Game 30: CARIMARA: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs

'Tis October, the season for Halloween! To celebrate I'm going to embrace the festivities by playing scary games. CARIMARA looks ominous and that's about all I know, so here we go! I am Carimara.

I'm the little old man with a staff walking to this house in the woods

The art style is striking, bleak with hints of dull color - but I have to remark on how animated it is. Even when you're standing still, the world is moving and shifting - almost as though it's breathing. I talk to the old woman in the house.

Sure sure I'll just go head to your basement, sounds great

You can find 'cards' by looking at different objects and these translate into dialogue options when speaking to a character. The basement is a maze of tunnels, and I'm lost when I stumble on a 'Forelore', or ghost.

Game feature: creepy wall frogs

I speak to the Forelore. It just has three questions for me: "Who was I?", "Who killed me?", "What killed me?"

My answers were incorrect

The old woman finds my unconscious body and kindly drags me back upstairs for some rest. Looks like this is a solve the mystery game! The old woman doesn't know anything about what this ghost is so I'll have to find out more myself. I wander around the house and see what else I can find.

This wise old owl scared the pants off me when her head whipped around

Exploring a bit, I find an awful little hole in the attic.

The thing inside ate me but fortunately 'death' just means waking back up in bed

I managed to coax it out with something that it wanted and immediately regretted doing so

PLEASE GET BACK IN YOUR HOLE

You progress the story by using the right cards to the right things - the basic system is nice and simple, choosing a card represents either using it on the item or showing it to someone in order to get them to talk about it. My character is mute and uses these cards to communicate.

Some characters don't want to talk about certain things

Thanks to the Hole-Horror I found my way into the shed.

Looks like Hole-Horror's buddy died in here

The back plank of the shed was loose so I was able to explore outside the garden a little bit.

That's a fancy gravestone

From the two-person bed and the owl I'd gathered that Violet, the old woman, didn't always live alone, so I suspect the ghost in the basement is her husband's spirit - and he was murdered. Talking to Violet about the grave gets her to reveal what I assume is an effigy she made of her departed husband.

A very sweet memorial - the unpleasantness of the place ameliorated by something beautiful

I stand corrected (By the Owl), 'Lavender' was also a woman.

Now I'm the bad guy for making assumptions. Something from earlier makes sense now - the frogs in the basement wanted to 'see her again', so I assume the spirit with questions is Lavender. Also, Violet told me earlier that the chest is where she keeps her Lavender, leading me to assume that it was for herb storage. I try just answering the first of the spirit's questions since I'm confident, but that doesn't help - I have to get all three right. Exploring doesn't reveal anything else either.

Thinking about what the Owl and Violet are saying about things, I actually have some educated guesses about how Lavender died and why - there's some inferences to be made here....

Nailed it!

In a touching scene, the specter of Lavender is reunited with Violet - and that's all, folks! It's a very short game - I think it's the only full game that I've started and finished a blog post on in a single session.

There's nothing wrong with short and sweet, and the ending is very sweet

Even though our time together was brief, it was time I enjoyed - I'll take a good game over a long game any day.