Content Warnings: creative burnout, mental health

This is the strangled gasp of a nightmare. This is a game that does not end.

Two players sit together. One plays the Writer, fueled with ambition and creative passion and excited. The other plays the Work, the latest in a long line of unfinished Works in Progress. As they play, trying to extend and shorten the amount of time they have, the Writer's Joy will slowly be chipped away as burn out sets in and the Work is inevitably abandoned.

This is an honest game. A game in memory of the countless works - novels, short stories, poems and TTRPGs - I gave up on when the going got tough. This is an ironic game, given I managed to finish it. And most importantly, this is an experimental game. Not because I think I've done anything new (in fact, this is a hack - we'll come back to that in a moment), but because this is the first layout I've done. The first project where I've sourced art and graphics and tried to figure out where to put text on the page. 

This is a first step on a journey to becoming an excellent designer, and I thank you for walking with me.

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'Ink Stains' is a production of RJKGames, and written for the Hue Shift Jam 2022, hosted by Sebastian Yue and Huetopia. This hack of quinn b. rodriguez's penultimate: is the whisper of a feverdream.

Images courtesy of Pixabay.

Chinese translation courtesy of coffee_ghost_TW - thank you again!

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