Tailypo

Tailypo is an old folk tale told around campfires, about a person driven to excesses by hunger and the consequences of their actions.

This game is the quintessential Sub-Q game, with an emphasis on styling, formatting, dense & high quality writing, and short playthrough. There are also sounds.

For me, the text swung back and forth between the frightening and the silly. This is, however, present in the original tale. The writing here was most compelling when describing the hopelessness of the protagonist, and when describing the dogs.

It's winter, and he's run out of food. He's hungry, he's cold, and if he doesn't go hunting, he'll freeze soon. But something wanders into his house. If he doesn't eat it, he will starve.

[This game contains sound effects.]

Tailypo belongs solidly in the desperation-horror genre: the horror that comes from doing something loathsome, even though it is a choice between that and dying. Groover makes judicious use of timed effects in Twine and repetition, building tension as creak, creak did.

Like Taghairm, Tailypo derives its premise from a creature from Appalachian folklore. While it might be easily repurposed as a story for campfires, or otherwise sanitised, I think Groover's take on this creature captures some of the desperation and terror - a terror from knowing that you are the only human in a mile's radius, and that no matter what, you have to do something - that probably inspired the original folk tale.

A short-ish Twine, published on Sub-Q, well worth playing.