Leftovers

Leftovers
https://realmpact.itch.io/leftovers

Leftovers is a free narrative horror game that takes about 20-25 minutes to play. Your mother has ten servings of leftover food, and she wants you to deliver them to the other tenants of your rundown apartment building. As you might imagine, each of these tenants is super creepy.

You can answer the tenants’ questions by nodding or shaking your head, and “failing” the interaction will make you run home to the top floor. Your mother will get progressively angrier each time you return, and you’ll have to walk down all the flights of stairs again. My recommendation would be to set the camera at max speed before starting the game, as this can potentially save several minutes of stair climbing.

The concept of Leftovers is great, but the execution could have been better. This was made for a game jam, so I understand there were constraints, but I think Leftovers could have been much stronger if the developers were able to put more time into the art and sound design. The 3D space of the apartment building is about as basic as it could be. There’s no background music, and there are only two or three instances of sound effects. More than anything, I wish you didn’t have to start over from the top of the building so often, especially since nothing changes between each run.

Still, I had a lot of fun with Leftovers. The hand-drawn 2D character designs are great, and the writing is fantastic. I was impressed by how much story fit into just a few lines of dialog, and I really enjoyed how the individual tenant stories gradually began to fit together into a cohesive narrative. It’s definitely worth playing the game a second time in order to appreciate the story details and foreshadowing. Leftovers stands well enough on its own, but I’d love to see the developers return to the game and polish it into something stranger and gorier and even more disturbing.

Let’s Learn about Gnosticism with Tentacles 💖

Gnosticism isn’t a religion; it’s a term that describes a set of religious tendencies that were common in the ancient world around the time of Jesus. Trade was flourishing, and ideas were being exchanged along the Silk Road. People from many different cultures would congregate in cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, Persepolis, and Rome, and there were all sorts of street preachers and mystics claiming they could do magic. The basic principles of this magic were as follows:

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From this article, I learned that Madame Blavatsky actually lived in West Philadelphia and operated séances out of her house on Samson Street. I thought I recognized the address, and sure enough, her residence was preserved as the White Dog Café. The restaurant was apparently named for Blavatsky’s dog, who would relieve people’s joint pain by licking their hands and knees.

The White Dog Café raised their prices during the pandemic, which sucks, but I’d still recommend at least getting lunch there if you’re ever in Philadelphia. The food is worth the money, and the interior of that townhouse is amazing. My favorite thing on the menu is their homemade vanilla ice cream complimented with freshly baked dogbone-shaped sugar cookies. Oh and I guess the building is haunted maybe.

ETA: I went to the White Dog Café for lunch the day after I wrote this. It's good, but maybe not worth the money. They also redecorated, and the interior is now a generic sort of New American Modern. Me and my friend spent like $75 on two sandwiches and some ice cream, and we did not see a single ghost.