Pepper & Smoke
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 。
Status | Released |
Platforms | HTML5 |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 total ratings) |
Author | saint-cuddy |
Genre | Interactive Fiction |
Made with | Twine |
Tags | Coming Of Age, First-Person, Narrative, Queer, Twine |
Average session | About a half-hour |
Languages | English |
Comments
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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)
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!!