In the early 20th Century, bored Surrealists created a parlor game where one would draw part of a figure, fold paper so only a bit is shown, then pass it to the next person to continue. In this way a weird, multipart monster would be created in a game now called Exquisite Corpse.
Now a collective of indie devs working (mostly) in the lo-fi PSX aesthetic have created a chain of free games based on a collective story—with a twist. Each game in C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D. (Chainged) ends with a choice, and that choice feeds into a separate game, creating a branching series of games with their own endings. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this: In true exquisite corpse fashion, developers only knew about games before them in their own branch.
Other branches developed entirely on their own, ending with radically different games on radically different storylines—or not, as the case may be. It’s a case of some weirdos going wild and doing great stuff, as you’d expect from this crew.
Because much of “this crew” are the same people behind and affiliated with 2020’s Haunted PS1 Demo Disc, a free collection of oddities, demos, and one-off projects which our Fraser Brown called “a good way to shine a spotlight on indie dev projects, which might normally fall through the cracks.”
A similar crew followed up with another round of Haunted demos in 2021, titled, uh, Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021.
But the real connection comes from a different experiment, C.H.A.I.N., or Chronological Haunted Anomalous Interconnected Narrative, which was a series of different games linked together to tell one story. Chainged adds the GED—Guide Each Decision—by making Chain’s linear sequence into a nonlinear one.
You can find Chainged for free on itch. Thanks for the tipoff, RPS.