Gruesome
As a grue, it's your duty to keep the underground kingdom safe from vandalism by sorcerers, swordspeople, and other ugly monsters who keep invading the dungeon in hopes of stealing a sackful of your friends' favourite possessions. Invariably they just get lost, and it's your job to find them, then do your best to guide them safely back to the surface. (What else would you do, eat them?)
Made for Parsercomp, Gruesome is a revisit to classic dungeon crawl text adventures from a new perspective. How many adventurers can you save?
- 🥈 2nd place in ParserComp 2021
- 🎀🎀 Nominated in two categories (Best Puzzles, Best Individual NPC [Mr Clavicle]) in the 2021 Xyzzy Awards
You can play the game online above, or download it as a zipfile for offline play. There are in-game hints; a walkthrough file is also available to download. Share and Enjoy!
Download
Install instructions
If you want to play the game offline, download gruesome.zip and unpack it into an empty folder, then open index.html with your browser.
Walkthru.pdf contains a walkthrough for the game. There's also an in-game hints system as you play.
Comments
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This is a fun concept for a game. I enjoyed playing it with the group on Sunday.
I enjoyed this a lot - one note I had, though, that might be a bug (i'll put it in rot13 to avoid spoilers):
V pbhyqa'g svaq nal zragvba bs gur pnaqrynoen va gur qrfpevcgvba bs rvgure gur Grzcyr be gur nygne - V bayl xarj vg jnf gurer sebz ybbxvat ng gur uvagf.
Really cool concept and I'd love to see an expanded version of this.
Good spot! Fixed. Glad you enjoyed the game.
How do you get Mr. Clavicle to play Handel's Opening Number? Whenever he sits down at the organ he always improvises. He doesn't want the sheet music, either.
This is covered in the hints, under "The music room". Using rot13 to hide spoilers:
Unir lbh chg gur zhfvp ba gur zhfvp fgnaq?
Vf Ze Pynivpyr'f unaq fgvyy vawherq? Ur pna'g cynl cebcreyl gvyy vg'f svkrq.
Nu, gunax lbh. Pna’g oryvrir V qvqa’g abgvpr n zhfvp fgnaq! Gur tnzr vf njrfbzr, ol gur jnl. Nyy lbhe tnzrf ner.
Thank you!
V nqqrq n ovg gb Ze Pynivpyr'f qvnybthr fb gung vs lbh TVIR uvz gur furrg zhfvp ur'yy fhttrfg lbh chg vg ba gur fgnaq (nygubhtu lbh jba'g frr vg hayrff lbh erfgneg lbhe tnzr)
What did you used to make it?
Javascript and lots of tea :-)