Don’t Play This Game demo play Pt 1

I was introduced to Don’t Play This Game via an ad in The Indie RPG Newsletter. A solo horror game inspired by found footage movies? (sings “These are a few of my favorite things!”) Snatched up the Demo immediately.

At the time of this writing, Don’t Play This Game is on Kickstarter. Go help fund this awesome project and get cursed with me.

This is a Legacy Solo Tabletop Roleplaying / Journaling Game about someone (YOU) who has been cursed to play a game with a mysterious Entity.
The game is simple – when you begin playing, an Event will happen to you. Then you record it. What happened? How’d it make you feel? What effect did it have on you? Sometimes words, sometimes photos, whatever the Entity asks. Once an Event is completed the Entity will select another. This repeats and your story unfolds until either you complete the game and are free, or you lose and, well, then really bad things happen…

Content Warnings

This is a horror game. My particular play through involves animal/pet death, mental health conflict, loss of loved ones, supernatural horror, and more. What happens in my playthrough does not need to happen in yours however and I would recommend checking out the safety tools at the beginning of the game with a serious eye.

Don’t Play This Game (demo) Playthrough Pt.1

My character for this playthrough is Harlow Chase. She is in her late twenties and runs a video rental store in the early 90s.

Dear Jakob,

I dunno why I’m still doing this to myself. Writing in this journal as if I’m writing to you. It makes me feel better and my therapist said it was good for me. I stopped seeing her…

Dear Jakob,

Got a weird package in the mail today. Figured it was from that film club thing – you remember the one where we swap rare and weird tapes. I didn’t look until later but there’s no return address. I don’t know who it came from or why it came to me.
It’s a journal and on the front it says “Don’t Play This Game.”
Despite the warning, as I opened its grimy pages, there on the second page, in messy scrawl was “You must play this game or in 7 days something bad will happen.”
I guess chain letters are getting more aggressive now? Whole journals instead of just a slip of paper.

Things are going ok at Video Wizard. Old lady Richards is still on my ass about having R rated movies on the shelf “out for the world to see.” THINK OF THE CHILDREN she says. So dramatic. I suspect she will complain about me to the town council again soon enough. She’d really piss her pants if she knew what Mayor Lark rents on the weekends.
Not that I’m really complaining. It keeps things lively. You know I don’t do shit else but watch movies and chill with Freddy. He’s doing well, btw. The vet says he’s in great shape for a dog his age. I still have to avoid stairs and keep our walks short, his hips can’t really handle it. He misses you. We both do.

Dear Jakob,

It’s been a while.

Dear Jakob,

I keep trying to start journal entries to tell you what has happened but it’s been too much.
Freddy died.
There. I said it. I wrote it. That makes it real, right?
It doesn’t make sense though.
Yes he was getting up there in years. I expected it to happen any day now and the vet kept making sure I knew and was prepared. But…
It was just weird. We were at Video Wizard. I left Freddy behind the counter while I got a tape ready for the display tv. I was struggling because we got some awesome new ones but you know, don’t wanna piss off Old lady Richards too much when she comes in to inspect me for immorality. That’s when I heard Freddy growling. It took me a moment to figure out what the sound was. Freddy never growls. He’s always been a big sweet doofus.
I asked him what was wrong but he was staring at the door, hackles raised and growling.
Before I could walk across the front of the store to get to him he was gone.
He ran out the door and in front of Larry Peterson’s truck.
Larry was sorry and I don’t really blame him. I guess I should have had Freddy on a leash or something but…he’s never run off before. Not once in all these years.

What could have made him do that, Jakob?
The vet said it could be anything. A hallucination from the meds we had him on. A stroke maybe. But he was running. Freddy could barely hobble along and yet he ran so hard it had to have hurt him.
That’s not the crazy part though.
Here’s where I admit to losing my mind and probably should call my old therapist.
I came home and that weird journal. Don’t Play This Game. It was on the floor next to my front door. I tripped over it coming in and I know for a fact I put it on my coffee table.
I picked it up, looked in the front cover at that second page and…there was something new written there.
Right under “You must play this game or in 7 days something bad will happen” was written, in the same scrawl, “Told you so.”
It’s crazy, right? I must have just somehow missed it before. It’s not like…it’s not like this is why Freddy died, right? Right.
I threw the journal in the trash and got things ready for Freddy’s cremation. I don’t need to start losing it.

Dear Jakob,

Once is a coincidence, twice is a curse…or something like that.
The apartment caught fire.
I was asleep when it happened. The neighbors, the Lewinskis, woke me by nearly beating down the door. I might have suffocated in the smoke if they hadn’t. Whole place was filled with the stuff.
The fire department said it was faulty wiring. The whole kitchen was in flames. Only thing that was salvaged from the space was the journal. The one I threw away. It lay in among the ashes of my trash can and pantry goods…untouched. The fireman that handed it to me was baffled.
I felt sick looking at it but took it.

I’m now staying in the apartment above Video Wizard. It’s roomier if drafty. I’d been avoiding moving up here despite the reduced rent because living next to your work seems like an invitation to become a workaholic. I don’t have much of a choice now though.
Moved in that night with a duffle bag of clothes, some of my favorite tapes, Freddy’s urn, and that damned journal. I’ll go back for the rest of my stuff tomorrow or what’s left of it. The landlord gave me my month’s rent and apologized. He’s a good man and seemed very upset by the fire. I don’t blame him. How can I? It’s been 14 days since the journal came in the mail.

Dear Jakob,

I spent last night playing the game…
I opened the pages and there, the third page, was another note.

“Hello again.
It’s time to begin. Turn to the next page so we can start playing together.
This is going to be fun.”

Why do I feel like something is in the room with me? Writing the messages just moments before I turn the page…as if we’re having a conversation in the here and now and not me reading something that had to be written weeks ago if not longer.

Would You Like To Play A Game?

Welcome reader.
The above is what I was inspired to write after reading the introduction to Don’t Play This Game.
Yep. Haven’t even started playing the demo yet.
This is a dark and twisted game and I think I’ve gotten the tone right. From here on, it only gets worse.
If you are interested in playing this game, go fun the kickstarter and grab a copy of the demo here.
Now, let’s begin.

To Continue Harlow’s Story, click here