Refugium (Fugere)

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It has two segments. The first is a slow, timed text description of being at a party and leaving. It focuses on visceral details rather than overall storyline.

The second is a series of elevator stops, each presenting the reader with an image (which sometimes requires you to zoom out; I think enabling scrollbars on itch would fix that). You can choose to enter that level, or not.

I replayed twice, but no more, as the timed text was really very slow and all had to be repeated each time. But the atmosphere was effective and moody, which was nice.

You flee a party, where you know few attendants and are not around the ones you do, unnoticed. In the elevator to escape, something strange happens. The stops between the floor of the party and the building’s door are… not what’d you expect.
Still, in a stranger even turn of even, you don’t seem to care… you even rejoice in these unusual refuges (haha title). If you chose to stay on the elevator, things get even weirder, as you seem to be talking to someone (who? the narrator? yourself? someone else? I think they had a physical presence?). It is even unclear whether we even left the elevator at all.
I got to wondering: did something happen to us at the party that made us experience these peculiar events (are we high?)? Are those rooms metaphors/twisted imageries for real life (a walk in the park, going to bed next to someone, being alone…)? Are we maybe dead and living through our personal hell?

With the timed fade-in of the text and the many non-choice screens, it would have been nice if we could to back to the last choice in the Restart, rather than having to go through all of this again…