JACKKNIFE

About JACKKNIFE

JACKKNIFE is a visual novel by the solo maker llonelly, entered in the Yuri Game Jam 2025. You play a lonely hitchhiker trying to outrun her past on the highways of rural America. When a charming truck driver named Jackie stops and offers you a ride, it feels like luck: a warm cab, a bed in the sleeper, someone friendly to talk to. But as the snow begins to fall, you sense that your rescuer might be far more dangerous than you expected.

You play by reading and choosing. The story runs to about 13,900 words with nine CGs, and the choices you make send it down different paths. Your character is a woman whose appearance is never shown and whose past is left for you to imagine; there are no pronoun options. The pictures are dark and painterly: a semi trailer jackknifed across the highway, the dim inside of a cab, Jackie's face lit from below.

The horror is slow and personal. The fear comes from being alone with someone who has been kind to you, in a vehicle you cannot leave, far from anyone. The maker warns of blood, death, stalking, manipulation and predation, and says the game is meant for adults, with minor sexual themes but nothing explicit.

It is pay what you want on itch.io for Windows, macOS and Linux, in English. The itch.io page lists this as a prototype. llonelly wrote the first version to practise branching paths, with no plan to finish. Then the comments piled up, and a July 2026 devlog says a continuation is in the works. It suits players who liked Night Drive or Vacation Terminal, short visual novels about trusting a stranger you depend on.

How to play JACKKNIFE

1. Download the game from its itch.io page for Windows, macOS or Linux, paying what you like or nothing.
2. Read the content warning on the page before you start; the game is meant for adults.
3. Click or press a key to advance the story, and pick your replies when choices appear.
4. Save before choices and replay to follow the other branching paths.

Tips

• Pay attention to what Jackie says and how she says it; the story is about reading a stranger.
• Save before each choice so you can come back and try the other paths.
• It takes about half an hour, so it fits in one sitting.
• The page lists keyboard and mouse as its inputs, so there is no controller support to count on.

Questions