10/11/22 - Added the other 3 openings and 7 endings to the code. Added walking animations, got sprites working for all 4 characters!
10/15/22 - Got all openings and endings working! Proofread most of the 16+ notes! Added death animations for all characters.
10/16/22 - Scrapbook works for all 4 chars! All chars have their own speed/movement variations now. Level gen has been adjusted - less narrow paths to get caught in. New gothic fonts for damage. You can now escape the credits screen early.
10/18/22 - Bad endings now have different music and backgrounds. Fixed more minor details with sprites you encounter in the final level.
10/21/22 - Added damage sprites for each character. Added a variety of horror fx - blocks turn blood red, enemies change color, lights go out, little jumpscares etc if you linger for too long. Added the secret note!
10/22/22 - Added transparency to new sprites. Fixed the mysterious puffy dot glitch! Added more sfx, changed pause/unpause sounds. Added global variables to lock up August, the other two characters, and the secret note. Now everything is "???" until you unlock it.
10/23/22 - I've started setting up the itch.io page! I'm still beta testing and tweaking what I've added.
10/24/22 - Tested all characters, everything works! Now I'm just proofreading the notes and making screenshots.
10/25/22 - Release day!!!
7/17/23 - Added multiple difficulties to the game, inspired by Silent Hill 3's Extreme modes. Removed a lot of visual fx that just aren't scary enough to me. "The Jaguar Translator" now plays for the last note before the boss, which helps build tension.
7/18/23 - Started having compile errors, but thankfully didn't lose much. Added new sfx, designed a new logo for the new name.
7/19/23 - Beta tested and tweaked the new difficulty levels.
7/20/23 - Release day. (13 years since my last horror game!) Lights dim and blood effect spreads quicker on harder difficulties now. Completely broke the sfx code somehow, had to rewrite the code to allow for the new sounds. Might add more story content, based on feedback.
Four days may not seem like a lot, but I've managed to change the game significantly in this time. I plan to go back and scrutinize the audio mix some more. I'll make some slight adjustments to the story notes too. But this feels like a good note to end on for now.
Enoch Never Dies may have resulted in a tight game, but the myriad ideas for it stretch back 8 or 9 years. It's actually the result of combining two of my stories about ouija boards, "Leon's Story" and "AMETHYST". Leon's Story served as a premise, while AMETHYST provided an ending and backstory.
I began working on Leon's Story around 2016. The story dealt with my own experiences with a ouija board - which included contacting someone who claimed to be a murder victim. I took that experience and threw in a big "what if?" in the form of a body that shows up years later, confirming the board's claims to the main characters of the story.
I wrote at least three prose versions of Leon's Story, but I was never satisfied with the directions I took enough to settle on an ending. So the project stalled.
Meanwhile, AMETHYST goes back further and has exponentially more notes and story versions. I began working on it in 2013, dealing with concepts regarding contacting spirits with electronic equipment (known in parapsychology as "transinstrumental communication").
Many of the notes are simply fleshing out the technology and resulting lore of the world. The main villain of the AMETHYST is born out of one character taking these ideas a little too far.
AMETHYST actually had a very similar structure to Enoch Never Dies, just two different protagonists. The 3rd and 4th characters in the game both draw their backstory from AMETHYST's main storyline, and the extensive notes I produced while writing ideas for the technology.
I was mostly satisfied with AMETHYST, I just couldn't find a satisfying angle to start off the story. So eventually this project also stalled.
A few years passed with no progress on either story, until I became frustrated with them both in 2021 and decided to finish them once and for all.
Seeing the common thread of ouija boards in both stories, I realized both stories had a problem the other could solve - Leon's Story had no good ending and AMETHYST had no good opening. So I smashed them together and behold, Enoch Never Dies was born.
The main character in AMETHYST's original story is referenced in the "Secret Note" in the game. I could probably return to that older narrative and use it as a sequel, now that I've clarified several parts of the story in the process of making the game. We'll see though.
The initial portion of the game's story is actually based on real experiences I had with ghosts and ouija boards as a teenager. The first two notes you find from August specifically are based on my own life. The rest is fiction.
The project as a whole has been my attempt at reconciling these experiences and coming to grips with many of the unanswered questions left behind by the ouija board.
I do not advocate the use of ouija boards after my experience. The danger is very real, and the greatest threat is not taking the reality of the board's phenomena seriously.
link to Enoch Never Dies
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