A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux

This is an Inform 5 game that was first intended for the 2004 IF Competition but wasn't completed in time. Some additional work was done the following year for the 2005 IF Competition, but I realized I still wasn't going to get it done. The next year I was busier and had moved on to other interests, so it got shelved.

The concept was to present the player with a situation with multiple degrees of success and multiple routes to get there, with lots of potential to decide what kind of protagonist you are. You're trapped in a plague-ridden, quarantined town and somehow your family is one of the only ones untouched by it. You have a wife, a baby and an elderly father, each with their own mobility issues. In the finished game, the idea was that there were many ways of escaping, but not all of which would allow you to bring your entire family with you. There would also be ethical choices to be made along the way vis-a-vis the other townsfolk, with the more cynical choices making it easier to escape.

There would be a way to achieve an ending whereby you save your entire family without doing anything too awful along the way, but it would be very hard to find; most endings would either have the player being forced to choose who to save and who to leave behind, or take a cynical approach and do whatever it takes without regard for the others in the town.

Source available on request - all I'd ask is if anyone finishes a game using any part of it, to be credited.

Download

Download
Pestilence.z5 129 kB

Install instructions

This game is a compiled Inform 5 file. You'll need an Inform 5 interpreter to run it; plenty are available for any platform you care to use.