GUTLESS

About GUTLESS

GUTLESS is short interactive fiction released free on itch.io by DOMINO CLUB. It was written and drawn by Hagfish Consortium, with music, sound and editing by Sensory Leakage, and made in Calico with the ink scripting language. Its own tagline is two words: hadopelagic false light.

It opens with a deep-sea funeral. The dead are wrapped in layers of canvas with an amulet between each, pressurised in the antechamber and launched into the water, and the crew watch the bundle sink knowing that is where they are heading. By the bottom of the bathypelagic zone the expedition is already three men down. You play the captain of Charybdis, a man the crew do not respect but cannot get rid of, because his body has been made into the ship's brains and its main source of fuel.

You read the story a line at a time, pressing space to bring up each part and clicking on choices where it branches. Asides in faded text open up when you reach them, sound and music build the pressure, and every scene is stamped with the day, the time and the depth. Dithered black-and-white photographs sit behind the words.

The fear here is quiet and heavy: the weight of water above, the sound of a body imploding behind cloth, a crew drinking through their losses and a captain who is no longer entirely his own body. The makers warn of thalassophobia, alcoholism, light gore and body horror, sexual themes and language, and death.

It suits readers of text horror and players who liked the pressure of Iron Lung or SOMA and want it as a half-hour of prose.

How to play GUTLESS

1. Open the itch.io page and press Run game; it plays in the browser, nothing to download.
2. Click START on the title screen.
3. Press the space bar to advance the text; some lines need several presses to come clear.
4. Click a choice with the left mouse button when the story branches.
5. Read to the end of the voyage; the page gives about a half-hour for one session.

Tips

• Play with sound on: the music and sound design carry much of the pressure.
• Read the faded asides in brackets; they hold some of the worst details.
• Use Restore game on the itch.io page to pick up a session you left.

Questions