@@jamescswindell5302 The thing is, Hugo doesn't want to socialize at the start which is the opposite to what the infected want. In the starting dialogue he doesn't seem to be expressely wanting to socialize and even is mildly fine if the protagonist doesn't want to let him in. It's only towards the end when he actually gets infected due to the windows of the basement being broken (and Hugo having to break the door) where he starts to highly want socialize with the protagonist and shouts to get in the house. So if you think about it he is not all that suspicious.
Sooo, basically just post-apocalyptic as a genre? This is not a new or interesting concept. Fallout has been doing it since the late 90's. The Last of Us also does this, along with basically every Zombie movie/game/show. I mean, really, the whole point of The Walking Dead is showing how people survive and behave in a zombie infested world lol Anyway, sorry about sounding like a dick, just like, come on
@seancrosby6837 I wouldn't necessarily call it POST-apocalyptic. Society is still functioning, but there's some event that it has to consistently work around. A more mundane example could be if you knew you had bi-yearly earthquakes around your place.
Reminds me of a book series called F.E.E.D. if I recall correctly... It was about a zombie apocalypse, that had been going on long enough that people just accepted it as daily life... And started using it as various forms of entertainment. Basically streamers and vloggers would go out into the wild and make a living off the zombies. 😂
@@seancrosby6837 its like living In certain place (like In Japan maybe?) Where theres constant diseater like earthquake or tsunami The society still functioning and people still does mundane stuff ,its not post apocalyplse
yes, i think it’s nice how all the infected mess up with their stories after becoming infected. like the agent doesn’t seem very human and keeps coming back, forgetting a mask after his second visit.
@@mincat1412the interaction with the agent is mildly interesting to me. If this is a real life situation, I would keep messing with the agent and ask him to grab more and more ridiculous thing or even fictional thing like a lightsaber or the ring from LOTR.
@@gwen4200 that's true. Seems like the only thing the spores did to him while he was waiting to bloom was just severely damage his intelligence lol. I like that though, that people in these things don't always exhibit the exact same symptoms. Makes it more like a real life virus/illness/etc.
Idk but the concept of refusing a zombie to get in your house then say "Fine." and go to fetch it to be let in is so funny to me. Is like the spore people have manners, they don't fight you, they want you to believe them. If the entire game had characters like this only it would be so funny to me. Is like "Hey dude, i'm a zombie not a jerk, ok?"
I think the ending is so suspect because the MC was always infected, the site and video list Paranoia as a symptom yet nobody exhibits that symptom, which is strange, with the only thing coming close to it being the MC not letting Hugo in when it's safe, bonus for if the door screen resetting after the last door event isn't an oversight and is a sign of hallucinations.
@@himedo1512 True, but you also have all the reason in the world to believe it's not safe when the "announcer" says it is, especially since unlike with the warning you don't actually see it on the TV, you just sort of imagine it, and it's a vast departure from the MC's behaviour up until that point.
I checked the website, and it only says that a person shouldn’t contact anything related to the spores until the sporestorm has passed. It’s also mentioned that only 30 seconds of contact with an infected individual is needed for one to be infected themself. Considering that the MC was able to walk all the way from their home to the observatory without any of the symptoms we saw from the infected ending like dizziness, they’re probably fine.
I was really enjoying the story until the “true” ending. Idk, it felt rushed. I was kinda disappointed that we didn’t get any definite answer to what happened to Onna or Hugo. It didn’t make sense for the protagonist to just carelessly go outside when they’ve been making smart decisions up to that point.
It almost feels like there should be another ending where you don't look out the door and sniff the mold. Something about the vibe of that ending felt like a last minute infection rather than a "you made it".
Personally, i'd like to believe protagonist got somehow infected along the way and that random-ass announcement was an hallucination entirely, making him go outside. He doesn't even elaborate on it, a voice just talks from nowhere and he lets a stranger keep his house. That's the only explanation to suddenly believe that it's over and go take a walk into the red mushroom covered street.
Yeah I agree. The ending was a bit TOO abrupt, didn't even have any input or follow up on everything else that was going on or involved. Nice game/story, but the ending wasn't satisfying. Which could also be the point but... Meh.
I really liked that the fungus influences its host to go to a high place, which is the end goal for most actual parasitic fungi. Most zombie/virus games with fungi make the infected act like normal zombies unlike actual parasitic fungi, which is disappointing to me because stuff like this is equally, if not more horrifying. Props to the developers for that!
@@DeltaCatStudio I'm curious, why is the ending so abrupt? I was wondering either maybe you didn't know how to end it /or/ maybe you wanted the ending to be ambiguous so it would be up to us on if we thought he had been infected or not. I've seen some people say he's sick in the head already and the enjoyed memories he's had up at the place are from the past spore storms he saw all the people blooming/which looks like blood, and someone saying some how he got exposed and that's why he went out or someone thought the announcement was in his head because he was already exposed, someone else said the announcement was from someone already infected. It's really incredible how much your work has got us all thinking, I think it's a testament to how well this was made. I want to say you did an amazing job, and we all, I'm sure, will be looking forward to the next thing you create!
@@PanicLedisko It's honestly not hard to be exposed-- houses aren't air tight in the first place. It's more surprising that anyone survived two storms in the first place. (But I'm just headcanoning that as it's because there weren't as many spores in the air as the past 2 storms.)
I love how you just leave Onna in the bathroom immediately after telling her you'd call the cops for her. Then you walk outside and leave Hugo in your house alone
Pretty sure it's implied you're infected in this ending. Your character immediatly start going somewhere high, finds the sight of the city covered in fungi "beautifull" and the word beatifull is in red, which is the color of the infestation.
I like how the three NPCs give you small hints right before they flip. The health control dude is most obvious. Onna stands and watches, and Hugo talks about his dog. Onna just moves to Spore City, Portugal for the coffee spots.
@@scientistmilorad9735 I mean, not politically?? But geographically both Spain and Portugal reside in the same peninsula. So, pretty damn near from each other.
@@AaronC.The iberian peninsula does include spain and portugal yes, but Milo was annoyed that spain and portugal were treated as the same country. Spanish and Portugese are different languages so it’s not very easy to lump them together-it’s a bit like saying Germany and The Netherlands are the same country because of proximity. No one’s really going to be happy about it.
This almost looks like the sequel to that one game where you're infected by spores/mushrooms and you're a celebrity in the world of being able to transplant celebrity organs to yourself!
Yea neither would windows. It would be pointless to even try to survive especially since they would get all over your skin the second you go outside. Iv had spores on my hands for like 5 days despite repeated scrubbing, the smell doesn’t leave
This is really good. The "YOU FUCKED UP" frame where she's staring at you in the window is a really good touch. I'd love just a series of games like this with different threats and puzzles and fail conditions.
Funky spore storm regularly sweeps nation. An interesting concept. A fungal spore that makes you socialize and paranoid, sounds like social media lol. I bet in the end where you survive the night, the person announcing that it was safe got infected themselves, cause the MC didnt call the cops for onna and went straight to a familiar high place.
Yeah. I like the game, not so much the ending, at least as somebody rooting for a happy ending for the 3 characters. It's just real shady... Though to be fair, it's an ending where controls taken out of your hands.
Yeah I'm thinking the announcer got infected as well for the MC to conveniently forget about both their new friend chilling in their living room and their love interest currently barricaded in her bathroom, and opening the front door probably got Hugo infected as well but ig at least the neighbor probably didn't hear the announcement and is probably fine until the next storm. Still rip those two though, seems like a no win scenario
@@weirdbookshelf49 I would as well, assuming I didn't get infected, which... Sounds much easier said then done in this story's situation tbh. That and the basement being a major flaw in the MC's defense and us not knowing if Hugo shut the door with the broken lock behind him, honestly infection for these characters was only a matter of time. Stories like this do make ya wonder how you'd handle such a situation in real life though... and ik my first priority would be putting plastic over the windows because I know better then to trust the seals around here, though unfortunately in the game's situation we likely don't get any info on the new development so it might not be survivable in the first place since it may potentially have a delayed activation that would explain the "good" ending seeming so abrupt since the storm... Might've started earlier then was announced as well
Seems like there's no good ending here. The narration on the ending after doing all the correct steps leads you to a high point in the city, and you go there, despite making a promise to call the authorities to help out the girl, and you're clearly absent minded, heading to a high place for no reason, most likely wishing to bloom. Maybe the state of the streets and looking at the peephole again and seeing nothing was actually not an oversight, but your mind hallucinating? Also, the notice that the spore was over and it was safe to go outside already is also probably being done by someone infected, a storm of spore even if it stopped, would still have the spores that have fallen all over the place be an issue for a good while.
You also have red text on the word Beautiful, they mentioned the spores were adapting so the manual might've been outdated and the whole city is doomed.
probably some living plant like spore that throws spore fruits or a strong odor spore to make it spread by itself even after sporestorm and since the city is completely covered then yeah its not safe to go outside
@@ManlyBadassHero Tells me the Onna infection ending is the best one. At least you can bloom together. It's a cute way to go, glass shards notwithstanding. Beautiful, even🍄
This totally feels like they made an analog horror videogame almost. Especially the opening sequence, that emergency notice is extremely indicative of analog horror
@@DeltaCatStudio The beginning reminded me heavily of the mandela catalog!!! Well done! Also so sorry I keep responding to your comments, I'm sure I'm prolly blowing up your notifications, sorry!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤
As a spaniard, that "Spain's Plague Control Department -1987-" took me so by surprise I only really processed it when Manly said "Uh, Spain" lmao Going to the itch io page and seeing one of the devs is catalan, though, was even more shocking. It makes me really happy to see more and more devs from here!!
The good(?) ending is rather bittersweet. I am genuinely disappointed that as soon as the broadcast was announced to declare that the spore storm was over your character immediately went outside without calling the authorities to let Onna out of the bathroom. The lack of all endings in the title of the video is also rather concerning, considering that some of the side effects of infection are an uncontrollable urge to socialize (and you seem to be do a rather decent amount of talking with the people who are survivors(?)) and hallucinations, followed by a need to get somewhere high. This, coupled with how the game did not note how Hugo was already inside when you become infected makes me think that the game has a punishment mechanic for conversing with the other people, especially with how the spores are only 4 microns and there is definitely more than 4 microns between gaps in the doorways. If this is the case you may be able to talk with Onna due to conversations being through the phone.
Thank you so much for the constructive criticism! This game was made in just a week as we wanted to submit it to the Spooktober 2023 game jam. We're taking notes of your suggestions and we'll try to fix all the issues the game currently has.
@@DeltaCatStudio Haha I knew it!! I had a feeling this was for a jam, but honestly you couldn't tell!! You've put so much amazing work into this!! You are extremely talented! Well done sweetheart!!!!!
I think the game couldn't have ended any other way-- houses aren't air tight in the first place, so it's really just a matter of time before the spores get in. (I assume the air had less quantity of spores in the past two storms, which is how people survived at all.) That said, I did wish for a good ending, even if being doomed is the realistic thing to happen. And it's true that the game could have acknowledged Hugo being in the house, if you did let him in early on. I suppose the ending feels like nothing you did mattered-- but it's true, isn't it? In the end nothing would have mattered short of building air-tight houses with a constant clean supply of oxygen from somewhere.
@@aquablast3155The issue is really only in the ending, where it felt too abrupt. It would be better if MC already showed symptoms even before interacting with anyone, and/or show some signs of spores infiltrate the house despite doing the right choices. That way it would feel "yeah it's inevitable" instead of "what the fuck MC you were doing so well".
The ARG was well handled and a neat way to test the player so you can help Onna, the art was nice, the bad ending/game over was perfectly disturbing, and it was smart to have this be "normal" for the setting. A good time all around.
About the ending... I'm pretty sure you were infected as well in the end. I mean, the houses won't be air tight anyway. And would the spores really just disappear by themselves? ... although you did supposedly survived 2 spore storms already. Alternatively, the announcer was infected, so they told everyone to come out even though it isn't safe yet, and that's what nailed our character... although your character seemed cautious enough, so kinda strange they'd just go out like that, if they weren't already infected by that point. Either way, it's interesting, even if it's practically just one ending.
The devs could've justified the sporestorm blows over so quickly by saying the mycopsychosis fungus can't withstand UV light aka sunlight, and both the spores and fungal mass die quickly when exposed to them. A bit cliche, but convenient considering this hypothetical fungus doesn't care much about humidity or temperature. This would also justify the setting being so dreary: sporestorms can only happen at night or under very cloudy weather. Imo MC isn't infected, the devs just rushed the ending and reused the pictures to save time/because they didn't know what to do for a good end. The MC doesn't care about Hugo nor Onna despite your actions, which make no sense.
Mushroom infection horror I believe is often inspired by a kind of mushroom Cordyceps. A mushroom that infects insects specifically. One of the key things of Cordyceps is late state infection makes the insect want to go somewhere high to latch onto a surface, then when secure, the mushroom will grow out of the head to spread its spores to more unsuspecting insects. There are many types of this mushroom species, each catered to different insect species.
As a mycologist your right, however spores are microscopic they are designed by nature to get through small spaces. They stick to everything and you’d never survive in a mushroom horror scenario. You wouldn’t even know you breathed in spores until you had symptoms
I liked it, it was pretty good. I don't mind the ending in itself but i do wish the game was a bit longer overall, so many spooky situations could have been done in this scenario to set up more of a mood, but the player immediately finds lots of other people and the experience becomes something else entirely. Hope to see more from the developers.
Thank you so much for your kind words! It was a bit rushed because this game was made in under a week to be submited to the Spooktober2023 GameJam. Glad you liked it!
I really like the interactions with Hugo they seem much more human than the convos with Onna.😊 It was also cool how everyone, at the end of the day, was just trying to survive and go on with their lives instead of freaking out and making dumb choices. 😅
Ironically, you learn more about Hugo if you DON'T let him into your house. I was disappointed at how his dialogue inside your house was quickly exhausted and he never did anything new. He doesn't even react to Ray or infected Onna barging into your house or you suddenly deciding to leave the house at the end. Like you would think he'd have his own opinion on his life being threatened.
To be fair, they explicitly said that there's no cure-- and then it beeped or glitched, and then said that one should call them if anyone is feeling these effects. I almost think that they were trying to backpedal-- if there's no cure and they want you to call them anyway, there's really only one thing it could mean.
@@kuhtheakumin yes and would anything else get people to comply? Ngl I think Manly had the right idea with suggesting fire since infected individuals will relentlessly pursue the company of uninfected individuals and houses aren't really designed for sealing individual spaces, in fact, bathrooms especially are designed to be the opposite of air tight to prevent serious accidents so a breach of the outer defences is a near guarantee of infection if the creator(s) of this infection know this
@@aquablast3155 yup, we also know the infection makes people obsessed with seeking company so it might also be a redirect. If you're infected, they will come to you, all you have to do is ask... So in a way they're purposely painting a target on themselves and it's probably in an attempt to sate that desire long enough to neutralize the threat and keep infected people from targeting those without proper gear to survive their presence. Kinda shitty but I can't say I'd handle the situation any other way when the infection is so rapid and at that point it's all about damage control and saving what few lives you can, and if lying and lulling the infected into a false sense of safety so they can attempt to take them out before they explode then ya do what ya gotta do
Really interesting story, I do like that it's time based without any kind of visual timer. But one thing I'd like to say something on, if you're creating a game and you know that you're having trouble with spelling, please let one or more people proofread your text. Or even if you don't have problems with that, let someone proofread it anyway, some spelling mistakes can always slip through. Especially in a visual-novel which is usually 95% reading. In the bad ending, anytime I saw "Pupper Master" I just couldn't stop thinking about cute dogs for almost the entire rest of the game, which is not really something you usually want for your horror story.
To be fair, the developer did this game in under one week! Despite the mistakes, it's actually a pretty darn well-made game considering the time crunch! They said in different comments that they'll update the game soon so I'm looking forward to that!
NGL, the "one spore" thing, kills the immersion pretty hard. Yeah, m8. Your house ain't air tight. And by specifically saying it's hard to filter, how TF are the insides of houses safe then? Further, if the basement is compromised and there is a gap to the basement under the door then the whole house isn't safe. Because one spore.
Theoretically speaking so long as your main doors and windows were sealed well enough (even just stick a towel under your doorframe) and you either didn't turn on your heating or had a HEPA filter rated for under 4 microns, then you'd probably be pretty safe, the spores would mostly just float down or with the wind so they wouldn't really be getting into the gaps in your basement and then floating right back up into your house unless you just had a REALLY bad draft. The real issue is what exactly is the life of the spores, because if they don't die the second they hit the floor than basically everything outside of your house is gonna be a biohazard zone for a long ass time, even opening your door could kick up some old spores right up into your face, and at 4 microns they're gonna basically be a nice film of dust on pretty much everything.
Same. Also, they had this happening for quite some time apparently, but all the houses are just normal-ass houses. No barricades, no easy way to cover the windows, the main character just nonchalantly commenting how his basement is not secured while people who might lose their mind and break in roam the streets... Apparently it is a well known event but nobody takes it seriously (getting 'rona response vibes, but Covid dind't make you literally explode into mold in a matter of minutes)
I think they went with the single spore thing because in Halo, a single flood spore could destroy a civilization. And, considering the potential spread of that one, that alternate Earth could easily be destroyed by a single spore.
Reminds me of another game you played "The Snow of Basidia", after seeing that I wish they would have drawn out the infection period a bit more. Basidia did a great job showing how horrible getting infected was with the view slowly blurring as NPCs slowly became more and more delirious, in comparison the player characters death in this wasn't as impactful, with them briefly panicking then cut to bad ending. Outside of that the art was nice and them having an IRL website to reference was cool, it added a lot of intractability.
_Day of the Triffids_ One of my favorite movies - spores from a meteor shower make everyone blind and chaos ensues. It's the things we can't control that make us panic. I enjoyed this game - the art style was cool, the extra web page with 'instructions and info was a nice touch. And the timing factor was interesting with answering the phone calls from Onna.
The book is excellent (by John Wyndham, if anyone wants to check it out). We studied it in school. The great thing, which I don't know was carried over into the film plot because sometimes they simplify, was that the blindness was _unrelated_ to the triffids - we already had those, and were farming them intensively for their plant oil, despite their deadly stings that people had to cut off manually and already caused a bunch of deaths per year. The blindness just allowed them to escape and humans got owned by a situation of their own making. I love sci fi with satirical bite.
@@suitov Oh the book was quite different from the film. Also one of the characters didn't even appear in the movie that was more central to the book. But I read it a long time ago lol. The film had the blindness be a direct result of the meteor shower that released the triffids and spores. The triffids still grew extremely rapidly and were mobile like the book. Both film and book were cool classics.
This really reminds me of that one manwha called Sweet Home, which kinda has the same premise. Which infected people wanting to start a whole new race of people. Really good manwha and messes you up
@@linenatharbor7726 mhm, watched it in 2021 or 2022. It was good. The plot isn't 100% the same as the original, though. But, from what I'm able to remember, the ending was rather interesting. So if you have netflix, maybe give it a watch?
Man, for some reason this game actually got me scared. The music, the drawings and the dialogue got me looking behind my back to see if anyone’s there. This game is solid. I feel like if the creator added and finished up a few things (like that true ending that felt more like a game over, interactions with hugo, e.t.c) we could be seeing a really good horror game.
I'm not really a scared of horror person but these kinds of ,,Incurable, inescapable" ,,Wait for the inevitable demise" kind of creepy scene is legit super creepy and eerie especially with how quickly someone gets afflicted
I reckon memetic infection is an untapped source of horror. Something like Pontypool or the recent Color out of Space movie are good examples. The role of misinformation in many current political climates provides a pretty compelling backdrop to the idea of malevolence being spread through words, ideas, or experiences is pretty horrific. Prions are another horrific pathogen that hasn't really been fully explored in horror. Look up something like fatal familial insomnia or mad cow disease. The basic explanation is a "wrong" protein can cause "correct" proteins to change to match. There's no way to stop this process because you can't attack or isolate proteins in the body like you can viruses or bacteria. Symptoms can take decades to manifest, and invariably involve acute neurological symptoms and a painful death. A world where everyone is infected with a prion and the first people infected are just starting to develop symptoms would be an incredible backdrop to a horror setting.
@@MangoJester That prion concept would not be a "horror where protagonist trying to survive" but a "horror where protagonist panic, lament, and suffer until their inevitable horrible death". Ngl, the concept is great and solid but i personally dislikes a horror where we will always died in the end. "Has anyone survived mad cow? Once symptoms occur-first depression and hallucinations, and eventually dementia and loss of motor control-patients survive about a year. Four people are known to have contracted vCJD through a blood transfusion from an infected donor.21 Des 2016" Lmao, the symptoms is the exact same as the spore storm
@@MangoJester Prions scare THE FCK OUTTA ME!!! They're up there with parasites too man. But your comment about the Prions reminds me of that kinda dating sim game Manly played with the Brain Eating Amoeba (yet another thing that terrifies the fck outta me.. And the amoebas are only getting worse and worse because of the increase of temperature in the water)
My little brother passed away 1 week ago and he always used to watch your videos on family tv, life is so cruel man, one day a kid is watching his favourite UA-camr and next day he is admitted in hospital
I honestly want to Manly play the update they'll put out after the Spooktober Jam. Noted more stuff and endings with Hugo and Onna. Plus info about the storm and fungus. That's pretty much what we all want, so I'm excited.
You know what's fascinating/horrifying? The "roots" of mushrooms, mycelium, are nearly identical to human neurons when viewed side by side under a microscope, right down to the rate of electricity traveling through them. There's currently a project going on where scientists are trying to use mushrooms and stem cells to create human limb analogs and working organs, with surprisingly promising results so far. The most well known "zombie" mushroom is the cordyceps, where this game obviously takes it's inspiration from including the desire for the host to find a high spot, of which Cordyceps cicadae survives in the same places cicadas do, say New England etc. But that's not quite the worst part. The mushroom actually takes over more of the nerves in the limbs of it's host than in the spine and brain area of insects, meaning that if you got infected you would very much remain an individual with your own thoughts and feelings, able to rationalize and empathize with your victims, as the fungus plucks at the nerves controlling your muscles like playing a concert harp, leaving you trapped in a body that no longer belongs to you, while being VERY much aware. Being forced to go after friends or family, the innocent, children perhaps, and not being able to do a thing about it, until eventually your dried husk remains months or years later, as an alter to torture and madness, waiting for some poor fool to come... just... a little... to... close... Sometimes the horror writes itself, Happy October🎃!
I can't help but notice that the backgrounds are probably traced sims 4 screencaps. It's not a bad thing, though. It's just funny to see such recognizable furniture in an unrelated game.
Oh man, I wonder if there's been any recent world wide event that required people to isolate and stay inside to not get infected that might have inspired this.
Good idea, but kind of feels like whoever made the game got bored halfway through and rushed the endings. There's a lot of buildup that seems to rather suddenly stop. Onna goes from fine to suddenly infected from one phone call, the agent guy comes back a few times and then just stops, and Hugo comes in and nothing happens with him. I guess it was better to get the game out then let it go unfinished, but it didn't leave much of an impression.
Thank you for your constructive criticism! This game was made in under a week to be submited to the Spooktober2023 GameJam so we had limited time, hence the slow duration of the game. We're taking notes to fix the game, now that we have more time!
@@DeltaCatStudioOh nice you guys are the dev's? Gonna butt in and say: wonderful art style and story - the bigger criticism really is that there isn't more haha!
I'm pretty sure the last "announcement" was a hallucination. The first one had voice acting and animation but the last was barely mentioned. Right before that, you hallucinate the streets as perfectly fine even though they're covered in red mold. The knocking could either be the agent's last attempt before becoming Beautiful or a hallucination as well. The desire to socialise is covered by talking to Hugo and Onna. If I had to guess the shoddy door and ventilation in the basement coupled with a gap in the door is what infected them. Although it would be nice to know what happened to Hugo and Onna I kind of like the ambiguity. It could ALSO be that in the "bad" endings you are hallucinating Onna and Hugo breaking in/looking like that. And may be hallucinating Onna's paranoia about the infected breaking in. If the infected DID try to break in there would be more measures against them. I think Agent is the only guy legitimately infected and that is the extent of them "breaking in."
Also, the Agent is the only one who doesn't get all "moldy" when let in, in fact he has almost no signs at all. The signs of an infected never list red eyes or signs of mold etc. The only time that's a symptom is during the blooming phase.
PA system: To all citizens its safe to go outside and go to high places, you can trust me Im Ray, see here's my identification card. Little did Ray know, no one could see his ID.
i like the ending. either MC is weird or has been at step 2 for a good duration of the game. severe fear of everyone except onna who you are very much wanting to talk with. the bloodshrooms disappearing if it's not an oversight. magical god voice telling you it's safe. you're not afraid of the obvious infected ray but instead entertain talking with him at that.
It's kinda dumb to have stage 2 being paranoia becuase everyone would be paranoid with the 100% of infection if you are outside and 99% infection if you even like are in the same room with someone infected. I'd be very paranoid too not wanting to get infected anyway possilbe, it's not paranoia if it's logial, it's like saying you have a phobia someone wanting to kill you, yeah no shit I fear that but it's not a irrational fear.
@@ALE199-ita fairly sure that's the point. A psa to seem like it's survivable but you're doomed anyways so having rational fears will make you ignore any irrational thoughts
the aesthetics of mushrooms, foraging, cottagecore etc are very popular right now so that probably had an effect on the indie horror scene and that’s part of why we’re seeing so many fungus takeover type games. I’m sure the popularity of last of us also played into it
I couldn't take Ray seriously at all, interactions with him just remind me of TomSka's "May I Come in" video lmao edit: awe poor Hugo, now that I've watched the whole thing, _any_ interaction with the infected reminds me of TomSka's video
Really love the game, and I hope it will be more developped on. While it has some flaws like frequent typos, I like how the game is pretty much forcing you to "study" the sporestorm by visiting the government's physical site, which gives advices on how to fight back against the plague, especially with helping Onna. I can imagine sequels could happen, where different strands of the spore appears with different properties, so you will have to go to other pages or find other details on the web site to guess which type of spore you are dealing with, and which measure you need to take to not get infected. I also like how the infected have this sort of obsession with becoming beautiful, which forces them to search for a high place to bloom. I think my only problem is the ending. It feels kind of disappointing that, after all we did to save ourself, the ending has implications that the protagonist did get infected without realising it, and went to a similar, high place. In any case, I hope to see more of this world and universe.
I’m pretty sure the “hang there” poster with the kitty is the reference to Subnautica because of the “hang in there” kitty poster which looks almost the same
I think my only thing with stories like these is that I would like to see more games or any entertainment field have a scenario that is apocalyptic but there's still hope. I also see this with ARGs where the monsters are so crazy that at a certain point im just like "we'll there isn't much point in watching it besides for the scary monster jumpscare or lore-drop!" Having a little bit of hope and a clear sense that humans are actually fighting back, even if it's slow and small but successful, would be really nice. I would've loved if this game had a 'everything is hell now but out of thousands, me and a few others finally managed to survive...' ending, even that gives hope. I think the "world is screwed" scenario would work really well if every single form of entertainment didn't ride that idea to death 😹
Mushrooms as enemies is a horror trope as old as time and I love it every time. This one was a very interesting take that I enjoyed! The atmosphere was nice, and sound design ESPECIALLY shined. I love that they made a full on booklet too
Yea I’m a mycologist and there’s no way to survive unless you have a air filter and bunker. I haven’t grown anything in a week and I’m still covered in spores. I shower twice a day to, the meaty spore small is still there and they are microscopic so I know they are on me
Those mind control spores/parasites/ect in nature being applied to humans is always fun for horror. There's a fungus that targets flies, which then makes them go somewhere high where they then take a "death pose" as they cling to where they are, wings spread away from the body, and then white spores start to bloom from their body. If the spore lands on the fly, especially their wings, they're screwed and the cycle begins again. :')
Hey Manly, this game got an update adding in 5 proper endings to it. Thought I mention it in case no one else has and you wanted to get a proper conclusion of the story and make a video on it.
Y'know, that announcement at the start is pretty _curious_ , isn't it. The way it glitches out the longer you watch it... almost like your character is hallucinating.
It’s always interesting to see a story where the big, horrible sickness is like… common. Mostly understood and warned against. There has to be a zombie story like this sometime. Something akin to Walking Dead but there isn’t an entire collapse. It’s a regular part of life now, and it’s handled in a mundane way. The same way it would be in real life. Cargo (?) did something like this with the AUS government dropping self-extermination kits to give people who knew they were done for a way out. I imagine a world with the Wildfire Virus for instance would do something similar. Hospitals would have armed guards for the chance of dead coming back. People are armed and educated in how to dispatch the dead. Sometimes bigger outbreaks happen but trained police, national guard, etc are able to quell it before it becomes a world ending situation. Imagine a world like that, where people are encouraged to carry firearms when out hiking for example. Because the chance of meeting a zombie is possible and you’re expected to exterminate it. Issues such as homeless deaths are now life threatening to whole neighborhoods potentially. Fatal accidents now have the added effect of creating a zombie from the victim. The whole “normalized mass illness” could be a super interesting new way to so horror stories. I think with the way Covid happened and now is treated - this new sub-genre might gain some legs soon.
I've been absolutely hooked on this game since seeing this video! I absolutely love stuff like this. I just hope an actual good ending gets added, but it'll probably take a little bit seeing as there's a really small team behind it
21:26 a heat pump works like a AC unit in reverse... no air is moving around between the inside and outside "unless its the portable units"... only heat energy... its why AC units get cold on one side and hot on the other
Something I don't understand about this is that people don't take extra precautions to prevent getting infected, like full body suits and gas mask or wetting clothes and hanging it over windows and door cracks. Follow some dust bowl rules and at least wear mouth and eye protection, particles can go through closed doors Edit, I was thinking further of this, all water should be boiled before drinking and people should either be in separate rooms with the doors being blocked with a wet towel or everyone should be in a central area with the whole house having various drapes to catch any stray spores. Like the basement could also be good for strangers if you leave a little secure kit for any wandering person. I like thinking about situations like this. It's funny that characters tend to take these situations lightly. Like imagine if the house was covered in rabid raccons that could crawl through small holes, you'd probably care. It seems to be taken very lightly though with the person immediately going outside to admire the carnage so maybe he or the world is not so mentally stable...
me at about the 7:30 mark: "Please say she doesn't die she's super cute please say she doesn't die she's super cute." Manly: "She's goinna die." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo! This is a decent tale with lots of options. I like that the timer is based on actions instead of a real clock. The only problems I see are as you mentioned, some typos and the wrong version of an image used. For when Onna said she didn't have a PC, it would've been better to blame it on the move. Home PCs being uncommon and expensive and yet home internet is so widely spread that the emergency broadcast would say "go to the website for all the vital info to survive" instead of putting all that in the broadcast makes no sense. But "they haven't sent my computer yet" or "I've been fighting to get my internet installed all month" are perfectly realistic reasons. The latter even happened to me once.
Welcome to the INCOMING GAME club how INCOMING GAME are ya?
Idk
@@Themanguy436idk
Im fat
I'm coming
Yep
Having Hugo break in through the basement was a good touch to show he's uninfected. After all, the infected want to go up, not down
Oh yeah! I didnt even catch that
Oh! Good eye!
Makes sense that he wanted to get out off the basement when he did get infected.
well since the infection only wants to go up in stage 3 and it just wants to socialize in stage 2 I think he has all reason to be suspicious.
@@jamescswindell5302 The thing is, Hugo doesn't want to socialize at the start which is the opposite to what the infected want. In the starting dialogue he doesn't seem to be expressely wanting to socialize and even is mildly fine if the protagonist doesn't want to let him in. It's only towards the end when he actually gets infected due to the windows of the basement being broken (and Hugo having to break the door) where he starts to highly want socialize with the protagonist and shouts to get in the house. So if you think about it he is not all that suspicious.
"Uncontrollable desire to socialize" oh my gosh it's an introverts worst nightmare.
Quick, wear a good-enough gas mask and shut yourself in! I'm sure my good ol' dust filtered mask will do!
Ḅ̷̾E̷̮̋À̸͍Û̴̳T̴̼̊Ǐ̵̩F̸͖̕U̷̮͠L̸̨̊
You wont be an intovert much longer after błœmįñğ
"Regardless of spore storm, i will not going out to socialize !!"
The extrovert virus is breaking into your house ! It will make you touch grass !
my brain mushrooms: _you want to socialize_
me: meh
Love these survival horror games where you arent really a hero or anything, just a person surviving the horrors of nature and such.
Like the old earn 2 die?
@@Negatron1609 still kinda action hero bs tho, especially with you just happening to know how to make an armored tank by the end.
@@justaguy5862out of context and just starting the video, yea the hell? That's kinda wild 😂
Like Silent Hill
Like project zomboid
Honestly the concept is pretty interesting, a strange dystopia where people just treat an apocalyptic event normally and incorporate it in their lives
Sooo, basically just post-apocalyptic as a genre? This is not a new or interesting concept. Fallout has been doing it since the late 90's. The Last of Us also does this, along with basically every Zombie movie/game/show. I mean, really, the whole point of The Walking Dead is showing how people survive and behave in a zombie infested world lol
Anyway, sorry about sounding like a dick, just like, come on
@seancrosby6837 I wouldn't necessarily call it POST-apocalyptic. Society is still functioning, but there's some event that it has to consistently work around. A more mundane example could be if you knew you had bi-yearly earthquakes around your place.
@@tylerly30 Exactly!
Reminds me of a book series called F.E.E.D. if I recall correctly... It was about a zombie apocalypse, that had been going on long enough that people just accepted it as daily life... And started using it as various forms of entertainment. Basically streamers and vloggers would go out into the wild and make a living off the zombies. 😂
@@seancrosby6837 its like living In certain place (like In Japan maybe?) Where theres constant diseater like earthquake or tsunami
The society still functioning and people still does mundane stuff ,its not post apocalyplse
My favorite detail is when infected Hugo mentions how much he misses his dog Al. Note that he said Alfredo was a *cat* a few minutes earlier...
yes, i think it’s nice how all the infected mess up with their stories after becoming infected. like the agent doesn’t seem very human and keeps coming back, forgetting a mask after his second visit.
@@mincat1412the interaction with the agent is mildly interesting to me. If this is a real life situation, I would keep messing with the agent and ask him to grab more and more ridiculous thing or even fictional thing like a lightsaber or the ring from LOTR.
@@oo8962the fungus would probably just go: WTF IS A LIGHTSABER?!
@@Yutii-The-Yutyrannus wtf is the One Ring of Power? Oh wait, I'm under its spell. Whoops, I'm actually under the spell of the fungus.
And also the towel thing. When manly gave him the towel he said thanks for the blanket
Can't believe Manly managed to get TWO DATES while in self isolation my man
Ofc, he was playing dating sim- i mean, Horror Simluation, after all.
He's very lucky 😎
that's the trademark mc rizz right there
you dumb spores, the unique symptom you are gonna put in me is the "socialize" one
Hugo kinda bad doe
I love how you can just keep telling Ray he needs to come back with a different object and he mindlessly goes to fetch it.
He was surprisingly polite for being an infected, considering the other two will just break in without warning.
@@gwen4200 that's true. Seems like the only thing the spores did to him while he was waiting to bloom was just severely damage his intelligence lol. I like that though, that people in these things don't always exhibit the exact same symptoms. Makes it more like a real life virus/illness/etc.
@@MikeCrainhe was probably the gentleman who invented gentlemen and the spore wanted to carry his legacy
Idk but the concept of refusing a zombie to get in your house then say "Fine." and go to fetch it to be let in is so funny to me. Is like the spore people have manners, they don't fight you, they want you to believe them. If the entire game had characters like this only it would be so funny to me. Is like "Hey dude, i'm a zombie not a jerk, ok?"
I would've insisted he quote the lyrics to the song or something if I had been part of development. lmao @@RazorsharpLT
I think the ending is so suspect because the MC was always infected, the site and video list Paranoia as a symptom yet nobody exhibits that symptom, which is strange, with the only thing coming close to it being the MC not letting Hugo in when it's safe, bonus for if the door screen resetting after the last door event isn't an oversight and is a sign of hallucinations.
Yeah, but you have all the reason in the world to believe its not safe. It's not an unreasonable call.
Maybe they're infected by the mold?
@@himedo1512 True, but you also have all the reason in the world to believe it's not safe when the "announcer" says it is, especially since unlike with the warning you don't actually see it on the TV, you just sort of imagine it, and it's a vast departure from the MC's behaviour up until that point.
I checked the website, and it only says that a person shouldn’t contact anything related to the spores until the sporestorm has passed. It’s also mentioned that only 30 seconds of contact with an infected individual is needed for one to be infected themself.
Considering that the MC was able to walk all the way from their home to the observatory without any of the symptoms we saw from the infected ending like dizziness, they’re probably fine.
@@Totallyarealhuman2210 On the hallucinations front, you do hear a knock without anyone being there at one point.
I was really enjoying the story until the “true” ending. Idk, it felt rushed. I was kinda disappointed that we didn’t get any definite answer to what happened to Onna or Hugo. It didn’t make sense for the protagonist to just carelessly go outside when they’ve been making smart decisions up to that point.
It almost feels like there should be another ending where you don't look out the door and sniff the mold. Something about the vibe of that ending felt like a last minute infection rather than a "you made it".
Honestly I agree man
Personally, i'd like to believe protagonist got somehow infected along the way and that random-ass announcement was an hallucination entirely, making him go outside. He doesn't even elaborate on it, a voice just talks from nowhere and he lets a stranger keep his house. That's the only explanation to suddenly believe that it's over and go take a walk into the red mushroom covered street.
Yeah I agree. The ending was a bit TOO abrupt, didn't even have any input or follow up on everything else that was going on or involved. Nice game/story, but the ending wasn't satisfying. Which could also be the point but... Meh.
I thought the announcement was real but just from an infected@@SilentJailbird
I really liked that the fungus influences its host to go to a high place, which is the end goal for most actual parasitic fungi. Most zombie/virus games with fungi make the infected act like normal zombies unlike actual parasitic fungi, which is disappointing to me because stuff like this is equally, if not more horrifying. Props to the developers for that!
Thank you!
@@DeltaCatStudio I'm curious, why is the ending so abrupt? I was wondering either maybe you didn't know how to end it /or/ maybe you wanted the ending to be ambiguous so it would be up to us on if we thought he had been infected or not. I've seen some people say he's sick in the head already and the enjoyed memories he's had up at the place are from the past spore storms he saw all the people blooming/which looks like blood, and someone saying some how he got exposed and that's why he went out or someone thought the announcement was in his head because he was already exposed, someone else said the announcement was from someone already infected.
It's really incredible how much your work has got us all thinking, I think it's a testament to how well this was made. I want to say you did an amazing job, and we all, I'm sure, will be looking forward to the next thing you create!
@@PanicLedisko It's honestly not hard to be exposed-- houses aren't air tight in the first place. It's more surprising that anyone survived two storms in the first place. (But I'm just headcanoning that as it's because there weren't as many spores in the air as the past 2 storms.)
@@PanicLedisko Thank you so much for your kind words
This kinda makes me remember about that one creepypasta where people got infected in a campus and dying cuz of the fungal
I love how you just leave Onna in the bathroom immediately after telling her you'd call the cops for her. Then you walk outside and leave Hugo in your house alone
Hugo after you leave the house: bro, thanks for house.
Pretty sure it's implied you're infected in this ending. Your character immediatly start going somewhere high, finds the sight of the city covered in fungi "beautifull" and the word beatifull is in red, which is the color of the infestation.
I like how the three NPCs give you small hints right before they flip. The health control dude is most obvious. Onna stands and watches, and Hugo talks about his dog.
Onna just moves to Spore City, Portugal for the coffee spots.
Bro Portugal is not part of Spain 😭 💀
@@scientistmilorad9735 I mean, not politically?? But geographically both Spain and Portugal reside in the same peninsula. So, pretty damn near from each other.
@@AaronC.The iberian peninsula does include spain and portugal yes, but Milo was annoyed that spain and portugal were treated as the same country. Spanish and Portugese are different languages so it’s not very easy to lump them together-it’s a bit like saying Germany and The Netherlands are the same country because of proximity. No one’s really going to be happy about it.
@@AaronC. Yeah but bro said the spore city is in Portugal and the game is clearly happening in Spain.
@@baydiac Exactly bro
This almost looks like the sequel to that one game where you're infected by spores/mushrooms and you're a celebrity in the world of being able to transplant celebrity organs to yourself!
I was thinking the exact same thing! I wonder if the developers might know each other? Or maybe they inspired each other or something
I actually just finished rewatching that one an hour ago. My thoughts exactly
What is the name of the other game?
@@MrPiksalIdolize
@@MrPiksal2 months ago on his channel
Realistically a door wouldn’t protect you from spores, unless you like tape it and create a Seal
Yea neither would windows. It would be pointless to even try to survive especially since they would get all over your skin the second you go outside. Iv had spores on my hands for like 5 days despite repeated scrubbing, the smell doesn’t leave
Would Flex-Seal work? Or do you have to saw a boat in half first?
@@yyeezyy630how did you get it off?
maybe the spores function like vampires and need to be invited in
I mean in the ending he seems to act like an infected out of no where, so I kinda assumed he did get infected by spores going through
This is really good. The "YOU FUCKED UP" frame where she's staring at you in the window is a really good touch. I'd love just a series of games like this with different threats and puzzles and fail conditions.
Make it.
A somewhat similar game series would be Don't Escape, I highly recommend the entire series.
@@pinkfurret6245 Don’t Escape is Definitely one of my top 10 favorite games. I agree, people should definitely check it out.
no u@@ombra711
You can even see a mild red glow from her eyes
Manly didn't say his signature "anyway" at the end. He must be infected with spores!
It's always who you least expect...
Hey man, im outside. Can you let me in real quick? I lost my car keys inside of your home.
I've never met you before, how on earth did you get YOUR car keys into MY house?
@@AmericanRatWomanThis is the plague control department, stay inside and refuse entry to any individual requesting so.
@@AmericanRatWoman oh.
I'll come back after meeting you.
Funky spore storm regularly sweeps nation. An interesting concept. A fungal spore that makes you socialize and paranoid, sounds like social media lol. I bet in the end where you survive the night, the person announcing that it was safe got infected themselves, cause the MC didnt call the cops for onna and went straight to a familiar high place.
Yeah. I like the game, not so much the ending, at least as somebody rooting for a happy ending for the 3 characters. It's just real shady... Though to be fair, it's an ending where controls taken out of your hands.
He should’ve still called the authorities though. (At least just to make sure) If I was in a situation like that, I would double check just in case.
Yeah I'm thinking the announcer got infected as well for the MC to conveniently forget about both their new friend chilling in their living room and their love interest currently barricaded in her bathroom, and opening the front door probably got Hugo infected as well but ig at least the neighbor probably didn't hear the announcement and is probably fine until the next storm. Still rip those two though, seems like a no win scenario
@@discordiacreates6669 yeah I'd wait at least a day so there's time for authorities to clean stuff up and deal with infected
@@weirdbookshelf49 I would as well, assuming I didn't get infected, which... Sounds much easier said then done in this story's situation tbh. That and the basement being a major flaw in the MC's defense and us not knowing if Hugo shut the door with the broken lock behind him, honestly infection for these characters was only a matter of time. Stories like this do make ya wonder how you'd handle such a situation in real life though... and ik my first priority would be putting plastic over the windows because I know better then to trust the seals around here, though unfortunately in the game's situation we likely don't get any info on the new development so it might not be survivable in the first place since it may potentially have a delayed activation that would explain the "good" ending seeming so abrupt since the storm... Might've started earlier then was announced as well
Seems like there's no good ending here. The narration on the ending after doing all the correct steps leads you to a high point in the city, and you go there, despite making a promise to call the authorities to help out the girl, and you're clearly absent minded, heading to a high place for no reason, most likely wishing to bloom.
Maybe the state of the streets and looking at the peephole again and seeing nothing was actually not an oversight, but your mind hallucinating? Also, the notice that the spore was over and it was safe to go outside already is also probably being done by someone infected, a storm of spore even if it stopped, would still have the spores that have fallen all over the place be an issue for a good while.
You also have red text on the word Beautiful, they mentioned the spores were adapting so the manual might've been outdated and the whole city is doomed.
If Ray, the goverment guy that tries to go inside were an official, then yes, the entire city is doomed already.
probably some living plant like spore that throws spore fruits or a strong odor spore to make it spread by itself even after sporestorm and since the city is completely covered then yeah its not safe to go outside
@@ManlyBadassHero Tells me the Onna infection ending is the best one. At least you can bloom together. It's a cute way to go, glass shards notwithstanding.
Beautiful, even🍄
@@EsShinkai02naw
honestly, hugo is probably the chillest intruder.
also cute
@@sha.kke1 🤨
@@viciousbee9151 Yes, he's a cute emo boy
@@sha.kke1we think alike
@@floatingfroggytbh onna is pretty cute
*Stage two: Uncontrollable desire to socialize.*
Alright then. You convinced me.
Anyone who knows me: "yep that's infected alright"
Wow! I am immune to infection.
omae wa mou shindeiru
Extroverts: 👁👄👁
ayo, hoshiguma pfp, nice
This totally feels like they made an analog horror videogame almost. Especially the opening sequence, that emergency notice is extremely indicative of analog horror
We took heavy inspiration in other analog horror media. Glad you liked it!
@@DeltaCatStudio The beginning reminded me heavily of the mandela catalog!!! Well done! Also so sorry I keep responding to your comments, I'm sure I'm prolly blowing up your notifications, sorry!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤
@@DeltaCatStudio that’s so cool honesty. Good work bro
Manly: “Is this an early computer era where they were expensive?”
Also Manly: *Talking on a rotary phone*
"I dont care who the IRS sends, I'm not touching grass during a spore storm."
As a spaniard, that "Spain's Plague Control Department -1987-" took me so by surprise I only really processed it when Manly said "Uh, Spain" lmao Going to the itch io page and seeing one of the devs is catalan, though, was even more shocking. It makes me really happy to see more and more devs from here!!
Gracies pel comentari!
Spaniards rise up 🇪🇦
Same here lol, didn't expect this game to be made in Spain, but I'm happy it was! 🇪🇸
You would love Valle Verde. I thought this was connected because it also has spores that rain from the sky.
Ikr
The good(?) ending is rather bittersweet. I am genuinely disappointed that as soon as the broadcast was announced to declare that the spore storm was over your character immediately went outside without calling the authorities to let Onna out of the bathroom. The lack of all endings in the title of the video is also rather concerning, considering that some of the side effects of infection are an uncontrollable urge to socialize (and you seem to be do a rather decent amount of talking with the people who are survivors(?)) and hallucinations, followed by a need to get somewhere high. This, coupled with how the game did not note how Hugo was already inside when you become infected makes me think that the game has a punishment mechanic for conversing with the other people, especially with how the spores are only 4 microns and there is definitely more than 4 microns between gaps in the doorways. If this is the case you may be able to talk with Onna due to conversations being through the phone.
Thank you so much for the constructive criticism! This game was made in just a week as we wanted to submit it to the Spooktober 2023 game jam. We're taking notes of your suggestions and we'll try to fix all the issues the game currently has.
@@DeltaCatStudio Haha I knew it!! I had a feeling this was for a jam, but honestly you couldn't tell!! You've put so much amazing work into this!! You are extremely talented! Well done sweetheart!!!!!
I think the game couldn't have ended any other way-- houses aren't air tight in the first place, so it's really just a matter of time before the spores get in. (I assume the air had less quantity of spores in the past two storms, which is how people survived at all.)
That said, I did wish for a good ending, even if being doomed is the realistic thing to happen. And it's true that the game could have acknowledged Hugo being in the house, if you did let him in early on. I suppose the ending feels like nothing you did mattered-- but it's true, isn't it? In the end nothing would have mattered short of building air-tight houses with a constant clean supply of oxygen from somewhere.
@@DeltaCatStudioyay
@@aquablast3155The issue is really only in the ending, where it felt too abrupt. It would be better if MC already showed symptoms even before interacting with anyone, and/or show some signs of spores infiltrate the house despite doing the right choices. That way it would feel "yeah it's inevitable" instead of "what the fuck MC you were doing so well".
as a spaniard, I can conform, we regularly get storms, but instead of water, they carry an exotic form of cordyceps fungus
Cataluña momento
The Last Of Us Moment
The ARG was well handled and a neat way to test the player so you can help Onna, the art was nice, the bad ending/game over was perfectly disturbing, and it was smart to have this be "normal" for the setting. A good time all around.
Except the complete lack of a good ending
This isn’t an ARG at all…
Closing in on 2 Million. Keep it up kid!!! Liked and shared*
I love how you’re talking to him like he’s a toddler
@@s7z7gyi like how you get zero bitches
The conversation with that agent guy is hilarious. The spore is like "Wtf do you want now? Let me in! LET ME IIIIIINNNNNNNNN!"
About the ending... I'm pretty sure you were infected as well in the end. I mean, the houses won't be air tight anyway. And would the spores really just disappear by themselves? ... although you did supposedly survived 2 spore storms already.
Alternatively, the announcer was infected, so they told everyone to come out even though it isn't safe yet, and that's what nailed our character... although your character seemed cautious enough, so kinda strange they'd just go out like that, if they weren't already infected by that point.
Either way, it's interesting, even if it's practically just one ending.
You were doomed from the start.
The devs could've justified the sporestorm blows over so quickly by saying the mycopsychosis fungus can't withstand UV light aka sunlight, and both the spores and fungal mass die quickly when exposed to them. A bit cliche, but convenient considering this hypothetical fungus doesn't care much about humidity or temperature.
This would also justify the setting being so dreary: sporestorms can only happen at night or under very cloudy weather.
Imo MC isn't infected, the devs just rushed the ending and reused the pictures to save time/because they didn't know what to do for a good end. The MC doesn't care about Hugo nor Onna despite your actions, which make no sense.
5:13 spots the Jake plush but not Finn the pillow on the bed
Ahh, I love spore or mushroom horrors. Such a nice thing.
Mushroom infection horror I believe is often inspired by a kind of mushroom Cordyceps. A mushroom that infects insects specifically. One of the key things of Cordyceps is late state infection makes the insect want to go somewhere high to latch onto a surface, then when secure, the mushroom will grow out of the head to spread its spores to more unsuspecting insects. There are many types of this mushroom species, each catered to different insect species.
As a mycologist your right, however spores are microscopic they are designed by nature to get through small spaces. They stick to everything and you’d never survive in a mushroom horror scenario. You wouldn’t even know you breathed in spores until you had symptoms
@@yyeezyy630 In real life, you wouldn't. But this is fiction.
I liked it, it was pretty good. I don't mind the ending in itself but i do wish the game was a bit longer overall, so many spooky situations could have been done in this scenario to set up more of a mood, but the player immediately finds lots of other people and the experience becomes something else entirely. Hope to see more from the developers.
Thank you so much for your kind words! It was a bit rushed because this game was made in under a week to be submited to the Spooktober2023 GameJam. Glad you liked it!
@@DeltaCatStudioCant wait for it when you guys are Finnished with it
It’s awesome right now
It’ll be even better later imo !!!!!!!
@@DeltaCatStudioOMG man 1 week awesome work tbh, i am really amazed and expecting the full realse, steam or where You put the Game ❤
I really like the interactions with Hugo they seem much more human than the convos with Onna.😊 It was also cool how everyone, at the end of the day, was just trying to survive and go on with their lives instead of freaking out and making dumb choices. 😅
I do agree
Ironically, you learn more about Hugo if you DON'T let him into your house. I was disappointed at how his dialogue inside your house was quickly exhausted and he never did anything new. He doesn't even react to Ray or infected Onna barging into your house or you suddenly deciding to leave the house at the end. Like you would think he'd have his own opinion on his life being threatened.
It seemed like they tried to give Hugo a personality, but for Onna, her personality was being attractive and being attracted to the protagonist.
@@Cog_NomenHugo is the real homie
@@Cog_Nomeni mean it's the easiest personality trait to give female characters you are too lazy to write
Did manly just guess the health authorities would burn down your house?
Would you not burn down a house infested with parasitic fungus growing in it that wants to use humans as hosts?
@@discordiacreates6669 they played it off as if they would help you lol
To be fair, they explicitly said that there's no cure-- and then it beeped or glitched, and then said that one should call them if anyone is feeling these effects. I almost think that they were trying to backpedal-- if there's no cure and they want you to call them anyway, there's really only one thing it could mean.
@@kuhtheakumin yes and would anything else get people to comply? Ngl I think Manly had the right idea with suggesting fire since infected individuals will relentlessly pursue the company of uninfected individuals and houses aren't really designed for sealing individual spaces, in fact, bathrooms especially are designed to be the opposite of air tight to prevent serious accidents so a breach of the outer defences is a near guarantee of infection if the creator(s) of this infection know this
@@aquablast3155 yup, we also know the infection makes people obsessed with seeking company so it might also be a redirect. If you're infected, they will come to you, all you have to do is ask... So in a way they're purposely painting a target on themselves and it's probably in an attempt to sate that desire long enough to neutralize the threat and keep infected people from targeting those without proper gear to survive their presence. Kinda shitty but I can't say I'd handle the situation any other way when the infection is so rapid and at that point it's all about damage control and saving what few lives you can, and if lying and lulling the infected into a false sense of safety so they can attempt to take them out before they explode then ya do what ya gotta do
Really interesting story, I do like that it's time based without any kind of visual timer.
But one thing I'd like to say something on, if you're creating a game and you know that you're having trouble with spelling, please let one or more people proofread your text. Or even if you don't have problems with that, let someone proofread it anyway, some spelling mistakes can always slip through. Especially in a visual-novel which is usually 95% reading. In the bad ending, anytime I saw "Pupper Master" I just couldn't stop thinking about cute dogs for almost the entire rest of the game, which is not really something you usually want for your horror story.
Who wouldn't want to be a pupper master🥺? Glad you liked it!
To be fair, the developer did this game in under one week!
Despite the mistakes, it's actually a pretty darn well-made game considering the time crunch! They said in different comments that they'll update the game soon so I'm looking forward to that!
@@thewxtchsheart Hello! The update is already live in case you want to play it!
NGL, the "one spore" thing, kills the immersion pretty hard. Yeah, m8. Your house ain't air tight. And by specifically saying it's hard to filter, how TF are the insides of houses safe then? Further, if the basement is compromised and there is a gap to the basement under the door then the whole house isn't safe. Because one spore.
Theoretically speaking so long as your main doors and windows were sealed well enough (even just stick a towel under your doorframe) and you either didn't turn on your heating or had a HEPA filter rated for under 4 microns, then you'd probably be pretty safe, the spores would mostly just float down or with the wind so they wouldn't really be getting into the gaps in your basement and then floating right back up into your house unless you just had a REALLY bad draft.
The real issue is what exactly is the life of the spores, because if they don't die the second they hit the floor than basically everything outside of your house is gonna be a biohazard zone for a long ass time, even opening your door could kick up some old spores right up into your face, and at 4 microns they're gonna basically be a nice film of dust on pretty much everything.
Same. Also, they had this happening for quite some time apparently, but all the houses are just normal-ass houses. No barricades, no easy way to cover the windows, the main character just nonchalantly commenting how his basement is not secured while people who might lose their mind and break in roam the streets... Apparently it is a well known event but nobody takes it seriously (getting 'rona response vibes, but Covid dind't make you literally explode into mold in a matter of minutes)
possibly you can be infected without showing symptoms as you can either be a carrier or the infection is latent for far longer
It is also just sorta hard to believe that any infectious disease could be that potent. Though I guess that is what makes it horror.
I think they went with the single spore thing because in Halo, a single flood spore could destroy a civilization. And, considering the potential spread of that one, that alternate Earth could easily be destroyed by a single spore.
Reminds me of another game you played "The Snow of Basidia", after seeing that I wish they would have drawn out the infection period a bit more. Basidia did a great job showing how horrible getting infected was with the view slowly blurring as NPCs slowly became more and more delirious, in comparison the player characters death in this wasn't as impactful, with them briefly panicking then cut to bad ending.
Outside of that the art was nice and them having an IRL website to reference was cool, it added a lot of intractability.
"Oh god I let a goth in here.."
Had me on the ground crying
"she's gonna die." i love the mood manly gives
_Day of the Triffids_
One of my favorite movies - spores from a meteor shower make everyone blind and chaos ensues. It's the things we can't control that make us panic. I enjoyed this game - the art style was cool, the extra web page with 'instructions and info was a nice touch. And the timing factor was interesting with answering the phone calls from Onna.
The book is excellent (by John Wyndham, if anyone wants to check it out). We studied it in school. The great thing, which I don't know was carried over into the film plot because sometimes they simplify, was that the blindness was _unrelated_ to the triffids - we already had those, and were farming them intensively for their plant oil, despite their deadly stings that people had to cut off manually and already caused a bunch of deaths per year. The blindness just allowed them to escape and humans got owned by a situation of their own making. I love sci fi with satirical bite.
@@suitov Oh the book was quite different from the film. Also one of the characters didn't even appear in the movie that was more central to the book. But I read it a long time ago lol.
The film had the blindness be a direct result of the meteor shower that released the triffids and spores. The triffids still grew extremely rapidly and were mobile like the book. Both film and book were cool classics.
This really reminds me of that one manwha called Sweet Home, which kinda has the same premise. Which infected people wanting to start a whole new race of people. Really good manwha and messes you up
Agreed. The netflix also did it for me...
@@elpatoempatado2404wait they made a Netflix series of it?!? How the hell have I never heard of it before?!
The webtoon was so good I loved it
@@linenatharbor7726its awful. Do not watch. Wasn't even good to hate watch.
@@linenatharbor7726 mhm, watched it in 2021 or 2022. It was good.
The plot isn't 100% the same as the original, though. But, from what I'm able to remember, the ending was rather interesting. So if you have netflix, maybe give it a watch?
Man, for some reason this game actually got me scared. The music, the drawings and the dialogue got me looking behind my back to see if anyone’s there.
This game is solid. I feel like if the creator added and finished up a few things (like that true ending that felt more like a game over, interactions with hugo, e.t.c) we could be seeing a really good horror game.
The devs actually in the comments now, apparently this was a submission for a game jam, so now they’re working on fully developing it
this game looks really interesting, i think the analogue horror aspect works very well!
I'm not really a scared of horror person but these kinds of ,,Incurable, inescapable" ,,Wait for the inevitable demise" kind of creepy scene is legit super creepy and eerie especially with how quickly someone gets afflicted
I wonder what the next type of "infection" would be after the recent string of Mushroom/Spore related infections in horror games?
I reckon memetic infection is an untapped source of horror. Something like Pontypool or the recent Color out of Space movie are good examples. The role of misinformation in many current political climates provides a pretty compelling backdrop to the idea of malevolence being spread through words, ideas, or experiences is pretty horrific.
Prions are another horrific pathogen that hasn't really been fully explored in horror. Look up something like fatal familial insomnia or mad cow disease. The basic explanation is a "wrong" protein can cause "correct" proteins to change to match. There's no way to stop this process because you can't attack or isolate proteins in the body like you can viruses or bacteria. Symptoms can take decades to manifest, and invariably involve acute neurological symptoms and a painful death. A world where everyone is infected with a prion and the first people infected are just starting to develop symptoms would be an incredible backdrop to a horror setting.
@@MangoJester That prion concept would not be a "horror where protagonist trying to survive" but a "horror where protagonist panic, lament, and suffer until their inevitable horrible death".
Ngl, the concept is great and solid but i personally dislikes a horror where we will always died in the end.
"Has anyone survived mad cow?
Once symptoms occur-first depression and hallucinations, and eventually dementia and loss of motor control-patients survive about a year. Four people are known to have contracted vCJD through a blood transfusion from an infected donor.21 Des 2016"
Lmao, the symptoms is the exact same as the spore storm
@@vanzeralltheway8638imagine a prion virus
@@MangoJester Prions scare THE FCK OUTTA ME!!! They're up there with parasites too man. But your comment about the Prions reminds me of that kinda dating sim game Manly played with the Brain Eating Amoeba (yet another thing that terrifies the fck outta me.. And the amoebas are only getting worse and worse because of the increase of temperature in the water)
ringworm.
My little brother passed away 1 week ago and he always used to watch your videos on family tv, life is so cruel man, one day a kid is watching his favourite UA-camr and next day he is admitted in hospital
so sorry to hear that man. hope things get better
I honestly want to Manly play the update they'll put out after the Spooktober Jam.
Noted more stuff and endings with Hugo and Onna.
Plus info about the storm and fungus.
That's pretty much what we all want, so I'm excited.
You know what's fascinating/horrifying? The "roots" of mushrooms, mycelium, are nearly identical to human neurons when viewed side by side under a microscope, right down to the rate of electricity traveling through them. There's currently a project going on where scientists are trying to use mushrooms and stem cells to create human limb analogs and working organs, with surprisingly promising results so far.
The most well known "zombie" mushroom is the cordyceps, where this game obviously takes it's inspiration from including the desire for the host to find a high spot, of which Cordyceps cicadae survives in the same places cicadas do, say New England etc. But that's not quite the worst part. The mushroom actually takes over more of the nerves in the limbs of it's host than in the spine and brain area of insects, meaning that if you got infected you would very much remain an individual with your own thoughts and feelings, able to rationalize and empathize with your victims, as the fungus plucks at the nerves controlling your muscles like playing a concert harp, leaving you trapped in a body that no longer belongs to you, while being VERY much aware. Being forced to go after friends or family, the innocent, children perhaps, and not being able to do a thing about it, until eventually your dried husk remains months or years later, as an alter to torture and madness, waiting for some poor fool to come...
just...
a little...
to...
close...
Sometimes the horror writes itself, Happy October🎃!
I can't help but notice that the backgrounds are probably traced sims 4 screencaps. It's not a bad thing, though. It's just funny to see such recognizable furniture in an unrelated game.
What can we say-- busted ლ(=ↀωↀ=)ლ
OMG that street is totally Willow Creek! Kind of funny since the Sims 4 also has a spore-infection storyline in Strangerville
"She's gonna die"
I keep getting diving to the point of realizing that Manly is the MC of our world
1:39 the national health emergency instructional jumpscares you. Someone at the Plague Control Department had too much fun making it.
Interesting game mechanics, a different genre from the normal horror games
I was on the edge of my seat with each interaction. Praise for the writing, it really packed the suspense.
Oh man, I wonder if there's been any recent world wide event that required people to isolate and stay inside to not get infected that might have inspired this.
Good idea, but kind of feels like whoever made the game got bored halfway through and rushed the endings. There's a lot of buildup that seems to rather suddenly stop. Onna goes from fine to suddenly infected from one phone call, the agent guy comes back a few times and then just stops, and Hugo comes in and nothing happens with him. I guess it was better to get the game out then let it go unfinished, but it didn't leave much of an impression.
Thank you for your constructive criticism! This game was made in under a week to be submited to the Spooktober2023 GameJam so we had limited time, hence the slow duration of the game. We're taking notes to fix the game, now that we have more time!
@@DeltaCatStudioOh nice you guys are the dev's? Gonna butt in and say: wonderful art style and story - the bigger criticism really is that there isn't more haha!
Poor Onna she just got left behind
lately I feel like everyone is into mushrooms either in horror games or foraging...
I'm pretty sure the last "announcement" was a hallucination. The first one had voice acting and animation but the last was barely mentioned. Right before that, you hallucinate the streets as perfectly fine even though they're covered in red mold. The knocking could either be the agent's last attempt before becoming Beautiful or a hallucination as well. The desire to socialise is covered by talking to Hugo and Onna.
If I had to guess the shoddy door and ventilation in the basement coupled with a gap in the door is what infected them. Although it would be nice to know what happened to Hugo and Onna I kind of like the ambiguity.
It could ALSO be that in the "bad" endings you are hallucinating Onna and Hugo breaking in/looking like that. And may be hallucinating Onna's paranoia about the infected breaking in. If the infected DID try to break in there would be more measures against them. I think Agent is the only guy legitimately infected and that is the extent of them "breaking in."
Also, the Agent is the only one who doesn't get all "moldy" when let in, in fact he has almost no signs at all. The signs of an infected never list red eyes or signs of mold etc. The only time that's a symptom is during the blooming phase.
What if the real spore storm were the friends we made along the way?
PA system: To all citizens its safe to go outside and go to high places, you can trust me Im Ray, see here's my identification card.
Little did Ray know, no one could see his ID.
This storyline has more logic holes in it than the protag's home.
Actually, this is one of the more unsettling games I've seen you play in a while
i like the ending. either MC is weird or has been at step 2 for a good duration of the game.
severe fear of everyone except onna who you are very much wanting to talk with. the bloodshrooms disappearing if it's not an oversight. magical god voice telling you it's safe. you're not afraid of the obvious infected ray but instead entertain talking with him at that.
It's kinda dumb to have stage 2 being paranoia becuase everyone would be paranoid with the 100% of infection if you are outside and 99% infection if you even like are in the same room with someone infected. I'd be very paranoid too not wanting to get infected anyway possilbe, it's not paranoia if it's logial, it's like saying you have a phobia someone wanting to kill you, yeah no shit I fear that but it's not a irrational fear.
@@ALE199-ita fairly sure that's the point. A psa to seem like it's survivable but you're doomed anyways so having rational fears will make you ignore any irrational thoughts
the aesthetics of mushrooms, foraging, cottagecore etc are very popular right now so that probably had an effect on the indie horror scene and that’s part of why we’re seeing so many fungus takeover type games. I’m sure the popularity of last of us also played into it
I couldn't take Ray seriously at all, interactions with him just remind me of TomSka's "May I Come in" video lmao
edit: awe poor Hugo, now that I've watched the whole thing, _any_ interaction with the infected reminds me of TomSka's video
"Alcohol removes the infectious capability of the spores"
So Demoman is invincible to spores.
Scrumpy is the best medicine
@@MTF_operative "Aye, me bottol of scrumpeh!"
Cheeers mate
Really love the game, and I hope it will be more developped on. While it has some flaws like frequent typos, I like how the game is pretty much forcing you to "study" the sporestorm by visiting the government's physical site, which gives advices on how to fight back against the plague, especially with helping Onna. I can imagine sequels could happen, where different strands of the spore appears with different properties, so you will have to go to other pages or find other details on the web site to guess which type of spore you are dealing with, and which measure you need to take to not get infected. I also like how the infected have this sort of obsession with becoming beautiful, which forces them to search for a high place to bloom.
I think my only problem is the ending. It feels kind of disappointing that, after all we did to save ourself, the ending has implications that the protagonist did get infected without realising it, and went to a similar, high place. In any case, I hope to see more of this world and universe.
I’m pretty sure the “hang there” poster with the kitty is the reference to Subnautica because of the “hang in there” kitty poster which looks almost the same
I think my only thing with stories like these is that I would like to see more games or any entertainment field have a scenario that is apocalyptic but there's still hope. I also see this with ARGs where the monsters are so crazy that at a certain point im just like "we'll there isn't much point in watching it besides for the scary monster jumpscare or lore-drop!" Having a little bit of hope and a clear sense that humans are actually fighting back, even if it's slow and small but successful, would be really nice. I would've loved if this game had a 'everything is hell now but out of thousands, me and a few others finally managed to survive...' ending, even that gives hope. I think the "world is screwed" scenario would work really well if every single form of entertainment didn't ride that idea to death 😹
imagine someone being immune to the spore storm due to your complete introvert deep into your core
Thank goodness we’re not ants! Cordyceps is well known for influencing their host ants to venture to high places before blooming.
This feels like an SCP-001 proposal.
I feel the boom of disease based horror stuff comes both from the last of us TV show, as well as c/19.
Mushrooms as enemies is a horror trope as old as time and I love it every time. This one was a very interesting take that I enjoyed! The atmosphere was nice, and sound design ESPECIALLY shined. I love that they made a full on booklet too
It must be absolutely terrifying trying to survive something like this
Yea I’m a mycologist and there’s no way to survive unless you have a air filter and bunker. I haven’t grown anything in a week and I’m still covered in spores. I shower twice a day to, the meaty spore small is still there and they are microscopic so I know they are on me
yes, fire the cure to everything, cold: fire, Arsonist: fire, Annoying people: fire
Those mind control spores/parasites/ect in nature being applied to humans is always fun for horror.
There's a fungus that targets flies, which then makes them go somewhere high where they then take a "death pose" as they cling to where they are, wings spread away from the body, and then white spores start to bloom from their body.
If the spore lands on the fly, especially their wings, they're screwed and the cycle begins again. :')
Hey Manly, this game got an update adding in 5 proper endings to it. Thought I mention it in case no one else has and you wanted to get a proper conclusion of the story and make a video on it.
avoid that last interaction with the "government agent"; i think you're locked in for a bad end every time you see red text
Something Manly didn’t notice: every time Onna was on screen, her pants went down more.
No they didn’t lol
Y'know, that announcement at the start is pretty _curious_ , isn't it. The way it glitches out the longer you watch it... almost like your character is hallucinating.
The art is pretty nice tbh
It’s always interesting to see a story where the big, horrible sickness is like… common. Mostly understood and warned against.
There has to be a zombie story like this sometime. Something akin to Walking Dead but there isn’t an entire collapse. It’s a regular part of life now, and it’s handled in a mundane way. The same way it would be in real life.
Cargo (?) did something like this with the AUS government dropping self-extermination kits to give people who knew they were done for a way out. I imagine a world with the Wildfire Virus for instance would do something similar. Hospitals would have armed guards for the chance of dead coming back. People are armed and educated in how to dispatch the dead. Sometimes bigger outbreaks happen but trained police, national guard, etc are able to quell it before it becomes a world ending situation.
Imagine a world like that, where people are encouraged to carry firearms when out hiking for example. Because the chance of meeting a zombie is possible and you’re expected to exterminate it. Issues such as homeless deaths are now life threatening to whole neighborhoods potentially. Fatal accidents now have the added effect of creating a zombie from the victim.
The whole “normalized mass illness” could be a super interesting new way to so horror stories. I think with the way Covid happened and now is treated - this new sub-genre might gain some legs soon.
This was the dead rising movie, infected take meds to not fully turn, and zombies are a general thing
When Hugo gets infected it’s sad after we learn that he just wants to go see his cat.
"Actually it looks decent ill be honest" My mans after that sporussy WOOOOOO
The way that manly was about to say that Hugo was hot
Okay but Hugo and Onno, you have two hands and they both pretty cute!
That annoying feeling when you _just_ washed your car and it begins to rain parasitic spores
Guess its the fungus that infects ants irl, interesting game of what if
I've been absolutely hooked on this game since seeing this video! I absolutely love stuff like this.
I just hope an actual good ending gets added, but it'll probably take a little bit seeing as there's a really small team behind it
I am so unbelievably down bad for Hugo it is unreal
21:26 a heat pump works like a AC unit in reverse... no air is moving around between the inside and outside "unless its the portable units"... only heat energy... its why AC units get cold on one side and hot on the other
Something I don't understand about this is that people don't take extra precautions to prevent getting infected, like full body suits and gas mask or wetting clothes and hanging it over windows and door cracks. Follow some dust bowl rules and at least wear mouth and eye protection, particles can go through closed doors
Edit, I was thinking further of this, all water should be boiled before drinking and people should either be in separate rooms with the doors being blocked with a wet towel or everyone should be in a central area with the whole house having various drapes to catch any stray spores. Like the basement could also be good for strangers if you leave a little secure kit for any wandering person. I like thinking about situations like this. It's funny that characters tend to take these situations lightly. Like imagine if the house was covered in rabid raccons that could crawl through small holes, you'd probably care. It seems to be taken very lightly though with the person immediately going outside to admire the carnage so maybe he or the world is not so mentally stable...
"So how was the last spore storm?"
"Not bad, I got a new boyfriend AND girlfriend."
"What."
"What?"
if youve ever had a fungal infection you'd realize how scary that would be
Aye, the thumbnail caught my attention. Despite the infectious spores, I may be provoked to act...unwise.
me at about the 7:30 mark: "Please say she doesn't die she's super cute please say she doesn't die she's super cute."
Manly: "She's goinna die."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!
This is a decent tale with lots of options. I like that the timer is based on actions instead of a real clock. The only problems I see are as you mentioned, some typos and the wrong version of an image used. For when Onna said she didn't have a PC, it would've been better to blame it on the move. Home PCs being uncommon and expensive and yet home internet is so widely spread that the emergency broadcast would say "go to the website for all the vital info to survive" instead of putting all that in the broadcast makes no sense. But "they haven't sent my computer yet" or "I've been fighting to get my internet installed all month" are perfectly realistic reasons. The latter even happened to me once.
They really did NOT had to make onna look SMASHABLE.