Empire of the Golden Witch
How deep you dig is up to you.
Determining if you've found the truth is up to you.
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This is an Umineko no Naku Koro Ni fangame. Knowledge of the series is mandatory to fully enjoy and understand the game.
This is an Umineko fanwork unlike any you've read up to this point. Taking place in an alternate world -- the extent of which I cannot share here, I'm afraid -- you take control of a woman, sifting through records of a strange database. The smell of coffee lingers in the air. The night is long.
What will she find?
More importantly -- what will you?
The gameplay is simple: all you have to do is dig for the truth. How far you dig, how much of the truth you know -- or, you believe you know -- is entirely up to you. There is no ending, just as there is no beginning. Dig until you don't want to. Theorize. Have someone else play it and exchange notes -- maybe someone's gotten a piece of information you haven't?
When you're satisfied, walk away.
The truth is out there, just as much as it may be in here.
Note: If you are playing one of the downloadable versions of the game, your progress is automatically saved at all times. If you are playing the web version, your progress will not be saved after you quit.
A huge thanks to selkie (@selkie_lynn on Twitter) for the music and art of the game!
Download
Install instructions
If you are unfamiliar with running RenPy games on Linux: simply open the terminal in the game folder and run the 'EmpireoftheGoldenWitch.sh' file!
Comments
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This is the best thing I have ever seen. Holy fuck. This is, like, 4 hours of pure AWESOME and WTF.
Spoilers ahead.
I never knew I needed cyberpunk Umineko.
This logo is so good. Conspiracy wall connections? Wires injected into a brain? Web of Red Truth? The extent of the Golden Witch's empire? How about all of the above.
I absolutely adore everything about this. Well, almost. Except for stiffness with query exact wordings (i.e. "ushiromiya gold" but not just "gold" or "marionette maker victims" but not "marionette maker killings", but that's okay, this kind of thing is a bitch to actually get working smoothly. Also, honestly, don't love the anti-progress vibe in the plot - but it's the Ushiromiya family who are doing this shit, so that's very understandable. Maybe a few more tidbits of information about how space colonization and androids and biotech etc actually improved life a lot would be appreciated. Okay, last nitpick - I would love there to be more than literally one music track. But the one included is very good and makes the game really tense, even if does totally wear off it's welcome and you just have to kill the sound sometimes.
The picture definitely starts to form...
Very hard to put concrete names behind specific things, but the overall picture is rather clear. A Beatrice - probably Beatrice II but could be I - is the core of CELESTE, and a Beatrice is leading the Purgatorio cult (probably III when they are not writing TV plays, but could theoretically be I, or maybe II is playing both sides - text messages, so who knows). The Marionette Maker is Ushiromiya family, looking for more valuable brains to cluster into CELESTE. Kinzo and Eva have been replaced with androids, their minds probably joining the cluster. The guy who shot Kinzo is probably Nanjo's son.
I have no idea what the fuck is up with Jessica, why did Asumu's disappearance leave behind a crazy-ass brain photo car, where the hell is Battler, how did Erika get her "gift" and from whom exactly, how does the database compiler know about the Rokkenjima Incident and George, and what the hell is with Rosa's paramilitary rationalist peacekeepers. And what about that Enemies of Reason photograph session? HMM. Maybe that photographer is a friend of Beatrice III.
Awesome game! I'll admit the open-endedness isn't really for me, but the journey to the "end" was a really unique experience!
Typo thread
(rot13'd against spoilers)
`Wrffvpn`: Anghfuv ~> Angfhuv
`puneerq obql`: "gur vqragvgl bs gur freinag jub vavgvnyyl unf arire orra qrgrezvarq" cebonoyl unf n cvrpr zvffvat
`wsx`: " bafcvenpvrf" vf zvffvat gur p
`trarfvf bcravat`: "fheivirq gur beqre" — gur beqrny?
`naqebvq nggnpx`: inaqrggn
`anfn`: "yrq gb Fcnpr Sebagvre gb ranpg vgf jvyy sbe gur qverpgvba" vfa'g dhvgr evtug?
This was incredible. No other game requires you to be this bonkers in the head. It's astonishing how much it just... completely turns you into the kind of person who has a crazy board with strings and pushpins ranting about how the Rockefellers are secretly lizard people and planned the JFK assassination. That might sound like an exaggeration but I swear to god it is not.
(It's even funnier considering how appropriate this all is for the perspective character...)
And then you spread the madness to me! (I fully concur, this was fantastically crazy and I am going to be rotating it in my head for a while to come)
Thank you! That was exactly the experience I was going for!
Possible bug? https://imgur.com/1Tc2Yal (text is cropped).
Managed to find 62 entries with non-default replies before getting stuck. Posting them in case someone wants them: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gVI5kCvGFe_2q04G3c0LwxY-lYjDSQBg1nZu2F8v2Yw/...
The fact that there is visible progress happening makes me think there should be at least some clear indication on when you exhausted most of the stuff?
Anyway, I have some theories but probably should have been making a timeline of events...
Edit: up to 89 (look like the background updates on each 11 entries). Still certainly doesn't seem final.
Edit 2: rough timeline/theory I cooked up (probably very poorly written though): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M4GTlJVlADGPdpDCYV45gOngQ5lbEK_WMpEOg-KoWRU/...
Thanks for pointing this out! This should now be fixed.
This is amazing! I'm super spooked and each ne info I get makes me want to search more xD.
"Wake up babe new DWaM VN dropped"