The Well - An Unsettling Lovecraftian Body Horror Game from YAMES (Creator of Discover My Body) Available Now on Itch: pantagruel.itch.io/the-well Support YAMES on Patreon Here: www.patreon.com/user?u=7156682
at 11:16, the dialogue box that ABG accidentally skipped reads: “BUT DON’T IT LOOK GOOD? LOOK HOW DARK IT IS. ATHOOD DUG IN HERE BECAUSE HE KNEW HOW DARK IT WAS.” just in case anybody was curious about it like me!
Hello Yames! Can i please ask what software you used to create this and what you'd recommend to people interested in creating something original themselves? (From the audiovisual perspective rather than writing.) In as vague or specific terms as you like. Thanks! ✌️
I really like Yames's art style where, while you can still make out key details, it still leaves a lot of the nightmarish stuff to the imagination, it's such a cool artstyle for horror stuff.
Yames is just... on another level entirely when it comes to horror and I mean in EVERY aspect -- audio, visual, dialogue, all of it and then some -- I've yet to come across anyone else who can make a game that leaves you feeling... delightfully unsettled well after you've finished it. Water Womb World still has me feeling that way and it's been MONTHS. 11/10.
@@bellum1080 Well, I meant since I experienced the game myself! Yames is a machine when it comes to developing his games. I'm sure there's even more secrets we don't know about yet!
There was one he played, not sure the name or creator, that your a gate guard at a test facility and lets cars in and out, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called 😤😤😤
"Farmer Seth Atwood was past eighty when He tried to sink that deep well by his door, With only Eb to help him bore and bore. We laughed, and hoped he’d soon be sane again. And yet, instead, young Eb went crazy, too, So that they shipped him to the county farm. Seth bricked the well-mouth up as tight as glue- Then hacked an artery in his gnarled left arm. After the funeral we felt bound to get Out to that well and rip the bricks away, But all we saw were iron hand-holds set Down a black hole deeper than we could say. And yet we put the bricks back-for we found The hole too deep for any line to sound." -HP Lovecraft, "The Well"
I honestly dig the creator's vibe in his games. It's just, unnerving, tiredless, grotesque-those elements just blend in with his body horror concept. It felt squishy and putrid, despite i'm seeing only a screen rn. Good work, Yames
Just a note, this is supposed to be one of YAMES's "secret games" that he makes exclusively for Patreon supporters. They are meant to be short and weird, so he can still keep working on the "Discover My Body" sequel "Discover Our Bodies". Anyways, this one ruled! I like the amount of interpretation that this game allows, as it's not entirely explained what some of it meant but could definitely get the imagination jogging.
@@ayyydriannn7185 in my defense i dont know his Patreon prices. It could be a reasonable 1-2 dollar tier. My mind went straight to "5 (or more) bucks to get access"
@@lindinle because you’re so civil about this, the real reason is that this is more of a side thing you get as a patron benefit, instead of subscribing specifically for the game. You get a few of his patreon games too, smaller ones he makes ok between releases
Not YAMES's strongest work, but I think about Discover my Body and Water Womb World all the time, and I genuinely appreciate any content that comes from this guy. A lot of the visuals in this particular game are straight up incomprehensible though, but maybe that's the whole point
Yeah, this is a lot weaker than those other two works. The minimal graphics end up making a lot of things incomprehensible (and not in the way you expect from eldritch horror, especially with the glitchy graphics on the final object you pull from the well), the story is a totally disjointed mess with nonsensical pacing that barely links anything together (particularly at 16 minutes, where you get a whole bunch of nonsensical talk with no visuals and suddenly go from trying to measure the depth of the well to helping to awaken the eldritch god that sprouted out of the cat, with little in-between; speaking of which, is it ever explained how the cat got that way?), the “gameplay” is boring as heck (Discover My Body didn’t pretend to have any real gameplay, while Water Womb World was at least somewhat engaging), the phonetic accent and missing punctuation in the dialogue is obnoxious, etc. I get that eldritch style horror like this is about leaving most of it to your imagination, but those other two were excellent at giving just enough information at the right time for maximum creepiness; this is just an incomprehensible mess that leaves me more confused than disturbed.
This almost feels like it went in the complete opposite direction of Water Womb World- in that, a man is undone because he dug too deep. In this one, a man is undone because he didn't dig deep enough into the situation.
I think this game needed some more colors like Water Womb World and Discover My Body. I honestly couldn't quite comprehend what was even going on for most of it.
@@AntipaladinPedigri I think I need to understand why I am even going insane in the first place. The visage of the Elder Gods causes insanity because it is juxtaposed with the mundane and normal of everyday life. Here, there is no everyday life. It looks like nothing. I actually can barely figure out what is what so when the "insanity" begins it doesn't even feel like it. A little bit of actual color would have helped tremendously in grounding the well exploration in reality.
This is aesthetics reflecting Lovecraft's approach of not describing monsters too much, becayse they're undescribable. Not only in the poem the game is based on but in his entire body of work. If Lovecraft was making a game, this is how he'd probably go about it. Shadow of the comet tried to portray monsters in a stereotypical way with white eyes and sharp teeth and it fell flat.
@@AntipaladinPedigri Honestly, I have to agree with Lucis in that I don't think it worked - I just finished it and the visuals didn't really register anything with me. There's a very fine line between horrific insinuation and just arbitrary shapes, and I think it fell on the side of arbitrary for me. I think it would really have helped if there was a much clearer distinction between things that we understood and the elements that weren't to be - the cat neither blended in with the horrific aspect nor was really distinct visually from it, it just kind of looked like a sock with a pentagram sticker cut out of it. The same with our well-delving friend, I kind of expected to see fleeting elements of his body, or at least some sort of vague outline of what used to be a skeleton, but it kind of just looked like a circle that had two arbitrary sectors wiggling in a way that didn't resemble what a human could look like to me (especially with the anatomical references, I expected something a lot more like Discover My Body) I think the part where this fell short was that it didn't really describe the indescribable or the describable, and went much too far in the direction of obfuscation.
Each to their own. If I were to reflect the insanity constantly referenced by by the story and which is the foundation block of Lovecraft's writing, I would blur the line between what is actually there and what your broken mind tells you there is. The effect of a stroke photo where everything seems familiar but actually can't be identified fits the theme.
Huh. I was wondering what YAMES was doing after discovering that the _Applesauce Apartments_ game wasn't something he (?) did. I am unsure what I think about this one as of yet, especially visually, since it seems less polished than other games by YAMES, and I don't know how intentional that was (or if I agree with it even if it was intentional). All I know is that the sound design is really good and that it was interesting to learn that "immanentize" is actually a word. That poor cat though. The pentagram collar certainly didn't protect it.
"Less polished" is probably intentional, cause this is meant to be the first in a series of short and simple games for people to play while he works on larger projects. Said larger projects currently include "Discover Our Bodies", a sequel to "Discover My Body", and a point and click game called "Family Vacation".
@@MalfunctionWhocares Hmm...noted. Thank you. I look forward to the sequel for _Discover My Body_ then given all the unsettling aspects and implications of that game.
So glad I've decided to watch Yames' games through a no-commentary playthrough; watched Markiplier play Discover My Body, but it didn't feel right with his commentary, so I decided to watch it again through ABG, and it was a waaay better experience! Watched Water Womb World next, and now I am about to watch this.
Im sorry but sometimes i cant see whats going on. Some images are way to obscured by the art design that im more concentrating on what im seeing than being immersed in the setting.
@@AntipaladinPedigri Yes but in this case i cant even realize what im seeing, not because the design of the image is otherworldly and disturbing but because its muddy and grainy. I like the style but in my opinion less is more.
@@AntipaladinPedigri yeah, but you literally cant see whats happening. Its like being 80% blind without being blind (i dont know if that made sense but you know what i mean)
Again, each to their own. I like the idea of not knowing if I'm looking at rags or a badly mangled corpse and the game not telling me if I'm right or wrong on the corpse. If you can't imagine or interpret things check yourselves for a condition called aphantasia, an inability to imagine.
I was watching this while on the edge of my bed, half asleep, but then I got it. This is when human beings get dragged towards some Lovecraftian entity. Our senses still work but they are stirred by something transdimensional that we were never meant to comprehend. So now our senses are off kilter. Like when you connect old and new technology say a PS5 to a tube from the nineties. You can get something out of it but it will be skewed by the limitations of the receiver. This is what this communicates.
Yames never misses. His games can be pretty veiled, and this one is no exception. However, they're always an interesting experience, though the gameplay is often limited. They do great work!
YAMES: Sir/Ma'am: You've become the go to source of weird and creepy gaming with a WONDERFUL originality in graphics presentation! You've seemingly hit the sweet spot of uncertainty and "oddness"/limited information that creates a fear from the uncertain and instinctive (and thus generates a universal form of creepy horror). Limited information (normally visually based as we are as a species) is always the way to genuine fear as it allows the imagination to take over....genius!
Aight this one veered a bit too much into 'what the fuck am I even looking at' territory, and not in a necessarily good way. Maybe having more than just 1 color could've helped, but I just had no idea what I was even looking at most of the time
Audibly shrieked "yes!" when I saw the video title. Yames is a frighteningly good storyteller. I'm beyond excited to see what twisted delights his career unleashes unto the world.
@@grimgrahamch.4157 Maybe an old artifact like the statue, or even a piece of “her.” They both seem to target the old man though, because he’s the one who gets bitten, and we see it as a rock while he sees it as an egg. “She” probably knows who’s more susceptible to getting lured in, and that’s why he goes a little crazy.
Hey everyone, stupid question, but I am not a native speaker and I don't understand what's going on with the rope, at first I thought the man talking to us went DOWN INTO the well, but then I thought it was us because of when he says "I'l feed you more rope if you need it" but then, it's us petting the cat OUTSIDE when he says "I'd do it myself but I'm over here" and then when the rope gets stuck, he says "...YOUR END of the rope" I don't get it :(
Okay so my tired ass mind (it's almost 1 AM here) could not properly comprehend what I just watched so if someoen would leave a long in depth comment with theories and what not, it will be highly appreciated.
i think it's intentionally meant to obscure as much detail as possible while still having a somewhat legible story. i think it's meant to be interpretive, but what i got was the following: -two family members are entranced by some sort of eldritch consciousness, they are then instructed or inspired to build a well which then either is a gateway to whatever place holds the eldritch consciousness, or the well itself holds it. -second family member kills the first, attempts to use their body as a vessel for the eldritch god. snaps out of it at some point. doesn't use the body as a vessel & bricks up the well to prevent the plan from being furthered. -a pastor de-escalates situation(?), sends second family member upstate. after the funeral, two people get the job, under the pastor's instruction, to retrieve things inside of the house for the family's next of kin. -other person suspects that there'll be valuables in the bottom of the well, coerces player character to assist in attempting to retrieve them. other person also has a cat. -as they attempt to gauge the depth of the well before heading in in-person, they're either 1. getting snagged on things, or 2. the entity in the well is rejecting further progress. the first item they get snagged on is extremely difficult to make out, but by the description the other person gives, it's either 1. a root, 2. just "a piece of wood" in an odd shape, 3. some sort of hand-carved wooden effigy. this specific one seems unimportant. -second object pulled up is an idol of the entity. back of it had an eye affixed to it. uncertain what exactly it did, my random eyes-closed dart board throws are 1. was meant to be a literal vessel of sight for the entity, 2. marked the other person to be a vessel, or 3. made the player character immune/an accomplice/something. a "toothed worm" bites the other person, marking/inseminating them as the vessel for the eldritch being, and either changing their ability to perceive things or beginning their metamorphosis. after pulling this up, the cat "disappears", having fallen down - or was pulled down - the well while the two human characters were transfixed by the idol. -other person begins acting in the interests of the eldritch thing, comments on the quality of the dirt (as in, where the being would be summoned/born from), perceives the next object entirely differently than the player character -next object is described by the player character as "just a rock". graphical fidelity makes it hard to discern anything in particular. other person sees that it's a "womb, filling with unborn or infantile slugs", akin to the way the eldritch thing looks at the end of the story. other person mentions that it's beautiful, specifically that it reminds him of the beauty of childbirth (as themed further). calls himself "just a worm", refers to the eldritch entity as "she". either means that the being wants to instill the fact that the other person (or maybe humans/other life forms in general) are below them/lower life forms, or referring to it more literally as in the "toothed worms" that are seen twice which appear to do the bidding/further the plans of the being -"cat" returns, actually a different entity infested by said toothed worms. other person comments on "wanting to lay in a deep dark hole" as in to incubate themselves for metamorphosis/birthing of the entity -next object is the corpse(? it's not moving, at least) of the actual cat. other person comes to a realization about that. upon mentioning this to the cat, it transforms. either the cat-impersonator knocks you out, or the game just cuts to later on. -i cannot discern what the pastor is saying in many scenarios without googling like, at least a word per text box. apologies, but i think it's esoteric on purpose. in essentiality, the pastor intended to assist with the entity's birth (it's unknown if he was entranced at some point after helping the second family member or if this was always the intention), likely intending himself to be the incubator originally, and envies the other person because of this. at this stage, the other person has entirely become a meat cocoon/womb for the eldritch entity and has fully transformed. -mimicking prior gameplay, the pastor... does, something? while you pull on what is highly likely to be an umbilical cord to birth the entity. after a couple tries, you successfully force its birth, and its form is similar to that of a slug. i may be incorrect about some things
