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Dolorific
/dəʊlə'ɹ̠ɪfɪk/
Causing pain or sorrow.




A man finds himself in a house.



A house that seems to defy the laws of reality.



The man watches his own life unfold in the house.



The man is not alone.



A haunting memory from the past follows him, always watching.



Made for the IGMC 2018, Dolorific is a short horror game. Mainly a walking simulator with small puzzles, Dolorific has you utilizing a fourth wall breaking gimmick to find your way through the house. With a story told without any dialogue at all and heavy surrealism and mindfuckery, Dolorific aims to deliver a brief yet entertaining experience.

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It's short, it's shitty, but it's something

So

I finished Dolorific

Which, yes, is a really rare sight to see from me

But it actually turned out way shorter than I had intended (originally intended to be 30 minutes, more like 10 minutes) but hey it's something

Anyway download will be up either tonight or tomorrow enjoy it you cunts
  • Completed
  • Frogge
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • Adventure
  • 11/04/2018 05:57 PM
  • 10/05/2020 06:39 PM
  • 04/30/2018
  • 32707
  • 19
  • 928

Posts

Pages: 1
No download? Oh, that's because it's a Frogge game. Makes sense.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
author=Muffle
No download? Oh, that's because it's a Frogge game. Makes sense.


Wow rude you come into my house and insult me like this how dare you but yeah no download
author=Muffle
No download? Oh, that's because it's a Frogge game. Makes sense.


It's Divination Coven all over again, oh no!

Jokes aside, I'll be waiting for both games!
I really like this page's CSS. I guess I'm a sucker for minimalism. (I KNOW I'm a sucker for the color black.)

If I were to voice one criticism of the overall presentation?

A house that seems to defy the laws of reality.

This is not actually a sentence (it doesn't have a subject, an object, and a predicate) but I don't care about that. What I do think is probably undermining the spookiness is that this fairly ominous phrase is followed by a...picture of a potted plant? Not only do potted plants tend to obey the laws of reality quite neatly, a pixeled image of a potted plant is perhaps the least ominous thing you might have followed up this fairly ominous phrase with. The overall effect seems, to me at least, a little silly.

Also, is there a reason the man is covered head to toe in rags and hooded cloak? Or would that be a spoiler? I only ask because if what you're going for is something like an ordinary man, like a Harry Mason/James Sunderland type, there are much more fitting sprites in that style. But if he's supposed to look like a medieval rag man/assassin, cool.

Final nitpeck: dolorific is an adjective, not a verb. So it doesn't mean "to cause pain or sorrow", it means "causing pain or sorrow". This is a subtle but important distinction, to us grammarians anyway. No one and nothing can ever "dolorific" someone or something (verb), but a thing can be dolorific: i.e. 'StormCrow's memories of RMN were mixed but ultimately dolorific'.
Between wolfs, bears, and disembodied eyes, this house might need to take a while to build
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Yo yo yo thanks for checking in.

The potted plant is there because it’s one of the driving forces of both the story and the gameplay, as well as the roses right below.

There isn’t a particularly big reason why the man is dressed up like that. Definetly no intentions to be Silent Hill there. The big reason I went with it is because I wanted a main character without much personality, kind of like those first person walking sim characters who have no dialogue, and since it’s in first person, you never get to see what they look like.

Thanks for the heads up about the word Dolorific, I’ll change that on the gamepage asap!

author=bicfarmer
Between wolfs, bears, and disembodied eyes, this house might need to take a while to build


Don’t forget the brain, cult, camp, colorless world, galaxy, town, sirens, bunker, woods, door-
This game looks really nice. I never usually play the full on horror games, but this one looks interesting.
OzzyTheOne
Future Ruler of Gam Mak
4676
Frogge completed a game? Neat
I'm loving the atmospheric feel to this! ^_^ <3 Amazing job! :O

I'm always weak to horror games with vague, mysterious descriptions! <3

We saw the play-through of your game. We loved the concept! Great work!!!
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Thanks guys, glad y’all enjoyed!
The game seems to be missing a load button, which is unfortunate because 5 minutes in I interacted with the tulips for the 3rd? time and the screen turned black except for the top-left corner which showed a part of the bridge I wasn't on. I exited and tried to reload only to be back at the start of the game, which I'd rather not have to redo.

Edit: I tried it again, but the same thing happened. This game is broken =(

(Why oh why did you have to play god with the window sizes? j/k)

Edit 2: I fixed it with Windows XP compatability mode!

In general though, you know my desktop background is less scary than whatever's going on in your game. Also, I play games in full-screen (alt+enter) and the game just doesn't work if I do that (windowed mode still had the above glitch though). Please keep those things in mind for future horror games.
Finished the game. Good atmosphere! The loneliness and strange fantastic things happening, combined with the sound effects were great! The tiny window of vision was a good idea too - even if I wish you'd stuck with darkness instead of window sizes.

I wish there had been more to the story too. The meta parts did nothing for me because I wasn't connected to the game.

On a side note, the "BEHIND" puzzle was a bit obtuse for me. I ended up solving it by brute force.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
author=Miryafa
The game seems to be missing a load button, which is unfortunate because 5 minutes in I interacted with the tulips for the 3rd? time and the screen turned black except for the top-left corner which showed a part of the bridge I wasn't on. I exited and tried to reload only to be back at the start of the game, which I'd rather not have to redo.


This seems to happen sometimes for some reason, and sadly I have literally no idea what causes it. Bic had the same problem in his stream, but pressing esc to bring up the menu seems to fix it for some reason. As for the lack of saving, that was definetly intentional since I did not intend for the game to be beaten in more than one sitting since it's so short. Loading the game also lead to a lot of issues (particularly that if you loaded in a section where the window size was supposed to be small it reset back to the default size). The game originally autosaved and fairly sure it still does, but I sadly had to remove the loading.

author=Miryafa
Finished the game. Good atmosphere! The loneliness and strange fantastic things happening, combined with the sound effects were great! The tiny window of vision was a good idea too - even if I wish you'd stuck with darkness instead of window sizes.

I wish there had been more to the story too. The meta parts did nothing for me because I wasn't connected to the game.


I'm glad you managed to beat it and that you enjoyed it, though! Dolorific was never meant to be a very story heavy game, as mentioned in the description, the story was simply there to give some progression and mystery and was basically just a filler. I even thought of not having a story at all, but I figured at least a bit of explanation as to what was going on could work nicely. The meta parts were also very largely experimental.

author=Miryafa
On a side note, the "BEHIND" puzzle was a bit obtuse for me. I ended up solving it by brute force.


You're supposed to look behind the window that pops up. I was afraid that puzzle was too easy, actually, because you briefly see the figures pop up for a split second before the window covers the screen.
Played this yesterday to get more 2018 game exposure before the year ends. I liked it for what it is, kind of a neat little trip. The window change was pretty neat though it doesn't affect the gameplay that much it did give a very interesting "feel" to the general alternate world mechanic the game had going on. Claustrophobic is what I would describe it as. I didn't really "get" the story but at the same time I didn't really make an effort to, I just kind of went with the flow. Overall solid game made in a month.
I enjoyed the game, but the constant screen changing messed with my game capture... Ended up missing a lot when the window became small and made it so it didn't look good on stream/video.

https://youtu.be/T0NCFIxVVPo

Still had a great time with it.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Oh man, sorry for the trouble with the game capture, but glad to hear you enjoyed it either way!
There actually is a real ending to the game, where once you're sent back to the title screen you can actually move around and enter the door. Thanks for checking it out!
author=Frogge
Oh man, sorry for the trouble with the game capture, but glad to hear you enjoyed it either way!
There actually is a real ending to the game, where once you're sent back to the title screen you can actually move around and enter the door. Thanks for checking it out!

Okay, I went back to play it (this time with the full ending)...

Really enjoyed it, and glad I was able to get a proper capture this time, though not sure why Window Capture doesn't show the dialogue boxes.

https://youtu.be/SIzpNJtU4PE

Also managed to beat it in the same amount of time as the first time I played... Though I fumbled with the maze on the second playthrough even though I breezed through it the first time around =P
Hi frogge bro can I play your game on my YT channel bro
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
author=Muneebsajid
Hi frogge bro can I play your game on my YT channel bro


Sure, let's plays are always appreciated :D
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