DISCONCORDIA
Disconcordia
(A puzzle/story/mystery game using the mechanics of a Discord-like chat interface. Special thanks to Leonardo 'Degaul' V.)
"It's 2016. A friend wants help getting guides back from a MMORPG community, one with a game, forums, and now a chat app.
But a poor redesign of the chat interface, as well as server outages prevent you from seeing the whole picture.
But maybe it wasn't possible to see the whole picture after all. Not while you are still blind."
Created for Confounding Calendar 2025.
NOTE: Intended to be played in browser, a puzzle is not possible in the itch.io app and the downloaded files are outright misleading to look at in the wrong order.
(inspired by a large mix of events I've witnessed in my own lived experience, mechanics in murder mysteries (although this is a much softer and smoothened way to present the ideas in this than any real life event lol), as well as a sort-of-mild interest in chatrooms as mechanics. Some assets: Unsplash, Pixabay, https://sketchfab.com/features/free-3d-models, ToDitherer, https://pdimagearchive.org/infinite-view - also testers that gave me the most useful changes and testing feedback for this project: Tixxy, MisshapenSmiley, olie, Cactos, Hazelstorm, slabdrill, noa, Robotic Press, Poklolio, opanker!)
rate story if you enjoyed it, feel free to post your videos of playthroughs/streams of this game, I allow it :)
Small note: if your save is softlocked, typing "deletemysave" anywhere will clear it (in case a bug is there)
Spoilers in the comments below!
(This is a story based game, and I've seen so many comments of other games like this have twists and reveals that you can easily accidentally find by carelessly scrolling down. Use text selection if you want to read it, but they're spoilered/hidden for a good reason!)
Comments
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Not a big fan of the file that downloaded.
🤡
hi
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I love this game, made through to the post-game, got stuck instantly, so I'll take a break and come back with a fresh mind
absolute cinema
if anyone can read this.... YOU ARE SMART.
Just played through this game and reached the ending. Not sure if there are other endings. The mention of “logging your timeline” on the end screen seems to imply that there might be, but I wouldn’t know how to find them.
I still don’t understand why it’s referred to as “Disconcordia” rather than “Discord,” despite referring to “Slack” by its actual name.
Maybe I’m not the right sort of audience for this, but I’m not sure what to make of the experience. You get interrupted during your investigation, and suddenly it’s over with a narrated ending and time skips and subtext that probably went over my head. My personal preference is definitely to have things more clarified and definitive, at least enough to let me know I got the intended experience from the game and I’m not still missing anything major.
I take it the point wasn’t the investigation after all, and that was a facade for the actual point which was to get an immersive taste of someone being discredited, expelled, and lied about in a community by awful people who everyone believes. But if so, it kind of hit oddly, because we didn’t actually get to know/trust Cassandra to make us care that much, and Cassandra herself apparently wasn’t even fazed by it. Plus the whole thing with the church was really weird and kind of out of nowhere.
The game itself is pretty impressive for a personal project, so kudos for that, but I did run into some issues:
I use the itch.io app and download and play itch games through it by default. Apparently the game relies being played in a browser though, in order to inspect an avatar to get the full image. Playing through the app doesn’t have a console or even a context menu by which the full image could be found. I was able to find it by searching the downloaded files for the game, but this obviously breaks immersion and can spoil. So you might want to clearly indicate that the game is meant to be played through the browser. I had to do the same for finding the email/password image.
I got really confused about “fire rate” and what a “0.2 fire rate” is supposed to mean. I kept assuming it meant 0.2 hits per second, especially because it’s closely related to “damage per second,” and because it was referred to as a “minimum,” and it made sense to think minimum = fewest hits per second. But it seems it actually means 0.2 seconds between each hit. So maybe the terminology could be made less ambiguous. This caused the already complicated DPS puzzle to be that much more confusing.
In the postgame, I’m stuck logged in as Shadowsmoke, and the logout command no longer works, so I have no way to access Tau’s friends or servers that Shadowsmoke isn’t part of. I was able to read through the Staff Area messages detailing the shady tactics used, and the rest of the Library server messages, but as far as I can tell these are just related philosophical/literary concepts and don’t involve anything more to actually do.
The end screen mentions a post game puzzle, but I’m unable to find it. The game files include an image with “Disconcordia Advanced” and “CBA” scrawled on it, but I don’t know where it’s meant to show up in game, and typing “CBA” does nothing. The only other images I don’t remember coming up despite reading through everything I could find were of “StratShotPlayer’s Comments” and of Slack’s interface, and I don’t know what to make of them.
hey, thank you for the big comment :)
- The actual discord didn't look exactly like this in 2016 so it didn't feel right to give it the same name.
- Thinking of doing sequel hooks to clarify certain things.
- It may require a much larger game to 'give time' for that and I'm not sure that it would be easy to give an experience of 'trusting' a person even with 1-2 hours of ingame.
- The "apparently wasn’t even fazed by it" is a more realistic corollary to IRL situations in my opinion, both including my own deeply personal experience with this and watching/experiencing others' stories who are still able to move on, and if you're more resilient it would make it seem like what happened wasn't exceptionally bad, and you can file it away as an exception. It's only when you may lose the rest of the will and goal of life that it hits you again. I would find it offputting if someone suggested that if "I was not visibly affected by [something]" that it means it was somehow trivial or less harmful. For me it probably directly relates to my slower content creation and will to live to be honest.
- Dang the itch.io app I wasn't really thinking of, will mention that
- I did that in the postgame since account-switching is not part of the final puzzle
- Those images are for an easter egg you missed (it's pretty obscure). The Slack interface one is used in the Library but the image was actually broken for a while :frog:
Thanks for the reply. Is :frog: meant to render as some sort of emoji? Because both on the app and in a browser, it’s just text, so it’s not clear what it’s meant to signify.
I’d like to leave you with one more note. Maybe it’s not a priority for you, but it would be great if you gave some thought to accessibility for your project. Things like text that’s deliberately hard to read due to small size or low contrast, or background noise that can’t be adjusted and might drown out screen readers, can prevent some people from being able to enjoy the game.
Good luck with your future endeavors. :)
remembered one thing I forgot to reply about, the abruptness of the ending is not unknown and is very much in theme, since reality is often abrupt and being hit by things you don't know and could not have easily predicted. From a literary perspective there are small ties lying around, and lots of details that tie together for thematic purposes.
There's a bunch of people who have mentioned being inspired enough to think up of potential extensions and sequel ideas, and while I already have quite a large picture of everything, it would be cool to adapt them somehow as side stories to make the world feel more expansive too :p
the fact that this was all made on only a 4 color pallet is insane
I don't like discord btw.
I feel like it's obvious the ways I dislike discord from playing this :walc
holy peak!!! did have to use every hint possible for the dps question tho (I forgot they couldnt see others messages)
Fascinating. Not sure what to make of this.
Everything up until the ending feels like an uncannily accurate depiction of what it was like being trans and a teenager in big discord communities that were my primary source of support and interaction.
In an attempt to wrap my head around the ending and finding more secrets I played the game again, fully intending to sequence break.
Ended triggering two temporally impossible cutscenes.
And now I'm wondering if there's a third one, or if they have ties to the final optional puzzle.
Icely you sure did just fundamentally alter my brain chemistry, thanks for that
:}
I spent so long trying to understand why 100% - 25% = 70%. Is this unintended?
also apparently deletemysave doesn't uninvite you from the servers which is pretty cursed
really good!! the atmosphere and aesthetic were really authentic to how it felt back then, both familiar and infuriating (in a good way). i liked the story i was literally so scared when i got caught hehe. it felt uncomfortable and real and im telling everybody about this
i did accidentally softlock myself by leaving the site while a guide was still uploading. it didn't progress and cass says that i've already sent it ^^; besides that this was awesome :-]
Banger game that also correctly calls me out for enjoying trying to be a bit of a thorn in the side of story based game's side after a playthrough. Cool story, cool message (insert ogre only understand surface level themes image), and I think it may be possible to beat the game evading the knowledgecheck cheat detection to some degree; I think you can beat the game without ever actually visiting the "main" server :)
absolutely loved the atmosphere of this game! the genre of simulated desktop games is one that i feel doesn't get much attention. i enjoyed being a little sleuth in this one, the methods of hiding information were very mechanically neat.
i only got particularly confused with the dps question, no idea what happened tbh but im almost 100% certain it's a me issue.
also the ending sequence was fantastic, i always appreciate being able to understand another's perspective better, and it has really contextualized the contents of a semi recent video of yours. i.e. i had understood it, but i haven't had a similar enough experience with online communities to emotionally(?) relate i suppose, but playing through this game lets you experience it firsthand.
so thank you icely for the great game :)))
Been having issues where profile pictures and such aren't loading with a 403 error, and messages are reaching max call stack size causing them to not come up, hope this gets fixed soon because it's been really good so far
I haven't heard of the 'messages are reaching max call stack size causing them to not come up' problem and can't tell if it's an actual bug :skull: did you have pregame progress in the past few hours when it was bugged? i think i went through a full playthrough fine
I only started this game about 30 minutes before I posted my original comment, got to where I started getting messages from a second person and the messages just didn't show up. I looked in the console and saw a bunch of those errors in creating message elements. Also, I don't know if this is part of it, but the profile pictures were disappearing, and messages rendered in plaintext instead of html markdown formatting. I tried this on chrome and firefox, both normal and incognito.
invite links/html were broken for 2-3 hours in an attempted bugfix making game unplayable lol sorry
This line is the only place in the whole game that calls Disconcordia "discord". Typo?
> I know you're in the middle of your discord server detox so maybe this is a lot to ask. But help me get them back! I would appreciate it a lot!
nah, there's a reply a little later that reminds them of the name =3
i spent 30 minutes typing "sythoblade 8750"
chess battle advanced
icely oh my gosh. you cooked hard. what the hell this is incredible
wow icely! this is awesome
really like what you did with Discord's UI and the story felt Very Real... i'm not sure if ever this is going to be developed further or just stay as its own thing, but if ever it does i'd be willing to play through it
(also dithering for the win!)
No way is this reference
small bug: i kept the dps converter/vigenere decoder open in the corner in case i needed it since closing and reopening it would download the code again. it appears and disappears during some parts of the ending cutscene. (also the buttons at the very end were unclickable; not sure if that's related or intentional?)
pushed update to fix, thank you :)
Your message could not be delivered. This is because of a server maintenance that is taking a longer time than expected.
Your message could not be delivered. This is because of a server maintenance that is taking a longer time than expected. Pain refuge.
Peak from icely :D
A neat game with interesting puzzle concepts and a strange, somber story I don't fully understand. Makes me want to do my own Discord game.
I had some scrapped ideas for this game that involved timestamps and time sequencing a lot more, if your plot is in that direction (or even if you wanted to send me a plot to implement) I may actually do it :frog:
wow, this is crazy. very unexpected for a confounding calendar entry. A couple of the puzzles really tripped me up, but the whole process was very enjoyable. i absolutely love the visuals in the final section, the restraints of the color palette made for some of the most beautiful imagery ive ever seen. super great work
thank you :}}}}
Your message could not be delivered. This is because of a server maintenance that is taking a longer time than expected.
is supposed to be an allegory to ||chess evolved online|| back in the days?
i commented on your game already, it was great, i’m going to check out the extra puzzle or whatever you mentioned. also haha i love what you did with the comments
thank you :) some even subtle things that don't have a mechanic to check revealing them have secret postgame interpretations (that i will not say) lol
unrelatedly but the channel “webnovels” got me to look at the webnovel implied in the conversation again; i had looked at it before but i barely did anything with it, and now i’ve gone much further, so thanks for reintroducing me to it
I feel the need to say that the reason there are comments here despite the game being currently not public is because the CC rules specifically tell you to publish it in this pseudo-unlisted state, but you can clearly still find the game through searches/community profile, and because I have an audience already random people are here :frog:
can't you hide games from search results though
alright I've looked at literally every profile picture I have access to and still have no idea which one has the code and then you called me stupid for trying to send a friend request like that wasn't a reasonable idea when nothing else was there
you definitely, absolutely did not look at every profile picture you had access to, I don't completely regret having 'dumb for trying to find a user that would have long changed names by now' in that text bubble :p
That being said, thank you anyway, since the hints in that section weren't really sufficient and outright skipped the part of finding it :frog: I have updated with this change as well as better memory-foreshadowing for the moment. (if you are past the hint step, it basically says the user is not in the users list, and that you should look in #welcome)
Damnit I swear I tried that but at least my stupidity helped future players. Now to enjoy reading this deep philosophical bullshit that's been forshadowed.
Wow, very engaging. Cant figure out the DPS cipher question
If the hints already provided don't help, use the ROT13 cipher on the encrypted text (I have a decoder here icely.neocities.org/rot13_and_decoder_tool ) for.
Effectively the problems are:
- What is "Voidshell"? - Where could info about the firerate be that isn't in an obvious place? - What is going on with the 4 users in the archive?
Hints for the answers are:- Qrpelcgvba gbby. - Bcra gur .jeq svyr. - Ybbx va gur ebyrcynl pung sbe erfvqhrf bs jung vf unccravat orgjrra gur 4 hfref, naq nyfb vs lbh erpbtavmr n hfreanzr bs bar bs gur sbhe hfref va gur pung bs Qvfpbapbeqvn Fhccbeg.
i forgot this was made by u lol. love ur vids