It's Not You, It's Your Trauma
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
The world's most prosaic isekai.
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Stuck in an unfamiliar world inside a library that records the entirety of its history through mysteriously magical means, Sammy Baxa must... dust the shelves?
Well, at least she's got a friend to accompany her while she waits for a way back home.
"It's Not You, It's Your Trauma" is a short character-focused game with lots of dialogue and lots of silly faces and just a little bit of drama.
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Content Warnings:
- Implied Child Abuse
- Implied Discussion of Suicide
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MISC:
- Made for "My First Game Jam: Summer 2022"!
- Credits + Controls can be found as a .txt file included in the download
- Socials + Other Projects: https://linktr.ee/concord.and.cliches
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Thank you so much for checking out "It's Not You, It's Your Trauma"!
Download
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Comments
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Love the artstyle for this one, definitely give it a go gamers!
thank you so much!!
Such a sweet little game that certainly pulled at my heartstrings!
thank you so much!! :D
I finally played this game after my friend saw it in my files and said "what is that" and we played through it and it was an absolutely charming little story! Voicing the characters with them was so much fun. Even without that, the comedic timing was flawless. The small hints as to what actually happened build a huge sense of dread which makes the characters and how they talk feel so real.
Cain is a sweet bby and I love everything about this so much.
Thank you so so much!!
It's making me smile like such a goof to know you and your friend were able to have fun voicing the characters while you played through :'] And I'm particularly glad the comedy was able to land, haha
Thank you again :D!!
I want to make it very clear before I say what I'm going to say: I MEAN THIS IN THE MOST POSITIVE WAY IMAGINABLE!!!
This feels like something I would have made when I was a kid.
Maybe not a KID-kid, but like, mid-teens. I'm not that far off from that age (I'm just in my 20s!), but it reminds me of all of the best parts of my projects from that age. A story that's more small in scope, but very character-focused, and emotionally resonant, for that reason. (You even had an emotionally stunted blonde! That's, like, my favorite type of character, ha!) It feels like something that was made... how to say... unabashedly? I'm worried that this is coming off wrong, but I mean this all so, so positively!
I think what I'm trying to say is, it feels like something I would've made as a kid in that it knows exactly what it is and what it means to do, and it does it well. I think a lot of other stories like this pad it all out with a bunch of unnecessary filler, because that's what people think makes a story "good", is when a story is very... thorough, I suppose. (Which is a pattern of thinking I've often applied to my stories, which doesn't always help.)
But we didn't need to know the exact details of the magic system, and the exact details of Cain and Sammy's backstories. We got glimpses of what we needed for the story to be effective and resonant, and our imaginations fill out the rest. That's often the best way to write a story like this. The character writing is very strong, and I just generally had a darned good time with it!
Thank you so so much for checking out and playing my game, and I'm so glad you were able to enjoy it :D!!!
You kinda hit the nail on the head with this being something made by a kid in a way--the characters and the plot featured here are an evolution of one of my oldest fully conceptualized stories, straight from my 12-14 year old self!
Since this was my first go at really going all-in on getting some sort of original game like this really done and out there, I wanted to really indulge myself and have fun with these guys that have been rattling around in my brain for years, haha.
and we love emotionally stunted blondes here LOL
Thank you again!! :'] I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness you've expressed here and your kind words more than I can properly articulate, and I'm, again, so so glad you were able to have a good time with it!! :]
WAAAAHHHH I don't know how I came across this game but it was SO SOO..???? AHHH??? I LOVE IT LIKE SERIOUSLY. I think both Sammy and Cain need a BIIIIIG HUGG!!!!! and the librarian is just chill like that. Anyway GREAT GAME I HAD SO MUCH FUN!! (also I personally relate to Sammy hating on doing the dusting thing, as a person who works at the library themselves I can more than agree it gets SOOOOO boring sometimes (all the time) )
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! i'm so so glad you enjoyed it and thank you again for playing!! :D!! (also i'm so happy the accuracy to real-life library work was present SDJFKLSDF)
NO PROBLEM DUDE THE GAME IS ACTUALLY FIRE
(ALSO YEAH HRKSGVJKVJFVNK)
I just wish the endings were a little more detailed to give proper closure (or well as much closure as possible ) but given is a FIRST Gamejam game I understand why it didn't happen.
10/10 The perfect amount of dust, keep the good work!
Thank you so much for playing my game!!
With hindsight this game definitely plays like a VN more than anything else haha, I had just bought RPGMaker and so wanted to take advantage of it, I guess! In any case, I'm really glad you enjoyed it!!
I was going for a more ambiguous ending-type deal since I have some plans to potentially use these characters in different stories, but I definitely see where you're coming from wrt a lackluster ending, and it's definitely something I'll keep in mind for the future!
Thank you so much again for playing :)