Become Dirt

Our family used to do magic. Years before I was born, our family knew hundreds of spells and used them a dozen times each day. It was easier for them than sweeping dirt from the kitchen floor. Now we only have three spells left.

Become Mechanical: Our most prized spell, one that can turn you into a machine that never tires and accomplishes everything without fail.

Become Dirt: The most useless spell. Becoming dirt can protect you, though, because no one cares about dirt and no one tries to hurt it.

Become Fear: The forbidden spell. You can defeat all terror and pain by becoming the source of Fear itself. It's forbidden because it's impossible to return to being human when you use it. This is the spell my little brother used today.

Become Dirt is a PSX-style 2.5D exploration horror game developed as part of the 2022 TGD Spooky Jam! A young girl arrives home one day to find her home strangely quiet and her brother is unresponsive when she calls his name. Perhaps, she thinks, he's down in their hideout in the crawl space. Perhaps, she considers, he's hiding from their mother and grandmother. Perhaps, she realizes too late, he may have used the family's forbidden spell... and now he has no way to break it on his own.

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About this Version

Become Dirt represents a concept for a narrative-driven exploration horror adventure about discovering a family's dysfunctions, history, and finding a way to survive in horrifying conditions.

This demo version is a brief proof-of-concept that contains examples of the game's story, exploration, aesthetic, and some limited features. The game will end when you interact with the small hatch/door to the basement in the floor of the siblings' room. While this is a short experience, we hope that you find it interesting - we'd love to complete this and fully implement all of our ideas someday, but for now please enjoy this brief teaser and thank you for playing!

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Controls

WASD - Move
E - Interact / Advance Dialogue
Left CTRL - Crouch

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Team Fear Queers

Programming: Parsely + Venera + Jane (BluebsTopCat)
Music: Anonymous
Sound Effects: Anonymous + Runa Liore Winters
Art: Bree + Skye 'silentscarlet' Smith + Taylor + Jane (BluebsTopCat)
Character Design: Bree
Environmental Art: Skye 'silentscarlet' Smith + Vivi-Avi
Writing & Production: Runa Liore Winters

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Attributions

• HPS1 Render Pipeline - https://github.com/pastasfuture/com.hauntedpsx.render-pipelines.psx
• Mansion Asset Pack - https://porkbellygames.itch.io/retro-mansion-assets
• Feverdream Johnny's Impact Controller - https://github.com/FeverDevJohnny/impactcontroller