Curse of the Juniper Tree

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Two siblings, a cursed tree, and wishes that come with a price.

Platforms: Browser, PC, Mac
Stores: itch.io
Price: Pay what you want
Rated: 4.8 out of 5 on itch.io (37 ratings); 16th overall and first for character designs in the Spooktober 2023 Visual Novel Jam
Length: 30 minutes to 1 hour
Players: 1
Controls: Keyboard: walk the character, press Space at a speech bubble to talk and E to advance the text, as the game shows on screen; mouse for the menus
Made by: tanaw and Lulu Kadhim
Released: 2023

What frightens A dark fairy tale after the Brothers Grimm's The Juniper Tree: two siblings in an isolated, snowbound village, a cursed tree, and wishes that come with a price. The page warns of death, blood, family conflict and disturbing imagery, and the story builds to a chase and a crawl through the tree.
Content: death, blood, family conflict, disturbing imagery.

Curse of the Juniper Tree is a short horror visual novel by tanaw and Lulu Kadhim, loosely based on the Brothers Grimm tale The Juniper Tree. You walk a girl through an isolated, snowbound village, talk to its people and follow her and her brother toward the cursed tree. It is free in the browser on itch.io, with name-your-price downloads for Windows and macOS.

About Curse of the Juniper Tree

Curse of the Juniper Tree is a tale of two siblings, a cursed tree and an isolated village. It was made in one month by tanaw (art, development and writing) and Lulu Kadhim (writing) for the Spooktober 5th Annual Visual Novel Jam in 2023, built in Unity, and placed 16th overall of 206 entries and first for its character designs. The story is loosely based on The Juniper Tree, the Grimm fairy tale published in 1812.

The makers call it a short kinetic visual novel with 2D exploration. Between dialogue scenes, told over painted portraits framed in blue folk-art borders, you walk Ilya through a snowy village at night, past timber houses and bare trees, and talk to the villagers and to her brother Esfir. There are no choices to make: it is about 10,000 words and takes 30 minutes to an hour.

The horror is that of an old fairy tale rather than of jump scares. The village is cut off, the tree at its edge is cursed, and wishes come with a price, as the makers put it. The page warns of death, blood, family conflict and disturbing imagery, and later scenes ask you to run and to crawl through the dark. Players often describe it as sad as much as frightening; one jam rater called its setup creepy, against soothing music.

It suits readers who like dark folk tales and short, beautifully drawn horror visual novels, more than those looking for scares.

How to play Curse of the Juniper Tree

Open the itch.io page and press Run game, or download it for Windows or macOS; the browser version can take a while to load the first time.
Walk Ilya through the village and stand by a speech bubble to talk.
Press the key shown in the bubble to start a conversation and to advance the text.
When the game tells you to run, move at once, then read on to the end.

Screenshots

Curse of the Juniper Tree cover art: a pale-haired young man and a dark-haired girl in a scarf before white bare trees on a deep blue night, with the title in white

Curse of the Juniper Tree dialogue scene: Esfir and Ilya face each other in a blue folk-art frame, with the line Shouldn't you be helping Leyna

Curse of the Juniper Tree dialogue scene: Esfir, a bearded man in a fur hat, Lenya in a headdress and Ilya, with the line I don't want to hear anything more out of you tonight

Curse of the Juniper Tree title screen: the menu beside two small figures standing on a snowy cliff under a great bare tree

Tips

Give the browser version time to load on the first run, as the makers warn.
Talk to everyone in the village; the conversations carry the story.
If a speech bubble does nothing in the first area, talk to Esfir to move on; the makers fixed this in version 1.1.