Background:

Pepper & Smoke is a simple, linear story made with twine – not so much of a game as it is a story with clickable parts. It is about a particular kind of person coming to terms with their past. While I hesitate to call it political, much of it is based on a series of events that occurred in my hometown within the past year.  

The story is "mostly true". The details are fictional, but it is a composite of many true events that had occurred to different people. I will not provide further detail for safety reasons. 

I hope you enjoy it.


Information:

  • Play in fullscreen for a better experience~
  • About 7-8k words, depending on your choices. One play-through takes approximately 30-40 minutes, depending on how fast you read. 
  • No multimedia except for one photo near the ending.
  • Please read the "about" page in the game! Content warnings exist if you need them.
  • You can try playing this on mobile, but it will be quite difficult. Sorry!
  • This is a story you are helping me tell. Please do not worry – no choice you can make is wrong.


Credits:

Thank you to my playtesters for dealing with me dropping them html files every three days and actually being able to write in English like normal people.

Thank you @storkvomit on itch.io for making the template that I used.

I don't own Szymborska's poetry (the epigraph).  I highly recommend you read some/buy a collection. I do own the photo(s). My photos are not so good, but you can look at some Pulitzer-winning photos (obviously not mine, graphic) about these events here

Thank you, the reader, for sharing this little story with me. Your engagement means a lot to me, and I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do this. 

And, as always, 香港人:黑暗過後,必是晨曦。共勉 。

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
Authorsaint-cuddy
GenreInteractive Fiction
Made withTwine
TagsComing Of Age, First-Person, Narrative, Queer, Twine
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish

Comments

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(+1)

Played/read your story, and it was a great one. It feels very real - and you indeed said it's "mostly true". Thank you for writing it~

To anyone else who finished once: one of the three endings is completely different from the other two, and is worth playing again for.

Minor nitpicks for the author:

* The intentional waits were a tiny bit annoying on the repeated playthroughs

* I'm not a native speaker, but I think the verbs used with gender-neutral 'they' should work in the same way as plural 'they'. For instance, "They doesn't notice you" should probably be "They don't ...". Same with "they hurriedly begins speaking". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they)

(+1)

Hi! I'm glad you enjoyed the story~

In terms of typos/errors (especially singular verbs for the plural they), I've noticed quite a few over the last couple of months of feedback, and at some point when I'm done with a few current projects I'll go back and correct them.  The waits are annoying, I agree, and while I don't think I'll be removing them entirely I am looking for a way to make them skippable.

Thank you for playing!!