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straightforwardly) wrote2025-10-14 04:07 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2025-10-14 04:07 pm
319 | thoughts on two indie games: dark queen of mortholme & a date with death
Reading: swapping between The Second Death of Locke (physical read), Mr. Melancholy Wants to Live a Peaceful Life (on-the-go read), and various FF7 fics.
Listening: for music, Lydia the Bard’s debut album “The Woods”; podcast listening has been switching between Singing Bones and miscellaneous episodes of Oologies.
Playing: A Date With Death—specifically, the Beyond the Bet DLC.
Watching: More or less keeping up with my youtube subscriptions, but otherwise, nothing.
I had a rather gaming-heavy weekend—which helped distract me from some unfun health issues I’ve been dealing with. On Saturday evening, I finished my replay of Final Fantasy VII, my thoughts on which are intended for another entry. Sunday, I spent playing two indie games linked only by the fact that they’re relatively short indie games that are available for free on itch (but have paid versions with added features) that I discovered via browsing the Yuletide tagset. I really enjoyed both of them!
► The first game I picked up was The Dark Queen of Mortholme (here on itch.io), which I played Sunday morning before I went over to my mom’s place for lunch. It’s quite short, and very much meant to be played in a single sitting—my run took me 23 minutes—but it’s quite effective in what it’s doing and the story it tells. I can fully see why someone nominated this for Yuletide, because it’s very much the kind of indie game I think is fun to explore further via fic.
The basic premise is that you play as the Dark Queen of Mortholm, who very much has “final jrpg boss” vibes. A hero arrives, wanting to defeat her… and is instantly crushed by her mace. But it doesn’t end there—the hero arrives at her doorway again, as though they’d never died (to the Dark Queen’s bafflement) and tries again. And again. And again.
The gameplay loop is really satisfying—with each new round, the hero learns from their previous failures, and you as the Dark Queen have to resort to more and more of your abilities to defeat them as time goes on. In general, I felt like the game did a great job of having the game design feed into and support the narrative they’re telling. One detail I particularly like is how the entirety of the game takes place within the queen’s throne room. Having only a single location simplifies your work from a game design standpoint, particularly since this is such a narrowly focused game, but it also does a great job of underscoring the sense of stasis around the Dark Queen. The Hero is always growing and changing, exploring the world beyond, but the Dark Queen is stuck in that one place, her world just as empty as her emotional landscape. She’s unbearably powerful… and yet, not capable of stepping out into the world beyond that doorframe.
The narrative aspects of the loop is equally satisfying, and particularly the way the dynamic and bond between the hero and the Dark Queen shifts and changes as the game goes on—expressed both in the pre-battle dialogue between the two, as well as some lovely visual storytelling. Namely, the way the Dark Queen disposes of the Hero’s body at the end of each battle. The first time she bent down to press her hand against their body before burning it to ash (as opposed to standing uncaring next to it), I felt the change like a mallet. And then, towards the end, where she’s straight up cradling the body to her before burning it… oof.
I am considering picking up the Steam version of the game, which isn’t free, but is imo a very reasonable price, and comes with achievements and controller support. The latter of which is particularly appealing, as I wasn’t…. actually the best at the gameplay, lol, and I’m wondering if I’d do better with a controller in hand. Plus, having achievements would be a good way to track which endings I’ve gotten…
I also feel like the set-up for this game could make for a fun FF7 AU. Either Sephiroth/Cloud—Cloud is certainly determined enough to try to kill him again and again, though it would necessitate setting aside the importance of Cloud’s initial victory against Sephiroth when Cloud really was at his weakest in canon, which I have mixed feelings about doing—or Zack/Sephiroth, in that I could very much see Zack reaching out again and again to Sephiroth in a way that parallels the way the Hero keeps talking to the Dark Queen. Or maybe something with Zack and Genesis...
► After I got back home from lunch on Sunday, I started on A Date with Death, an otome visual novel where the love interest is the grim reaper. (Here on itch.io) Which I picked up vaguely expecting to drop within ten minutes of playing, and instead kept me glued to my computer from the start of the game until I got my first ending.
For this one, the base game is free—or, more accurately, pay-what-you-want, with a minimum of nothing. If you pay more than a certain amount, you get the expansion, which includes more customization options for the MC and, more importantly, more dialogue choices and an extra ending. There’s also a paid DLC called “Beyond the Bet”, which is essentially is a canon divergence AU spinning off from the second-to-last in-game day, adding extra days to the game, a lot more worldbuilding (my catnip), and four new endings. I… shelled out for all of that, because this game ended up hitting me hard in the id.
The main reason why I thought I wouldn’t like this game (despite loving otome visual novels) is because I generally don’t like blank slate MCs, and I saw how customizable the MC in this one is—down to the fact that they don’t even have a default name, my greatest nemesis as a fannish person. But they’re actually very vividly characterized, with a strong character voice. (Also, just as a note—as is my usual when I have a choice of genders, I chose a female MC, so I’ll be saying she/her from now on out.) She’s forward, quirky, fond of teasing, has a mind that races a mile a minute and an imagination to match, full of questions and curiosity, with a genuine capacity for warmth backing it all. No matter what dialogue option you choose, she always feels like the same person at her core.
Better yet, she has an equally vivid and clear dynamic with our babygirl grim reaper love interest—not the sort of thing you can find and replace just anyone into, and it’s that dynamic which truly won me over. The interplay between the two of them is just so fun—the romance ends up being rather fast-paced, since the game takes place over the course of a week, which is something I’m often rather critical of, but worked for me here because of just how well they clicked from the start. Their relationship does change and develop as the game goes on and they get to know each other better, but from the very start, the spark was there. When, during that soulbond-adjacent subplot, Casper says something about their souls being particularly compatible, I didn’t even blink, because it was so obviously true.
Also, it doesn’t hurt that Casper was basically designed in a lab to appeal to me. A vain, arrogant, secretly submissive pretty boy who is genuinely powerful but also easily flustered and embarrassed? Catnip, absolute catnip for me. If I hadn’t already been won over, that moment in the first day where he hangs up on the FMC over his embarrassment about his “incorrect typing” (he initially types his messages like Kanaya from Homestuck and the FMC calls him out on it, lol) would have done it for me.
My first ending was the “You Win” ending, which I would consider to be the best of the freely available endings. Also, that CG… Casper being pushed down onto the MC’s bed… yes <3 After that, I went for the mini-bad ending you can get on day 3, but I don’t feel like there’s much to say about it, and finally I rounded off my night with the marriage ending. Which, the route to get there was pretty fun, but the epilogue itself did little for me, as a person who is not particularly invested in the trappings of weddings and marriages. Though—while doing that route, I also decided to click on the soul baby joke option for the first time, which turned out to become a running joke of hers if you do that (to Casper’s dismay). But what I did not expect was for the FMC to bring up that joke again during the wedding, and ended up choking on surprised laughter. SUCH a good pay-off for that.
I have off this week, so the next day—yesterday—I treated myself to the expansion, mainly because I was curious about the Both Win ending. And I enjoyed it—probably my second favorite of the original batch of endings, after the You Win ending. Though I do have more questions now about how things play out in that ending post-canon after having started the Beyond the Bet DLC & learning more about the grim reaper society worldbuilding…
After that, I bit the bullet, and checked out the Full Bad Ending, which was a bit tedious to do, and honestly wasn’t particularly worth it for me. I do love a good otome bad end, but that one wasn’t particularly interesting to me, and the set-up for it didn’t fully work for me.
After that, I picked up the Beyond the Bet DLC, but was planning on saving it for today, and intended to wrap up my evening reading A Date with Death ZERO, a webcomic about Casper’s pre-canon backstory. But I rapidly realized that it seemed to be containing spoilers for the Beyond the Bet DLC, so I set it aside and… did my first playthrough of the DLC instead, lol.
I really enjoyed it! The fleshing out of the plot and worldbuilding was really fun and interesting for me. I loved seeing Casper and the FMC interact more in person, and the soulbond side-effects plot was so fun—I wish the in-game timeline wasn’t so constrained, because you could do so much with that in fic. The reveal about what, precisely, the soulsickness is also really worked for me! Though—we now know what happens when a reaper tilts too far towards the light, but what happens if they fall towards the taint instead…? (I haven’t finished the DLC yet, so maybe this does get answered. We’ll see!)
As of right now, I’ve only done one of the four endings for the DLC—the “Bloom” ending, which does, unfortunately, involve one of my least favorite tropes—characters losing their special powers. :( In this case, twofold—the FMC loses her special life aura-thing, and Casper becomes mortal. But setting my personal feelings about that trope aside, I do think it was solidly done, and I like how the lives they carved out for themselves afterwards featured their mutual love of flowers. Very sweet.
I think I’m probably going to go for the bad ending next, to get it out of the way, and then fingers crossed that at least one of the remaining good endings will nail it for me. I looked up a spoiler-free guide after getting “Bloom”, and the names of the remaining good endings do intrigue me—“Interwoven” and “Metamorphosis”.
I also installed the Adult Patch. The first scene had great femdom vibes and did some very fun things with the soulbond, plus had some excellent erotic handholding. I did check out the second scene, but saved beforehand with the intention of reloading because it didn’t feel natural to me that they would bang at the particular moment in time. In any case, I liked that scene a lot less—it felt more like standard smut to me (though the fun soulbond aspects remained), and, again, it just felt off for the two of them to be banging just right then. I liked the other (sfw) narrative option a lot more.
Listening: for music, Lydia the Bard’s debut album “The Woods”; podcast listening has been switching between Singing Bones and miscellaneous episodes of Oologies.
Playing: A Date With Death—specifically, the Beyond the Bet DLC.
Watching: More or less keeping up with my youtube subscriptions, but otherwise, nothing.
I had a rather gaming-heavy weekend—which helped distract me from some unfun health issues I’ve been dealing with. On Saturday evening, I finished my replay of Final Fantasy VII, my thoughts on which are intended for another entry. Sunday, I spent playing two indie games linked only by the fact that they’re relatively short indie games that are available for free on itch (but have paid versions with added features) that I discovered via browsing the Yuletide tagset. I really enjoyed both of them!
► The first game I picked up was The Dark Queen of Mortholme (here on itch.io), which I played Sunday morning before I went over to my mom’s place for lunch. It’s quite short, and very much meant to be played in a single sitting—my run took me 23 minutes—but it’s quite effective in what it’s doing and the story it tells. I can fully see why someone nominated this for Yuletide, because it’s very much the kind of indie game I think is fun to explore further via fic.
The basic premise is that you play as the Dark Queen of Mortholm, who very much has “final jrpg boss” vibes. A hero arrives, wanting to defeat her… and is instantly crushed by her mace. But it doesn’t end there—the hero arrives at her doorway again, as though they’d never died (to the Dark Queen’s bafflement) and tries again. And again. And again.
The gameplay loop is really satisfying—with each new round, the hero learns from their previous failures, and you as the Dark Queen have to resort to more and more of your abilities to defeat them as time goes on. In general, I felt like the game did a great job of having the game design feed into and support the narrative they’re telling. One detail I particularly like is how the entirety of the game takes place within the queen’s throne room. Having only a single location simplifies your work from a game design standpoint, particularly since this is such a narrowly focused game, but it also does a great job of underscoring the sense of stasis around the Dark Queen. The Hero is always growing and changing, exploring the world beyond, but the Dark Queen is stuck in that one place, her world just as empty as her emotional landscape. She’s unbearably powerful… and yet, not capable of stepping out into the world beyond that doorframe.
The narrative aspects of the loop is equally satisfying, and particularly the way the dynamic and bond between the hero and the Dark Queen shifts and changes as the game goes on—expressed both in the pre-battle dialogue between the two, as well as some lovely visual storytelling. Namely, the way the Dark Queen disposes of the Hero’s body at the end of each battle. The first time she bent down to press her hand against their body before burning it to ash (as opposed to standing uncaring next to it), I felt the change like a mallet. And then, towards the end, where she’s straight up cradling the body to her before burning it… oof.
I am considering picking up the Steam version of the game, which isn’t free, but is imo a very reasonable price, and comes with achievements and controller support. The latter of which is particularly appealing, as I wasn’t…. actually the best at the gameplay, lol, and I’m wondering if I’d do better with a controller in hand. Plus, having achievements would be a good way to track which endings I’ve gotten…
I also feel like the set-up for this game could make for a fun FF7 AU. Either Sephiroth/Cloud—Cloud is certainly determined enough to try to kill him again and again, though it would necessitate setting aside the importance of Cloud’s initial victory against Sephiroth when Cloud really was at his weakest in canon, which I have mixed feelings about doing—or Zack/Sephiroth, in that I could very much see Zack reaching out again and again to Sephiroth in a way that parallels the way the Hero keeps talking to the Dark Queen. Or maybe something with Zack and Genesis...
► After I got back home from lunch on Sunday, I started on A Date with Death, an otome visual novel where the love interest is the grim reaper. (Here on itch.io) Which I picked up vaguely expecting to drop within ten minutes of playing, and instead kept me glued to my computer from the start of the game until I got my first ending.
For this one, the base game is free—or, more accurately, pay-what-you-want, with a minimum of nothing. If you pay more than a certain amount, you get the expansion, which includes more customization options for the MC and, more importantly, more dialogue choices and an extra ending. There’s also a paid DLC called “Beyond the Bet”, which is essentially is a canon divergence AU spinning off from the second-to-last in-game day, adding extra days to the game, a lot more worldbuilding (my catnip), and four new endings. I… shelled out for all of that, because this game ended up hitting me hard in the id.
The main reason why I thought I wouldn’t like this game (despite loving otome visual novels) is because I generally don’t like blank slate MCs, and I saw how customizable the MC in this one is—down to the fact that they don’t even have a default name, my greatest nemesis as a fannish person. But they’re actually very vividly characterized, with a strong character voice. (Also, just as a note—as is my usual when I have a choice of genders, I chose a female MC, so I’ll be saying she/her from now on out.) She’s forward, quirky, fond of teasing, has a mind that races a mile a minute and an imagination to match, full of questions and curiosity, with a genuine capacity for warmth backing it all. No matter what dialogue option you choose, she always feels like the same person at her core.
Better yet, she has an equally vivid and clear dynamic with our babygirl grim reaper love interest—not the sort of thing you can find and replace just anyone into, and it’s that dynamic which truly won me over. The interplay between the two of them is just so fun—the romance ends up being rather fast-paced, since the game takes place over the course of a week, which is something I’m often rather critical of, but worked for me here because of just how well they clicked from the start. Their relationship does change and develop as the game goes on and they get to know each other better, but from the very start, the spark was there. When, during that soulbond-adjacent subplot, Casper says something about their souls being particularly compatible, I didn’t even blink, because it was so obviously true.
Also, it doesn’t hurt that Casper was basically designed in a lab to appeal to me. A vain, arrogant, secretly submissive pretty boy who is genuinely powerful but also easily flustered and embarrassed? Catnip, absolute catnip for me. If I hadn’t already been won over, that moment in the first day where he hangs up on the FMC over his embarrassment about his “incorrect typing” (he initially types his messages like Kanaya from Homestuck and the FMC calls him out on it, lol) would have done it for me.
My first ending was the “You Win” ending, which I would consider to be the best of the freely available endings. Also, that CG… Casper being pushed down onto the MC’s bed… yes <3 After that, I went for the mini-bad ending you can get on day 3, but I don’t feel like there’s much to say about it, and finally I rounded off my night with the marriage ending. Which, the route to get there was pretty fun, but the epilogue itself did little for me, as a person who is not particularly invested in the trappings of weddings and marriages. Though—while doing that route, I also decided to click on the soul baby joke option for the first time, which turned out to become a running joke of hers if you do that (to Casper’s dismay). But what I did not expect was for the FMC to bring up that joke again during the wedding, and ended up choking on surprised laughter. SUCH a good pay-off for that.
I have off this week, so the next day—yesterday—I treated myself to the expansion, mainly because I was curious about the Both Win ending. And I enjoyed it—probably my second favorite of the original batch of endings, after the You Win ending. Though I do have more questions now about how things play out in that ending post-canon after having started the Beyond the Bet DLC & learning more about the grim reaper society worldbuilding…
After that, I bit the bullet, and checked out the Full Bad Ending, which was a bit tedious to do, and honestly wasn’t particularly worth it for me. I do love a good otome bad end, but that one wasn’t particularly interesting to me, and the set-up for it didn’t fully work for me.
After that, I picked up the Beyond the Bet DLC, but was planning on saving it for today, and intended to wrap up my evening reading A Date with Death ZERO, a webcomic about Casper’s pre-canon backstory. But I rapidly realized that it seemed to be containing spoilers for the Beyond the Bet DLC, so I set it aside and… did my first playthrough of the DLC instead, lol.
I really enjoyed it! The fleshing out of the plot and worldbuilding was really fun and interesting for me. I loved seeing Casper and the FMC interact more in person, and the soulbond side-effects plot was so fun—I wish the in-game timeline wasn’t so constrained, because you could do so much with that in fic. The reveal about what, precisely, the soulsickness is also really worked for me! Though—we now know what happens when a reaper tilts too far towards the light, but what happens if they fall towards the taint instead…? (I haven’t finished the DLC yet, so maybe this does get answered. We’ll see!)
As of right now, I’ve only done one of the four endings for the DLC—the “Bloom” ending, which does, unfortunately, involve one of my least favorite tropes—characters losing their special powers. :( In this case, twofold—the FMC loses her special life aura-thing, and Casper becomes mortal. But setting my personal feelings about that trope aside, I do think it was solidly done, and I like how the lives they carved out for themselves afterwards featured their mutual love of flowers. Very sweet.
I think I’m probably going to go for the bad ending next, to get it out of the way, and then fingers crossed that at least one of the remaining good endings will nail it for me. I looked up a spoiler-free guide after getting “Bloom”, and the names of the remaining good endings do intrigue me—“Interwoven” and “Metamorphosis”.
I also installed the Adult Patch. The first scene had great femdom vibes and did some very fun things with the soulbond, plus had some excellent erotic handholding. I did check out the second scene, but saved beforehand with the intention of reloading because it didn’t feel natural to me that they would bang at the particular moment in time. In any case, I liked that scene a lot less—it felt more like standard smut to me (though the fun soulbond aspects remained), and, again, it just felt off for the two of them to be banging just right then. I liked the other (sfw) narrative option a lot more.
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