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chiaroscuro

by Kim Berkley

Fantasy
2022

Web Site

(based on 3 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

chiaroscuro is a low-fantasy interactive fiction novella about art and inspiration, set in the heart of modern-day Rome.

Step into the shoes of Perce, a young artist in search of her muse who instead finds herself in the unusual company of two strange creatures, one dark and one light.

- Immerse yourself in the art and culture of the Eternal City
- Make friends with the creatures (or don't)
- Seek your muse and fill your empty canvas
- Discover up to five distinct endings

chiaroscuro is a short narrative experience meant to be played in a single sitting, and is 100% free to play.


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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
An artist seeks for balance between light and dark, January 22, 2022
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 1 hour

This is an ink game in six chapters, each around 4 or 5 choices long. Each choice gives a page full of material.

You are an artist filled with self-doubt. You won a competition, earning you prize money and using that to get to Rome, but once there you have no inspiration for your painting.

Every where you go, two creatures follow you: one light, one dark. You have to choose who to feed.

There are 5 endings. One ending is the 'true path', containing almost 50% more material than the others; one is the worst path, containing much less content than any other. I reached all endings except for 'balanced'.

I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of art in Rome, and looked up a bunch of them (I especially enjoyed the garden of monsters). The self-doubt in a creative artist was familiar to me as a writer.

At times I found the long pages and rich text a bit wearying, so I took a couple of weeks to play the game, doing a couple of screens at a time. Once I played through once, though, playing again only took 30 minutes or so.

Lovely musings on art. For anyone seeking the 'best' ending, what worked for me was (Spoiler - click to show)feeding the dark creature on odd chapters and light creature on even chapters

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chiaroscuro on IFDB

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This is version 1 of this page, edited by storytellerkim on 13 January 2022 at 1:06pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page