this was the first game i ever released!

it was made for the 13th GM48 jam, a 48 hour long gamemaker-focused gamejam.

the theme of the jam was "death is useful."

trying to think of interesting ways to tackle that theme, i had the idea of using the player's blood in some way to reveal the environment around them.

maybe it could glow in the dark or something...

maybe forcing you to commit suicide over and over again to progress...

i think "the unfinished swan" had just come out a few years prior, and that seemed like an interesting game where you had to navigate a world blindly, so this took some inspiration from that.

trying to think of what scenario could work with this idea, i thought: what if the player is dead, and is stuck in purgatory.

to get out, they have to kill themselves over and over again, a horrible and torturous thing to do.

but this would let them clear their sins, and eventually ascend to heaven.

now i'm no relegious woman, but this thought interesting to me at the time.

i think i was also in quite depressed around the time, so suicide was... an interesting topic to me.

looking back, the game's story is quite cringe, but mechanically it was a cool idea.

around 20 people entered this jam. we'd rate each others' games, and somehow i won!

whoa! i had not expected that!

in hindsight, i don't think winning was very good for me.

it lead me to believe i had more skill than i did, and i wasn't just randomly lucky.

so i wasted many future years trying to turn this idea into a large metroidvania style game.

i tried to make my first game be my dream game.

it did not pan out lol

there were 3 main attempts at this. you can read more about them here if you wish:

- pixel purgatory plus (gms1)

- pixel purgatory plus (gms2)

- acedia

actually you can't, cause i haven't written these pages yet SIKE! got fucked lmao