A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux

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Forget Your Chains is a visual psychological horror novel about the horrors of forgetting anti psychotics. 

Play as Nonnie, a strange girl with schizoaffective disorder and try to make the right decisions for her survival. Explore her world, an empty home, through her eyes and mind. Interact with strange & surreal characters as you try to search for medication or try to create safety.

PLAYTIME ESTIMATE: Around 30-45 minutes depending on reading speed.

WORD COUNT: About 7,500 words

ENDINGS: 4 Total, 2 True Endings

CONTENT WARNINGS: FLASHING IMAGERY, CONTENT THAT MAY BE DISTURBING TO SENSITIVE VIEWERS, TOPICS OF SUICIDE & SELF HARM, CONTENT MAY BE DISTRESSING TO PLAYERS WITH A HISTORY OF PSYCHOSIS

BONUS ART FILE: Includes scrapped scenes, paintings & concept art from game development.

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Rating
Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars
(22 total ratings)
Authorgloomybat
GenreVisual Novel
Made withClip Studio Paint, Ren'Py
Tags2D, Creepy, Dark, Horror, Mental Health, Monsters, Multiple Endings, Psychological Horror, Ren'Py, Singleplayer
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish
InputsMouse

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

ForgetYourChains-pc.zip 303 MB
ForgetYourChains-mac.zip 289 MB

Development log

Comments

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Warning to viewers: SPOILERS IN VIDEO!

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I had so much fun reading through this and putting this together. Love the creepy imagery! 

Really makes you feel like you're off your meds 

wow-

this game was a rollercoaster... even with reading the description of the game you still dont truly understand untill you start playing! the beginning bit with the laptop sent chills down my spine, along with everything else

thank you so much for making this,,, honestly youre an artist, keep being awesome!

sending luv from Ireland <3

Nunca vi um jogo tão pessoal e que representasse tão bem minha relação com os remédios. Quase infartei quando vi que sabia meu nome! Amei ele.

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I am working on a 2D surrealistic horror game, kinda similar to this. I am so glad that I found this game and that I exist at a time to enjoy it. 

Thank you for your hard work!

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I'm pretty late I know, but gods knowing that you've endured this (well slightly less but still, given that it was just so...bizarre the entire time) is kind of wild for me. The game in and of itself was a great one, I genuinely loved the gameplay and the best ending out there, because I think it's almost equivalent to someone with high power finally getting contacts--to see the world in a much brighter way. The realisation that not everything is screwed up makes me kind of happy. The bad ending saying how she did not deserve her fate due to struggling so much everyday just for one incident to shatter her was genuinely impactful (in the bad final ending no2)


I do have a few questions. 

(a) Why did you choose the name Nonnie instead of plenty? I would 100% understand if it's just some wild name but idk I feel like it may have a closer significance

(b) What is her backstory? She mentions of an incident (I think). 

(c) What happened to her familY?

I'd like to end it off by saying that I'm happy that you reached out and got therapy. This...weirdly does make sense in some way, because all these voices does get based off of some sort of reality which gives it more power as it's more believable. All of the scenes with blood would be the person scratching themselves and honestly, it's cruel for someone to endure things like this. Thanks for creating a game like this, it gave me a glimpse to what people endure.

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Hello, thank you so much for this comment ! <3 

I’m so happy you enjoyed the endings ! ! As for your question, Nonnie is a shortened nickname for the word “Anonymous”. As for her backstory, the incidents referred to previous psychotic attacks usually resulting in being hospitalized. What happened to her family is up for the reader to infer, since we are being told the story from an unreliable narrator there isn’t a way to truly tell where they are or what happened to them. There’s even potential they’re still in the home and Nonnie is too far gone, since Nonnie was somehow moved back to her bed in one of the true endings this could mean family is still there. However this is up for interpretation and theorizing, when I wrote this from my perspective- everything is untrustworthy and some things don’t check out and aren’t what they seem, so some things will never have true reality based answers in this novel.

As for your commentary, I truly thank you for experiencing this and analyzing it and showing empathy and compassion to such a stigmatized disorder! <3 

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oh this game fucked me up so bad, especially the worms thing. i've never been affected by a horror game so much, you did an amazing job. and dw, it fucked me up in a good way (the psychological horror way)

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This comment made my night ! ! <3 I'm so glad you enjoyed playing, thank you so so much for the support ! <33 

As the worms would say . . . YAAAAY ! 

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Thank you for writing this chilly (a for me as a creator, inspiring) game! I really enjoyed the weird mix of the artwork and the strange atmosphere that made me look for my meds! :)

Thank you so much for the kind words ! I am so honored that you consider my work inspiring ! <3

I’m really glad you liked the game, thank you for playing ! <3

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This was honestly a really great game! I absolutely loved the atmosphere you built with it and the way it was utilized worked very well in it's favor. I only had the time to get 1 ending; however, I might have to go back for all the other ones at a later point!

I LOVED WATCHING THIS ! This video honestly made my day, I was so entertained by your responses & honored at the reaction to the true good ending. Thank you for this ! ! <3

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Is this what people suffering from psychosis feel? How much is fantasy and how much is reality in this game? I am not demanding an exact representation, I am just curious because I know nothing about the subject.

It was a strange thing, the worms hatching and saying "yay" with rainbows was to my unintentional humor, and the good ending felt strangely optimistic after all that had happened. Overall it was a good story.

I think it's partly because my pc is old, but the special effects consume an insane amount of CPU. The main menu alone put my usage at 95% and without special effects it was at 5-10%. Such special effects are well done but, it would be nice if it could be regulated in some way, I think. And the text is so small, I had to strain my eyes to read it.

My cons with the game are more technical than anything else, I enjoyed the story itself, I hope you keep making good interesting games like this one. Sorry if it sounded like I didn't like the experience.

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Firstly thank you for such an in depth comment & the constructive criticism =-D ! I’ll see if I can find why that’s ridiculously unoptimized (maybe the file sizes are responsible ? that has me puzzled =-0 ? ). As for your question about psychosis, I am diagnosed with schizoaffective and this is how I’ve lived my life before medication + the struggles I face taking it. The parts that are exaggeration are the peeking woman and the hands of god + some aspects of the death scenes, but all writings are real delusions I faced and what it was like in my head when I was delusional and suffering from hallucinations. I wrote this to cope with my diagnosis and maybe provide some insight into the inner workings of a disease that looks very strange from an outsider’s perspective- and it was inspired by a night I had endured without my medication working+ my memories throughout my life with particularly bad episodes. It’s a brutal disease D= . . Nonnie is a character inspired by how my face was distorted when I was actively hallucinating. Peeking woman was actually a dream I had, not related to psychosis. However it’s a spectrum, it won’t be exactly like this for everyone suffering from psychosis or the schizophrenia spectrum. It was extremely difficult to write some days, on bad days I wrote about what happened and implemented it into the game. I’m glad you got a chuckle out of the worms, the file for their art was named worm party because my humor is a bit morbid as well x) . .   The good ending is the strangest part for me because it is quite confusing to endure such a scary and stigmatized disease and discover life isn’t actually like that . . ! 

Once again thank you, this comment is amazing and I’m grateful for the constructive criticism & the interest in what is truth and what is exaggerated. I didn’t read this as you disliking it at all, I quite enjoyed hearing the honest feedback =-D ! <3 


TL;DR Everything except death & peeking woman/ the hands of god is real experience. It’s basically a documentation of my experiences as a game & I’ll look into optimization techniques for ren’py for future games / an update x) . 

What engine did you use to make this? And how much time did it take?

I used Ren’py! It took a few months considering the emotional toll of the writing, so I had to take breaks pretty often, sometimes for a while. =‘-) The engine uses python as the language if you’re curious about that. 

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😊👍

AHH! Thank you so much for playing! I’m so grateful you made a video, that is really kind of you! Thank you so much for supporting this project <3! 

You're welcome!

Thank you for making this game! dev :)

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i dont have a pc but this looks so interesting omg

Thank you so much ! ! <3 <3 I'm so glad you think so ! 

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great jobs novel

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WOW! Thank you so much for taking the time to make a video! I am so grateful! This really brightened my day! <3

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i like creepy novel.. you idea very nice

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This game is amazing! I have never played a game like this before, and the atmosphere is quite chilling. I personally don't have schizoaffective, but I do have depression, and I gotta say, the bad ending and good ending hit really close to home. The good ending filled me with feelings of hope and healing, that it does get better after all, you just have to fight some demons first. I also loved the Hands of God ending, it was the right amount of horrifying and I couldn't help but laugh when the worms popped out screaming "YAAAAAAAY" in rainbow wavy text. 10/10, 5 stars, would play again. I can see why some people may wish it was longer, but I honestly like that it's short. I CANNOT WAIT to see what else Gloomybat will come up with next!


PS: Would you allow people to make videos of your games and upload them on sites such as YouTube?

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Thank you so much! This means so much to me, I am so grateful for your support and review. I would be very open to people making videos on my games. I'm absolutely thrilled that you took the time to comment such kind words. If at least one person enjoys the game, that makes it all worth it.

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Hey, first game I tried out on this website. First off, I absolutely loved the atmosphere of the game. I was pretty unsettled with certain descriptions of the character's inner dialogue. The hands of god ending was horrifying with the worms being inside your body, celebrating hysterically.

The pace wasn't too bad either. The game was a bit short, but it had a lot content packed inside for the time spent in-game. The good ending was impactful and reminded me of those horror games that give you an emotional feeling of hope, even if there are horrors beyond comprehension and despair awaiting for the protagonist (like Resident Evil, etc).


Only critique is that I think you should make your future games longer to pace things out a bit better. There was good pacing for the amount of time you had, but it was a lot to digest during my first playthrough.


I think this is a solid game, especially if the person who plays the game is into psychological visual horror. I hope you make more games in the future, would love to test them out and give my opinion.

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Thank you for the constructive criticism, it's appreciated. I'm really glad you enjoyed the atmosphere. I do plan to make more games, I already have a few in development. I've started an open world horror experience in Godot 4. Thank you for the in depth comment ! <3!

How do you plan to make an open world horror game? I don't think I've seen that before

Ah- I'm working in Godot 4 in the 3d engine portion and I've structured it to where people can roam and explore freely to find the path they want to take, they can find whatever objective pertains to them (it's a game about conquering guilt) through portals which lead to mazes. There's exploration involved alongside the mazes & things to find while surviving guilt monsters. I prefer non linear game play when it comes to 3d engines ! :'-D

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decent game, but the pro life monologue was dissapointing

I'm sorry it didn't meet expectations ! There's also a bad ending if that is more your preferred flavor of ending. I hope you enjoyed the game anyways. . !