand it is a very serious subject. If you know anyone who may be suffering from abuse or are suffering from abuse yourself, please seek help from any available source in your area.