External Links


Play Online (Post-Competition Version - Recommended)
The post-competition release contains new content; an updated walkthrough is available for download on the same page.
Play Online (IFComp Version)
The original competition release.
Play this game in your Web browser.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

DEVOTIONALIA

by G. Grimoire profile

Episode 1 of Sacred Tides series
Ritual
2018

Web Site

About the Story

The high priest of an obscure cult is preparing a ritual. Don the priest’s sacred mantle, for these holy labors are yours to direct. You may carve a votive, lead a prayer, or make a sacrifice — but you must see to the task with care. Unearthly eyes gaze down upon you from the sea above. Will your devotion reach them?

Does it matter?


Game Details

Off-Site Reviews

These Heterogenous Tasks

Music, darkness, melancholy, the unknowably alien, and the space to absorb them. That’s the mood which Devotionalia is after, and it skewers it like a moth on a specimen-board.
See the full review

The Breakfast Review
The piece seems to be about the nature of religious devotion. The unfamiliarity of the story's deity and cosmology serves to isolate the acts of prayer and sacrament so that they can be looked at without our own beliefs getting in the way. There's a lot here that's really worth contemplating.

As a breakfast, I think it's rice congee with a firm, white fish, topped with flakes of crispy fried onions and fresh chives. It has an ascetic look, but threads of ginger and sesame oil boiled in with the rice make it surprisingly flavourful. And then, piping hot green tea.
See the full review

McT's Interactive Fiction Reviews

In a way, this game reminds me of the works of Chandler Groover and Phantom Williams. It has a similar rich aesthetic. A surreal, haunting feel. A sense that there’s more hidden below the surface. [...] The interface matches the ambition of the prose. The music is atmospheric and appropriate. The aesthetics of the design are completely aligned to the game experience.

It’s something a little bit special, this.
See the full review

IFComprehensive

The pensive mood of the game supports its plot. The author handles the alien details of the world well, showing rather than telling and focusing on the story rather than belaboring the setting details. It’s a much more original setting and plot than most games have, and the author provides just enough details to make it comprehensible but still mysterious, befitting the priest’s uncertainty about his gods.
See the full review

catacalypto
It mostly does one thing, which is ‘an evocative, doomed setting of a cultist tending to a dying ritual’, but it does that one thing very, very well. The music and design choices heighten the experience; it’s probably one of the most slickly-produced games this year.
See the full review

Page Update History

v.8: 31-Dec-2018 12:40 - Zape (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
Changed IFIDs, download links
v.7: 02-May-2020 20:26 - G.C. "Grim" Baccaris
Changed cover art
v.6: 07-Aug-2019 17:49 - G.C. "Grim" Baccaris
Changed author
  v.5: 31-Dec-2018 12:40 - G.C. "Grim" Baccaris
Changed version number, series name, episode number, Web site URL, download links
v.4: 25-Nov-2018 20:01 - G.C. "Grim" Baccaris
Changed version number, external review links
v.3: 17-Nov-2018 22:55 - Doug Orleans
Changed download links
v.2: 09-Oct-2018 12:25 - G.C. "Grim" Baccaris
Changed author
v.1: 05-Oct-2018 11:33 - CMG
Created page