To Ashes You Shall Return

In this Choicescript game (which I played for free by watching ads), you play as Vivien, a recently-out queer woman who has fallen in love with a witch.

And, unfortunately, died.

Fortunately, your witchfriend has a solution for that. But it causes a lot of problems.

This game feels like an inentional metaphor for loss of both people and relationships, and for slow grief.

Many of the choices are binary, but there are some more involved options and even a set of riddles which I did not quite solve on my first playthrough.

There are some endings that require clicking the same screen 50 times, but I found a more normal one. I thought that the writing had personality and I was engaged with the story. At times I felt lost due to the non-linear narration.

Full Disclosure: I am a credited beta tester for this game.

To Ashes You Shall Return breaks many 'rules' of making a choicescript game. You play as a fixed character with a fixed RO, in a F/F relationship. There are no stats, save one which you can't control and is largely a progress meter of sorts. The overall story, while having some choices, is largely linear and converges on a single ending.

Well, it's not in itself, a bad thing. Honestly, I'm a little tired of the unwritten rules of writing 'good' choicescript games. The game reminds me a lot of a Yuri VN, minus the lack of visuals.

Story and writing are the game's strong points. You die and are raised as an undead creature with your wife's magic. Much of the game then revolves around spending time with your wife while feeling your undead body slowly withering away. The game gives you a strong sense that you are on borrowed time, and slowly losing experiences and feelings which matter to you. This part was surprisingly good, and I liked it.

That said, the game is largely linear with a single ending, and while there are choices, I did feel like I was reading a pseudo-kinetic visual novel rather than playing a choicegame. None of the choices felt weighty even on a blind playthrough, and behind the curtain, none of them were. You could enjoy it once for the story, but you probably won't get much out of additional playthroughs.

Anyway, it's free to win on Hosted Games, so might as well give it a shot if you want a melancholy and light read.