Dark Communion

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone who’s seen the borderline-compulsive way that I can only either review zero or all games in an IF competition to learn that I can get oddly obsessive in how I approach other games too. Take immersive sims: the best ones, like Thief or Dishonored, offer a broad panoply of tools for engaging with multiple deeply-implemented systems, and are at their best when you improvise, roll with the punches, and enjoy the complex way all these interactions lead to emergent gameplay. Me? I prefer to hoard every consumable I come across instead of using a single one, and ignore just about every weapon or supernatural ability in favor of just hitting each baddy in the back of the head with a sock full of quarters. Since of these games aren’t designed assuming that you’re only using 5% of your options, this can often be quite hard, so I often wind up abusing the quickload key, running through particularly tricky setups again and again: maybe if I throw a crate over there to create a distraction, I can nab guard number one when he comes to investigate and create a hole in the patrol pattern to get the others? No, OK, so what about climbing the wall over here and getting the drop on guard number two when he briefly pokes his head into the alley? No, so maybe next time…

Playing Dark Communion is kind of like that – it’s a supercompressed horror scenario that sees you and another girl investigating an abandoned church, at which point things quickly go wrong and you’ve got to face a gauntlet of lightning-fast decision points to try to make it out. It’s clearly designed for multiple replays, inasmuch as it tracks your successes as well as your failures (plus some bonus achievements) so you can see how much of the possibility-space you’ve plumbed, and for me it evoked that same rhythm of repeating a familiar gameplay loop but intentionally introducing small deviations – maybe wait an extra beat before investigating the choir loft this time? – to see if I could get an optimal result.

Where the metaphor breaks down is that the choices you have aren’t purely about guiding your character through the scenario. In fact the very first one you’re offered asks you define your relationship with Lianna, the other girl: is she your sister, someone you’ve got a crush on, or just some acquaintance you wound up going on an adventure with? At first I was bit nonplussed by this choice, because of course the emotional connection you’ve got with Jane rando will be much weaker than the one you’ve got with a sibling, which feels like it should have a significant impact on the story. And it does! These different choices of relationship significantly alter Lianna’s motivations, and the options available to you at particularly high-stress moments. It’s a neat bit of design because the fundamentals of the narrative remain the same, which maintains the loop-y, accretive nature of the gameplay, but they get remixed and stay fresh by virtue of their new configuration.

As for what those elements are – well, they are fairly generic horror beats, though they’re worked through efficiently and effectively. The church is properly spooky, with the descriptions sprinkling in a light theme of alienation:

"A space that was made to hold throngs of people, voices joined in song, speaking and kneeling in unison, eating ceremonial bread and drinking ceremonial wine. Communion. Now it’s dead and silent, and you, who never even believed in God—you’re the last person who belongs."

The terrible thing, once it gets on-screen, doesn’t get much by way of explanation, which is usually something I dislike in horror – you can definitely take the lore-dumping too far, but one gribbly monster is much the same as another, so give me the tortured backstory and scraps of worldbuilding dripping with implications – but it works fine here since it means the replays aren’t burdened by the need to run around collecting information that the player already knows. The scope of the variation in the potential scenarios means that the thematic connection between the horror and the interpersonal stuff going on with you and Lianna is sometimes tighter and sometimes looser – because of this, I felt like the playthrough where Lianna was a potential romantic partner felt more canonical than the others – but the tropes being invoked are all sturdy ones for the supernatural horror genre, so there’s never too much of a mismatch.

It all adds up to a compelling experience that maybe doesn’t have that much power in any given playthrough, but winds up more than the sum of its parts as you experiment with all the different things you can build with this Girls in Spooky Church Lego set. Even if you’re not moved to exhaust every single possibility – I confess I didn’t get two of the bonus achievements – and the set of tools you’ve got to confront the monster isn’t that broad in any iteration, there’s still more than enough here to make for a satisfying half-hour of playing and replaying. It’s just a shame there are no smoke bombs to collect and never use…

A high-stakes, short horror game set in an abandoned church.

The concept requires replays, but it’s written well enough that that’s no chore. I wouldn’t have minded a few more endings, or delving deeper into the religious horror elements (i.e., adding more elements of guilt or culpability).

Dark Communion’s most critical choice comes not at the end of the game, but at the beginning. You the player must define how the PC (a teenage girl) is related to Laina (another teenage girl), who is leading you into an abandoned church. Is she a younger sister you’re protecting/competing with, some girl that you kind of know from school but don’t really like, or a crush you’re trying to impress? In addition to affecting flavor text along the way, this choice affects how motivated you’ll be (and what options you’ll have) to help Laina when things unsurprisingly take a turn for the supernatural.

This game encourages exploration on multiple levels. There is the literal exploration of the “big, old, gothic church,” with its “racks of half-melted candles,” its rows of empty pews, “most of which have been nudged out of their neat rows, as if shuffled by the fingers of a giant hand,” and its fractured light, illuminating the faces of judgemental saints. I loved these brief yet evocative descriptions. Exploration in this sense creates a sense of mounting unease. In a particularly chilling sequence, (Spoiler - click to show)you can choose to ignore Laina’s calls from the balcony, and continue exploring on your own instead. A few turns later, you notice that “Laina is quiet now.”

You can also explore the game by replaying it. There’s an achievements screen that incentivizes you to explore different choices at the beginning, and throughout the game. Indeed, there is a lot more branching and variation than you might expect in such a short game.

What was most rewarding for me was shining my flashlight into the quiet alcoves of the church, and through that, exploring the PC’s relationship with her spirituality and her relationship with her sister/acquaintance/crush. I actually found this to be even more compelling than the final confrontation. It reminded me of one of the author’s EctoComp games, Loneliest House. In that game, the act of leisurely looking at the details of the house–and speculating about past and future human presence–was so captivating. It’s a game where the real story takes shape in the negative space–similar to what Tricks of light in the forest does, but on a much smaller scale. It made me wonder what Dark Communion would be like if it had developed this aspect a bit further.

All in all, great writing, tight story (even some humor!), and very replayable. I highly recommend this game!

This is a brief but replayable Twine game. To me, it felt like a speed-IF that was polished up and made nice, and from the About page that's exactly what it was.

The styling is really nice, with a dark textured background and legible light grey serif text.

The writing has a thoughtfulness to it I appreciated. You play as a non-believer exploring an abandoned church, and a lot of people would just put random thoughts in about how the person hates religion and so on, but this game provides a more balanced approach; the narrator is an interested outsider, looking in but aware they will not ever take part.

Storywise, the game is brief, so much so that its narrative arc felt underdeveloped, which is the main drawback I found; I liked the story, there just wasn't much of it. You are investigating the church with a loved one, and things go wrong in a bad way.

The interactivity has quite a bit of depth, with many endings and achievements despite its short length. I wondered how they could fit so many results into such a short game, until I realized that the game underneath is tracking more variables than you'd think.

Overall, an impressive effort, but one I'd have liked more of.

Moody abandoned church? check! Two kids with not enough fear to know better? check! Spooky shenanigans? check, check, check!

The game plays like one of those horror movie, where dumb kids do something they shouldn't, stumble on a weird thing that definitely means them harm, and try they best to escape - hopefully in one piece...

The writing is quite moody and creepy, and with the quick page, it gives little space to breathe (you have to act now or else...). The reluctance of your PC towards your sister/more-than-friend/acquaintance's wish to explore without care is understandable, from the uneasy descriptions of the abandoned church (and all the horror warnings of not breaking off ranks). Endings can come quite fast, depending on the choices, with some leaving you with a sense of dread for what happened.

As is it quite easy to pick the "wrong" choice, and reach a bad end, the game gives you the opportunity to "rewind" to the last choice made, and try something else. While there are many ways to fail the game, it is also a short one - so getting back on track doesn't take too long.

Another interesting bit of this game, was how the text/ending was affected from the first choice: what relationship you have with the other girl. Different tactics are required for different relationships...

Anyway, going back to hunt the last of the achievements~