Player Comments on G-H-O-S-T

So, the first thing I'll say about this is probably the most important: I FELT something. Well done on putting in several emotions and giving us the option for catharsis at the end.

On to the review....

At first this story felt like a personal attack, since I hung out with the emos/goths in high school (lol yep). How dare you imply goths are automatically psychopaths! But then I began to see that Threnody wasn't indifferent to the murder I thought she committed, but instead she was just emotionally broken, and afraid to tell the truth. Then when I found out about Red, it was clear at that point there's no way it could have been an emotionless murder. Jealousy was likely the cause. Of course, by the end we got the best possible cause of death: a total accident, caused by someone who desperately wanted to try to save the relationship.

What's cool about it is that there was that ambiguity until Alex pieced together the memories. And more, there is a dovetail about TRUTH in this: what really happened (in the branch I took, Alex told Threnody to tell the truth), and then in Alex's identity, who they really are. Threnody helped with that in that final scene, and then Alex pushed HER to tell the truth about how Alex died. It was a nice little dovetail, I guess.

I enjoyed the ghost mechanics as well. They were a nice world-building step. Also the lore, with Sam, was interesting. There was enough explained so you knew what was going on, but also a great deal was left to the reader's imagination, which in my opinion is a plus for this story. Another solid world-building bit was the daily life of the campus, where Alex was connected, but only a small part of a greater wheel. That helped the world feel lived in.

Anyway, I feel like Threnody's guilt, combined with Alex's own guilt at cheating on her, was the lynch pin of the story. Both of these characters were sorry for what they did (although to be fair, the real villain here is Alex. Threnody's guilt was unjust). Now, some might say the ending was bittersweet, but I see it as a happy ending (or at least the one I got). It's not every day you get certainty about the afterlife, as well as catharsis for the conflict you had with people in life. Alex may have been killed at 18, but they still got to tell Threnody they loved her, and Threnody got to hear that Alex did not blame her for accidentally killing them.

Best of all was the final reunion at the end. Threnody never forgot Alex, and in the end, they got to be together again. To me, that's an unambiguous happy ending.


Overall, this had just enough of a haunting vibe to make it a fun Halloween story, and just enough romance to make it a good Valentine's Day story. Decent world building, good conflict, and best of all, guilt, misunderstanding, and catharsis.

Very well done.

A first this story felt like a personal attack, since I hung out with the emos/goths in high school (lol yep). How dare you imply goths are automatically sociopaths! But then I began to see that Threnody wasn't indifferent to the murder I thought she committed, but instead she was just emotionally broken. Then when I found out about Red, it was clear at that point there's no way it could have been an emotionless murder. Jealousy was likely the cause. Of course, by the end we got the best possible cause of death: a total accident, caused by someone who desperately wanted to try to save the relationship.

What's cool is that there was that ambiguity until Alex pieced together the memories.

So

A Cozy-Crime Ghost-Love Story

My playtime for this game was 46 minutes and I enjoyed every minute of it. You play a recently deceased college student named Alex while they investigate their own death, which is an intriguing premise.

For a large part the game gives you an open world that you can explore.
In each location you have the option to observe, which gives you a quick taste of the atmosphere of the place, or remember which often reveals some important life events. This is mixed up with choices in which you decide how past events played out, and also additional events and memories that are triggered under certain conditions. Eventually there is an intense showdown where you get to use what can you learned.

The setup of the game is very neat. The exploration phase with its clear basic structure and predictable choices is easily navigable. Also the intial night in which we are slowly eased into this kind of gameplay worked very well---basically a tutorial that never felt like a tutorial. More importantly this sort of gameplay, where the player is free to explore, sparks curiosity, which works well with the murder mystery theme.

The implentation of the open world likely required a good bit of scripting and mostly this works smoothly. I noticed only one minor glitch in the matrix when I went to the bus stop a second time which resulted in one event being triggered twice.

Regarding the writing: the pages are extremely short and this may be the reason why this game is rated lowly by some---at first glance it can be confused with some sloppy and pointless games on this site, but this is not one of them. The writing is very concise and efficient and for me that worked perfectly. This opinion may be slightly biased: I have spent 30+ years on university campusses, and hence I don't need a long description of what a university library looks like, but those who lack university experience might be struggling to fill in the gaps.

The characters are great, perhaps with the exception of Alex, the protagonist who is mostly a blank slate. He seems a very generic college student, even the police have a bit more personality than they. I would have loved to have a way in which Alex is special, if we knew a little secret about them of if they had one extraorinary skill or life experience (okay they draw, but then who doesn't).

The prose is toned down and matter of factly and there aren't any particular sparkly sentences that stood out for me. Nevertheless you can tell that Owl is a good writer from the way owl handle the dialogue. The dialogue is flawlessly done, with each character talking in their own distinct voice. This massively benefits the romance aspects of this game which are absolutely lovely, and also efficiently establishes the characters.

Of the two cops one uses Alex's chosen pronouns, while the other ignores them (the pronouns not Alex). As an author this is a genius move, not only because it helps flesh out the characters, but also immediately signals who of the two is speaking (I will totally steal this!)

The game has a very clear three-act structure, with spatially separated acts (great!). The pacing is a bit unusual: The second act opens up the action to a wider geographical area which also slows the story like which is fairly standard, but there is no real climax after the midpoint, so act two becomes essentially a long valley until we build to the eventual showdown. This is a riskay choice that benefits cozy exploration but comes with the risk of feeling slow, for me it worked though. I think it might have worked even better if the the action had stayed confined to the dorm building. There was certainly a ticking clock, with halloween approaching but I didn't feel a particular urgency, so yes, we are firmly in cozy-time territory; you can tell it was never meant to be a thriller.

In terms of content there is a nice love story with some cool scenes (Ouija Board, yay!). The plot is fairly basic but then this is a short game and it can only fit so much, so that's fine.

It is worth noticing that the game quite extensively touches on suicide, and even if it might turn out that this isn't what has happened, perhaps a content warning in the description would have been warranted.

The showdown is nice and did feel intense, though I hoped we would see more of the police again. That they didn't show may have been partly due to my choices but I could not bring myself to push a certain character in a certain direction.

In summary this is a good game that can be mistaken for a bad game. If you like mystery or ghost stories or cozy crime this is a must-play.
It is certainly a game that I will remember for a good while, and I am very tempted to try making something in this style myself. This is not a thriller, it is not dark and gritty, and is certainly not a grand epic, but it is a damn good ghost story.

P.S.: A song is mentioned that bookends the game (nice), but unfortunately I was not familiar with the song. However, instead Nightwish's Ghost Love Score played in my head, which I hope is an adequate replacement. (The game did feel more like "Ghost Love Score" than "Black Number One")

I truly have no words for this. And if I am correct, words cannot be used to explain this story. You simply must read, and feel it.
This is definitely one of my favorites, at least in the top 3, of stories on this site.

I thought this was a cute story. You play as the ghost of a college student trying to solve the mystery of their own demise. The conflict comes with the fact that there's major gaps in your memory about what happened, and you must follow your ex-girlfriend Threnody and some members from the local law enforcement unit through your college campus to discover the truth.

Each page is very succinct and easy to digest, if not bearing some dull writing at times in its brevity. Still, the writing itself wasn't totally boring enough to get me to click out of the game. The author does a phenomenal job of capturing the essence of the fall semester at university, especially around Halloween. Costumes, fall-aligned music, goth chicks, walking around campus - it has me feeling nostalgic for my own college experience even though I just graduated. The dialogue is believable and fun too. The biggest strength of this story is the way it navigates the dynamics and relationships between the characters, and the puzzle of solving your own death is fun.

The depiction of the characters can be a little one-dimensional. Threnody is a very stereotypical goth girl. Interesting name to choose, pairs well with the whole "lamenting over a dead person" thing and her aesthetic. At times though she feels like a caricature of her vibe, which makes her writing fall flat occasionally. I liked the angel that helps prod Alex in different directions. Alex themself is relatable too, and I think they're the first nonbinary character I've read about on the site. Maybe I'm biased because I'm nonbinary myself, but the representation felt kind of nice.

I have some gripes with the branching, too. There were a lot of redundant choices, false options, and unnecessary clicking in general. I feel like a lot of the "observe" and "remember" pages could've just been condensed into one page unless one of those two led to more choices that had a direct impact on the story. Most of the endings were decent though.

Overall I would give this a 5/8. I really did enjoy this story and I would recommend reading it as it's short and sweet, but as always there are ways to improve.

This is sweet and nice, I like it a lot. I was feeling kind of a weird nostalgia for campus around October, today, actually, and then randomly stumbled onto this story.

Amazing. Sure, it's a little linear but sometimes the choices you can make in a story are more meaningful then their impact. I found the choice at the oujia board between 'I love you' and 'I forgive you' excruciating.

Flowed really well, most of the pages were in easy to consume chunks rather than long blocks of text that can sometimes be a little off-putting. Maybe the only criticism I have is that Thernody's personality can be expanded upon a little beyond her goth aesthetics? Other then that, I thought it was a wonderful story about death.

I liked it! I really liked the beginning where I was just as confused as Alex on what was going on but in a good way since it really showed their confusion. I also liked going from place to place, feeling like a detective solving the case. My biggest complaint is that it was very linear and that none of the decisions were really that important until close to the end.

You picked an interesting prompt and I think you used it well. Overall, I liked the game, though I feel it could have been better with just a little more fleshing out.

I like that the first two links are “darkness” and then “light”, though I think that expanding those first two pages with more details would definitely serve to engage the reader more as the story begins. Maybe it’s a personal thing, but I feel like immediately having to click a link makes it harder to immerse myself into the story.

I like the beeps page as well. Not entirely sure why.

The entire story is full of some awkwardly-phrased sentences and a few odd sentence fragments. It could use a proofreader.

What the fuck kind of name is Threnody- quirky, I like it.

Ah, there’s a lot of talk in this story about inclusion and positive LGBTQ+ vibes. Consider your audience, Morgan. With End as the judge, you know at the very least that won’t be getting you any brownie points.

The choices were also rather redundant, which got annoying after a while.

I still enjoyed the game as a whole, though. Nice job.

I was expecting worse, especially after Endmaster rated this a 3. Honestly It was very fun and enjoyable and deserves much higher 5/8--goodjob

I liked the idea of playing as a ghost in the afterlife. The mechanics of how you interacted with your environment fit really well with the premise of the story, as someone who is not really able to affect things anymore. I also loved the challenge of having to recall details from earlier in the story in order to progress later on without having been warned beforehand- I like challenge elements in otherwise narrative-based stories, and it was challenging without being frustratingly difficult. On the other hand, the writing on some of the pages was a bit sparse, like just bare bones descriptions that could have used filling out. There were also some meaningless or false choices that felt pointless. Finally, some of the unsatisfying endings felt unnecessary, like it would have been better if we had fewer endings to choose from.