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Shallow

by Austin Eady

(based on 1 rating)
1 review2 members have played this game.

About the Story

In this empty work, your character could be anyone in a bottomless void with shifting voices and swirling colours. There's three locations of static prose and nothing else.

Ratings and Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Not even shallow, just a featureless plane, August 31, 2025

There is no point in even having an IFDB entry for this item, which the evidence suggests is the product of someone spending about an hour with Inform 7 before tiring of the effort of learning the basics and moving on to another hobby.

David Welbourn's "walkthrough" (a term which seems to have extra applicability in this case) is complete; I decompiled the Z-code to make sure that nothing else was hiding. The sum total of author-supplied text is as follows:


Room 1:

A Bottomless Void

Deep inside the void, you hear a quiet sobbing that surges from a source that you can not locate. The wailing sounds are weak and broken, almost feminine, but not quite. It seems nearly familiar, yet distant, like the relationship of the sun and the moon. Your sight betrays you, for even though you stare into this absurd reality, your concentration mirrors this realm, never fixating, and always in motion. The weeping rises in intensity, the cries assault your ears more often, and they increase in volume. A variety of strange, swirling and altering colours converge around you, and then suddenly retract, and converge once more. A ceaseless kaleidoscope of glowing lights and shifting imagery. The lament of the woman induces an abrupt pain above your right eye, causing you to close your eyes and avoid the tornado of colour, but the scene remains there, unaffected by humanity's natural hiding mechanism. You shake your head, trying to negate the invasive gaze of this indifferent scenery, but its hold never falters, and restrains you. The wails suddenly morph and alter into a distorted, masculine voice, and a strange gargling sound emits from deep within its throat. The throaty sound drones on, staying at a rather low note, but the sound does not alter, or form into a comprehensible fragment of speech. It seems as if it is waiting for you to make the first move, but you have no idea where the sound's host is, as you can only hear the low, gargling noise. Though you can't find the source of the deep, throaty sound, you decide that it would be best to look around this strange, colourful and eriee realm.


Room 2 (east of room 1):

Whirlwind of Dancing Shapes

You look to your right, and notice a difference from the lights that were infront of you. Over here, they seem brighter, and their glow pulsates, shining incredibly bright, then suddenly dying down, and reapeating the process over and over. Shapes also appear from the swaying colours. Though, they are not such shapes like squares or triangles. These shapes are heavily deformed, mutated and absurd. Like a smudged, pastel painting, the forms and colours are slow and sluggish, and they excrete a presence of depression and despair. You can only go back, as there is nothing else of interest here.


Room 3 (west of room 1):

A Dark Presence

To your left is a haven for a multitude of glowing lights that are shining incredibly dully. At first they were swaying and rushing around the space of this strange place, but the introduction of these dull, nearly lifeless lights has hindered the almost beautiful display of dazzling lights and colours. The last remaining glowing orbs finally followed suit of the now dead lights, and slowed to a crawl, finally burning out. Out of nowhere, a burst of black streams forward to where the dead orbs make rest, and coats the assorted colours and orbs, absorbing them, and one could no longer tell if they had even existed. Bubble like shapes appear on the areas where colour remains, and more of the black liquid shoots foward, staining the once majestic display of light and absurd colour. The whole left side of this alternate realm is now a giant, swirling blanket of black. The once, almost appealing, colouring of this world had been completely dissolved on the left side. The monstrous, dark and haunting sheet of black had suddenly stopped spinning and twirling, and now lies motionless. With its cease of motion, it almost seems inviting, as if it wants company to venture forth and explore its depths. You can go closer to the black ocean that blankets the entire left side of this strange realm, or you can go back and search for that voice.


Unless you get a particular joy out of typing direction abbreviations into a command prompt, you have now been spared any need to interact with this thing, which is not a game and does not even qualify for the word "work." (If you prefer, you can make a game out of looking for the typo that I corrected.)

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Game Details

Shallow on IFDB

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New walkthroughs for October 2022 by David Welbourn
On Sunday, October 30, 2022, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works...

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