Ceasing to be Her Demise

About Ceasing to be Her Demise

Ceasing to be Her Demise was released by the Austrian team chronerion interactive in July 2016 and ends the Fragments of Being Her Demise trilogy that began with A Fragment of Her and continued with Being Her Darkest Friend. It is the longest of the three: the makers give 60 minutes or more of play, and their release note says about 90.

Selina, the young art student of the earlier parts, has moved to a new flat and believes her nightmares are over. They are not. The game cuts between ordinary problems in her waking life, a dark city view from her window and a kitchen with an open fridge, and nightmare scenes drawn in grey with splashes of red: a chamber lined with ribs around a bleeding heart, a skeleton against the wall, a man with a rifle and red eyes, grey strangers with glowing eyes waiting in the dark.

It plays as a classic point and click with one-click controls. You walk Selina around, look at and talk to everything, collect items and use them to get past each problem, in the flat and in the dream. The fear is slow and personal rather than sudden; the story carries on from heavy themes in the earlier parts, including sexual assault and suicide.

The art is hand-drawn pixel art in the style of 1990s VGA adventures, with English and German text and an auto save. It is free in the browser on Game Jolt or as a Windows, Mac or Linux download there. The makers recommend playing the first two parts before this one, and it is best for players who have done so and want to see how Selina's story ends.

How to play Ceasing to be Her Demise

1. Open the game's Game Jolt page and press Play to run it in the browser, or download the Windows, Mac or Linux build there.
2. Pick English or German at the bottom of the title screen and start a new game.
3. Click to walk Selina around and click on people and objects to look at them, talk or pick things up.
4. Use the items in your inventory, at the bottom left of the screen, on people and objects to get past each obstacle.
5. Work through her waking days and the nightmare scenes in between until the story ends.

Tips

• Play Being Her Darkest Friend first: the makers recommend the trilogy in order, and the story assumes you know Selina's past.
• When stuck, look at and talk to everything in the scene again; Selina's comments carry the hints.
• If the Game Jolt desktop client gives you trouble, the makers advise the browser version or a stand-alone download.
• The game saves automatically, so you can stop between scenes.

Questions