Games likeFriendShapes Feb 10, 2025

Explore the twisted remnants of Leavalley, a place you're fairly sure was your hometown in a mixture of 2D and 3D rendering.

You feel you were drawn here for a reason, though no one is sure why, least of all yourself.

Encounter a variety of denizens, each with their own motives and reasons for staying in the ever twisting Leavalley and its Digressions.

Trade items with TradeMark, receive good advice from Highfive, be stopped from going in over your head by Mr. Dac, and... ask Mícheart Jinsil questions about who and what you've encountered so far (with no downsides whatsoever, they assure you).

Save progress by talking to a Scape - creatures that represent certain locations and feelings, there's Nightscape, Cityscape, Seascape and Snowscape, which will you be saving with?

Digressions are places seemingly beyond reality; labyrinths you must traverse, seemingly random in order, features, encounters and danger levels.

Discover locations where the world's slackening reality has folded in on itself, producing areas that continue longer than they should, twisting and turning with any number of strange things to encounter.

If you can't keep your wits and Sanity about you, stranger sights may begin to reveal themselves.

Try to keep your Focus to make it through the trials in hope of uncovering slivers of memories of the past to help you keep hold of who you are in the present - or at least, who you think you should be.

Between each area are text events - over thirty events can happen in each Digression, based on Luck, which reduces on each lucky thing that happens in your current run of the Digression, as well as your Wellbeing, Sanity and Focus... Will these give you some much needed respite, or will they carry with them even more challenges?

You may find Files which can give background to what's already happened in the world, as well as some studies on the Shapes you may or may not have encountered yet.

Encounter almost 40 Shapes -potentially hostile beings that not only drain your Physical, Mental and/or Focus health ambiently, but may cause damage in various ways as well, sometimes in reaction to your choices.

Each Shape has their own behaviours, depositions and accompanying music, along with various ways to appease or otherwise find a way around them.

With no will for violence on your part, these Encounters are part puzzle, part intuitive, part instinctive, and likely part trial and error.

During your interactions, you may Observe, Gesture, Speak, Touch, Withdraw, use Inventory items as well as rare Context actions - new actions that may become available as the encounter goes on and a opportunity presents itself.

Some of the Shapes you can Encounter:

Blood Shadow: A spectre-like being, body of blood and powered by the neural pain signals of others, never having felt pain as we do, they have no way of relating to suffering.

Huh?Man: Something masquerading in a mascot-like Human Suit made of what you hope isn't stitched together skin, they are very adamant on you following them to their Huh?House...

The Collective: The sound of canned audience laughter follows them wherever they go. They enjoy nothing more than watching every moment of someone's memory over and over again until the preverbal tape of their memory is totally worn down to nothing as they watch every moment of their lives, all the while laughing.

Excogidiomycota: Seemingly fungal life-form that reacts to stimuli they can't quite sense by attempting to grow the necessary sensory organs.

Abandoned Mascot: What you can only assume is a person in a dog-eared mascot suit, though from to a casual observer, they seem to waver between "Mascot" mode and "Not Quite Self-Actualized Corpse" modes of behaviour.

Conceptual Parasite: Just try not to think about it too much The Beckon:Mícheart Jinsil:

Friendly, maybe even overly so, a strange person(?) that insists that the two of you are the best of friends, and seems to know what you've been up to in your wanderings... they always have something to say and tend to turn up when you least expect them.

Intuit how to interact with Shapes to help them realise you're not a threat worth fighting.

These can be as simple as performing actions in a certain order, to knowing what action to make based on the Shape's latest exchange. Make a wrong move though and you may find yourself wiser but in a worse state than you were previously.

Will you find what you've returned for?

Well, that's something I can only leave up to you.

[Contains Scenes and Descriptions of Surreal and Abstract Peril, Blood, Automatonophobia, Mycophobia, Necrophobia, Philophobia, Selenophobia, Developing Sentience, Depictions of overwhelming feelings of Impending Doom, Anxiety Attacks, Losing touch with Reality, Distressed Animals, Obsessive Spiralling and Personal Abstraction]