Passage of Grief
A downloadable liminal experience for Windows
Game Summary
Passage of Grief is a first-person narrative-driven exploration game that immerses players in a surreal journey through the mind of Henry as he navigates a series of liminal spaces. Inspired by "PT" and "Amnesia," this game features randomized, infinite looping environments and physics-based interactions, creating an unsettling and immersive experience.
Story
After experiencing a profound loss, Henry finds himself in a dream-like world filled with echoes of his past. Each environment he explores reveals fragments of memories and emotion. Through physical interactions with the environment, found objects, and collecting key items, players will help Henry piece together his story and find a path toward understanding.
Key Features
- Immersive Liminal Spaces: Experience beautifully crafted environments that evoke a sense of transition and unease, enhanced by atmospheric sound design.
- Emotional Narrative: Follow Henry's journey through grief, piecing together his story through environmental storytelling, voice lines, and memory fragments.
- Interactive Exploration: Engage with the environment through crawling, sprinting, and solving puzzles to progress through the game.
- Dynamic Level Design: Discover randomized, infinite looping pathways and unexpected transitions, creating a unique and compelling exploration experience inspired by "PT" and “The Stanley Parable.”
- Physics-Based Interactions: Manipulate objects and interact with the environment in a manner reminiscent of the "Amnesia" games, adding depth and immersion to the gameplay.
- Non-Euclidean Environments: Navigate through mind-bending spaces that defy traditional geometry and challenge your perception.
- Cohesive Art Style: Enjoy a consistent visual aesthetic that blends realism with surreal elements, maintaining immersion and enhancing the emotional impact.
Controls
Keyboard/Mouse
- WASD: Move
- Mouse: Look
- E: Inspect Item
- Left Mouse Button: Pick Up/Interact
- Shift: Sprint
- C: Crawl
- Middle Mouse Button: Flashlight
- Escape: Pause
Gamepad
- Left Analog Stick: Move
- Right Analog Stick: Look
- "Y": Inspect Item
- Right Trigger: Pick Up/Interact
- L3: Sprint
- Left Bumper: Crawl
- Right Bumper: Flashlight
- Pause Button: Pause
Open Source Soundtrack
About Sojourn Studios
Passage of Grief is a heartfelt project developed by a solo developer as part of the Liminal Game Jam. The entire game was conceived, developed, and completed during the game jam’s duration.
This project explores the depths of human emotion and the healing process after loss. Your feedback is invaluable; a positive reception will encourage continued development and future updates. Thank you for playing, and I hope the experience resonates with you!
Trigger Warning/Sensitive Content
Passage of Grief contains themes and content that may be distressing to some players. This includes depictions of grief, loss, and suicide, as well as intense emotional experiences. The game explores the psychological impact of these themes and may evoke strong emotional responses. Viewer discretion is advised. If you are sensitive to these topics, please proceed with caution.
Contact
If you encounter any issues or have feedback, please reach out to the developer at jamesepierceiii@gmail.com.
Open Source Assets Used
- Rusty Metal Barrier (Low Poly, Game Ready): https://skfb.ly/6WOpu
- heavy step.wav by Vladimir_WN -- https://freesound.org/s/581424/
- Desktop Wallpaper (Courtesy u/Cloesparkle): https://www.reddit.com/r/wallpaper/comments/gv5ntu/windows_xp_error_message_1920...
- Engagement Ring 3D Model by Rijo: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ring-189e7478562b447a9d91b8fcc53d66e6
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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ps. the door mechanics needs help, and the enemy A.I is to high it knew where I was the entire time
Just played your game, check it out - share it if you want to, game was fun
Thanks so much for giving Passage of Grief a playthrough! I just watched through your experience and enjoyed seeing your reactions and thoughts every step of the way :)
Here are some responses to your comments/critiques:
1) As far as the voice acting is concerned, I definitely am not a trained actor haha. This was a solo developed project where I did all of the male voices and my wife did the female voices - in the future I plan on finding professionals for those roles!
2) Regarding the door mechanic, it’s something I plan on revisiting in the future - the floating point math with Euler angles makes consistent opening/closing annoying to calculate and there wasn’t enough time for me to fully sort it out during the Liminal Jam.
3) And the detective’s AI is really rudimentary and should probably get a complete rework (it was my first attempt ever at an enemy AI and is rough around the edges, especially since pathfinding doesn’t play friendly with level streaming in this use case.
4) The twist at the end was also hinted at in the coroner’s report at the detectives office ;)
Thank you so much again for giving Passage of Grief a try! I’m glad it was fun for you, and I really had fun watching!
Your welcome and just know i wasnt talking bad about the game the game is great and i kow you are a solo dev so im not trying to criticize you about your work, i had a blast playing the game dont take anything i say the wrong way
No offense taken at all! It was all constructive criticism and I really appreciate the feedback. This was my first shipped game ever so I fully understand that it can be a bit rough around the edges!
if you have any other games, im down to try or any demo ill play it
Hey man! Just wanted to let you know I released a new horror game for Halloween a few days ago! Here’s a link to it if you’re interested: https://sojourn-studios.itch.io/requiem-1998
This one was made in one week for Scream Jam 2024, and was also submitted to Cosmic Horrors 3 and a couple other jams as well!
This was really a beautiful, emotive experience. I'm new to the liminal spaces community, but Passage of Grief sparked a new interest for me, so thank you for that.
I haven't experienced anything quite like this before - without spoiling anything for new players, the story ties really nicely into the idea of "liminality" - of those moments spent in passing, of the time lost between life experiences. At the same time, a lot of the game feels familiar, somehow, like unexpectedly wandering into a place I haven't been since childhood. The atmosphere you've created with the visuals and soundtrack works in concert with the game design to communicate a real sense of melancholy - that speaks to the power of the narrative, at least in my view. This game makes you feel something, and that's something I wasn't expecting when I started playing it.
This is clearly a real labor of love, and there's real emotion in the storytelling here. A sincere well done from me; this is one of those games you just keep thinking about even after you've finished it. Thanks for uploading!
Thank you so much for the kind words! I’m really glad you found the game to be a good intro to the world of liminal spaces, and it means a lot that the narrative kept you thinking after you finished!
Hey :) So sorry I can't rate your game, because my Windows comp is apparently too old and low spec to run it. Even after I changed the video settings to the lowest, it keeps crashing/hanging, the furthest I ever got is picking the key. And I didn't succeed to run it on my main comp with Linux, neither via Steam Play nor any other emulator. Such a pity, was really looking forward to playing it. Hopefully you publish it on Steam someday, then I suppose they'll take care of the compatibility...
I appreciate your feedback, and my apologies that it’s not able to run smoothly on your computer! Since this was done for a game jam in a short period of time it’s still lacking in optimizations and I’ll be implementing those improvements as soon as I’m able to.
Would you be willing to share your computer specs so I have a data point regarding compatibility with specific hardware? Every bit of info helps and I appreciate it!
Sure, Windows 10: i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 8Gb RAM, NVidia GeForce GTX 680
and Linux Ubuntu 20.04: i7-10875H CPU @ 2.30GHz, 32Gb RAM, NVidia GeForce RTX 2060. The Linux one can run Hogwarts Legacy through Steam Play, so it should be able to handle games of similar complexity.
Thank you and good luck!
Thank you so much for the info! The primary issue is that the game relies on randomly spawned level instances as its core mechanic, making it difficult to bake lighting. Having real-time lights for everything is computationally heavy, in particular with the starting apartment level.
There are fixes which I’m working on and hope to have in soon! I’ll keep you posted when they’re implemented so you can hopefully give it another shot :)
This was a good story, and a good message. I liked the environments and themes. My only complain is that the doors were really jank, but other than that, I had a good experience
Edit: I just tried changing the door opening/closing to use a vector interpolation to be smoother, just in case the movement may have been jerky for you. It should hopefully help a bit!
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Thanks for the feedback! What about the doors was a problem? I made some adjustments to help compatibility with some playtesters, but it sounds like those fixes may have negatively affected you.
Would you be willing to share your PC specs so I have them as a reference?
The problem with the doors was mostly just control consistency. Like I'd be moving the mouse left to open one, and then suddenly I'm closing it again in the same movement. Sometimes they'd just freak out or wiggle. I think the doors needed a hard rule on operation, like "left is always open" and "right is always close", basically making their operation consistent instead of very dependent on your positioning
Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for the clarification. That’s definitely something I can fix! I did resolve the occasional jittering with yesterday’s update, but I can get this fix implemented as well today or tomorrow :)
Handle on the right, opens left. Handle on the left, opens right. This will feel very intuitive and should help future game builds with doors. :D
EDIT: As a heads up - all of the major issues with Passage of Grief should be patched now! I addressed every bug I’ve had reported and it seems to be working smoothly. If you played Passage of Grief before the patch on 8-15-24 and ran into issues, it’d mean a lot to have you try it again with everything major fixed up! No pressure at all, but it’s significantly more pleasant to play now!
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Thank you so much for giving this project a look!
I'm doing live patches and bug fixes as new issues crop up, but the latest version (21) should be fully playable.
Bug fixes performed so far include:
If you downloaded an earlier version and ran into issues, please give the updated version a shot!
Thanks again!
-James