Cryptic Stitching

Well, as some of you may recall, way back last year I was fooling around with making a game on the StoryNexus engine, put out by Failbetter Games. (They do Fallen London.)

They announced a few months ago that they're not going to be developing for it any longer, because they're very busy and there's no money in it. And I am entirely sympathetic to this, and understand their reasoning. But--the downside--I probably won't be pursuing this game any longer because once the maker stops supporting it, stuff gets tricky.

But y'know, I put a crapload of work into the world and I love it very much and I would like people to be able to see it.

Act One is playable. It is occasionally buggy--they broke some of the art options--and there are quests that don't wrap up and the Act ends on, not so much a cliff-hanger but with a whole lot of stuff unresolved. And parts of it are dull and grindy and parts of it are probably not at all intuitive and I did not do the best job of design. The art is 99% stock because, as I said, they kinda borked some of the art options, and though I did a few new pieces, I couldn't begin to illustrate all 400+ cards, and even if I had, they wouldn't work right now.

So I am not recommending this as a great gameplay experience, because it's not all that great.

But it is a first effort, and y'know, despite all those caveats, I'm kinda proud of what I managed to accomplish in terms of worldbuilding. I love these guys very much, I love Quippet and Crazy Wool and the Tangerine Rabbit and the Silver Rat and all the rest.

I'd like to someday follow their story. It might be as a book or it might be as a comic or I might just set up a "Random World Website With Stories And Art And Poetry Written By Stuffed Sheep," or I might even find another way to do a game like this.

But if you want to play it, here it is. (Please note: If you find bugs, I can't do much about them anymore, and sometimes art shows up labelled as "Placeholder Image" which, again, that's a new one and kinda them. So tech support is not gonna be great for this However, if you get actually STUCK--as in it's broken, not as in "I don't know what to do next!" then use the support e-mail and I will try to get you unstuck!)

(If you hate games that require some grinding, you will not enjoy this. It's okay, they're not for everybody, no reflection on you! It's cool!)

It can be reached here: Cryptic Stitching

It requires a Failbetter Games account. If you would like to give them money for more turns, that's between them and you--I do get a small cut, but not much, and honestly, I'd prefer you just played it and had fun. At standard browser rates, it'll take a few days or weeks--the actions refresh at the rate of about one every twenty minutes, so it's one of those games that you do a little bit in your browser when you're taking a break from whatever it is you do normally, not one you power straight through.

And you can hopefully spend a little time in the world and maybe see a little of what I was trying to do, even if events have conspired against it.