Mors Terrae

IMPORTANT: This game requires the RPG Maker 2003 software to be installed on the machine it will be played on. I apologize for any inconvenience or bugs, if you have any, please contact me so I can help. A download for RPG Maker 2003 can be found here.

This game came about in concerts. First, in a band concert, I had the initial flash of inspiration (to create a game about the end of the world in which the end is inevitable) while playing Frank Tichelli's Vesuvius, which is featured in the game's opening. However, I couldn't conceive exactly how to do this: should I limit the player to only one town? Could I manage building an entire world which would function?

Then I was at another concert, this time listening to a piece in Latin. During this concert, I was reminded of another concert, in which I sang the Requiem Aeterna by Maurice Durufle. It struck me then that this could be a useful framing device for a story about the end of the world. Thus, Mors Terrae was born.

In Mors Terrae, you play as a nameless, bodiless being, referred to as "traveler". A mysterious figure (who is eventually referred to as "Singer of Songs, Weaver of Dreams"), appears in the nothingness and begins to speak to you. He tells you that everything ends, and that he still does not understand why that scares us, since it is a truth we are born to and live with every day.

He then takes you on a journey, to a small planet struck by catastrophe. A meteor has hit the planet, knocking it back and causing its orbit to slowly decay as it floats out into space. The mysterious figure sticks you into the bodies of eight beings on this planet, at eight different times during the slow end of the planet. In each situation, the music of the Durufle requiem begins to play, and you have until the end of the movement to see all you can see. When the music (the requiem for the planet) ends, your term is over, you leave the body and move on to the next.

The purpose of Mors Terrae is not to defeat the darkness, not to end the apocalypse by some dubious solution. In Mors Terrae the end is impossible to stave off, it is already over by the time you being. What then, is the point of such a game, where no achievement can be made? The answer lies inside the player.

You are the traveler, and as such, you are expected to enter into the game's world as much as you can. Each act of the game focuses on some particular aspect of the end of things, and in each one, there is a lesson you can take away. Even the mysterious figure who wove this story together for you does not know what the lesson is, only that it is there.

The gain you can find in Mors Terrae is personal, it is for you and you alone to decide. The more you immerse yourself and allow yourself to think about the questions posed to you, the more you will discover about yourself and what you believe.

The rabbit hole is deep, my friends, but the fall is worth it.
Enjoy.