THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BLOOD MOON

This is a Ren'py game entered in the single choice jam with some other minimal constraints.

It's go-go-go from the start, with flowery and/or extreme language choices, intense scenario descriptions, harsh music, etc. It tells a lurid tale of someone kidnapped by a jealous rival and tortured over and over.

I only played through one ending, so there were likely chunks of story I missed, but what was there was very descriptive. Aside from the game itself, I'm surprised that ren'py has over 1700 files to unzip when you download a python game.

Overall, a good exercise in writing stressful or tense situations, but the one-note harshness and intensity could have been balanced by contrasting scenes.

You were kidnapped by a stranger, for a reason unknown to you. And you are currently strapped to a chair, while the stranger essentially tortures you. You are given a choice, to hopefully gain some information about who that stranger is or why you’ve been brought here.

This visual novel is quite short, and lets you skip the part you’ve already read during replay, so it is quite easy to wrap it up in about 10min or so. And while there are hints to how you got there, I don’t believe there are enough pieces to solve the puzzle altogether. The writing focuses more on visceral description of the violence, making it quite gratuitous at the end.

I was honestly left quite repulsed (so the writing did what it aimed to do!)