Radiance Inviolate

This is an extensive story about a vampire who was both blessed and cursed with vampirism. Of course being a vampire is a bad thing, but you've been blessed to be a vampire with some control and restraint over your feeding.

Unfortunately for you, you've been trapped by an ingenious device and have to await the coming of the sun (which is the radiance inviolate mentioned in the story name).

While you're waiting, you have numerous flashbacks. You see how you originally died, how you came to be a vampire, and some other unholy creatures you've met.

While most of the game was linear, there were a few interesting choices and (I think) multiple endings. I ended up with a somewhat romantic ending.

I liked the writing in general. One effective piece of text I liked early on:

"Camille—his maker—had left him a particular imprint; a drive to consume those already craving relief from suffering.

Acts of mercy that fueled him, yes, but also brought him to face that force of nature which he himself refused and resented.

Death."

But sometimes the text felt more confusing than elaborate. Another early example is:
"At his most embraced, he worked as an affineur, attuning his supernatural sense of smell to divine the status of ripening cheese in exchange for safety from sunlight in the cellar, and regular access to blood."

I wasn't quite sure what 'most embraced' meant, and combined with the unfamiliar word 'affineur' and the use of the slightly more elaborate 'attuning' and 'divine', it took me a while to stop and reread this. Similarly with 'inviolate'; I looked it up and it means 'unharmed', so radiance inviolate is 'light that hasn't been hurt'. I tried to think of how that fit in the story; maybe the idea is that other kinds of light have been sullied or poisoned by the presence of evil things? Actually, while writing this I looked it up again and 'pure' is a synonym so I guess 'pure light' makes sense.

This doesn't mean this writing style is bad, it means that I sometimes had to stop and go back and try to understand what is going on. Chandler Groover, I know, deliberately writes his games to be dense and non-trivial to parse to encourage people to slow down and look more carefully at his game text.

Overall, by far the best part in this story for me is the dynamic between characters. It's clear the author is talented and experienced at writing interesting conversations and relationships, and that's something I look forward to in future games from this author.