The Ancestry Tapes

Uncover a deep, dark family secret hidden on a stack of forgotten VHS tapes. Grandma warned you to stop—but the family duty demands a sacrifice. --- The Setup You're at your grandma's house, trying to dig up some material for a boring research paper on your ancestry. Instead of old photo albums, you find a rough wooden box tucked away in the shadows, containing a collection of unlabeled, forgotten VHS tapes. Armed with a dusty VHS player, you decide to watch. What starts as an innocent look at family history quickly devolves into a chilling descent into a past that should have stayed buried. Gameplay & Features The Ancestry Tapes is a short, choice-based narrative horror game (interactive fiction) built in Twine. Found Footage Horror: Experience the terror of the tapes firsthand as you watch and transcribe unsettling scenes, from a chilling "Birthday Party 1995" to the sinister ritual hinted at in "The Viewing 1982". A Growing Unease: Follow the story's rising Dread mechanic as you confront bizarre imagery—like your teenage mother's paralyzed, terrified face in an old car—and piece together a history of family sacrifice. Multiple Outcomes: Your choices determine how deep you dig. Will you find the horrifying truth, or will you stop before the silence takes hold? The story features multiple endings that lead to different conclusions about the "deep, dark family secret". Content Warning: This game contains themes of body horror, ritual, and psychological dread. Prototype created with Twine 2.11.1.0 in Harlowe 3.3.9 as part of a Narrative Game Workshop for my Game Design studies in the Video Game Development curriculum at Haute École Albert Jacquard, Namur, Belgium. Game made by Noémie Hans.

Thara View creator →