Psychroma
A downloadable game
Psychroma is a narrative-driven side-scroller where you play as a digital medium. Confront the past by piecing together the broken memories of a cybernetic house, and exorcise the ghosts in the machine.
PLAY AS A MEDIUM
Investigate a haunted cybernetic house as a drifter with the ability to experience nonlinear time.
FACE YOUR TRAUMA
Regain your own memory of what brought you here and find out how to break the loop.
FIGHT THE TERROR OF THE PAST
Uncover the events of a harrowing psychological experiment gone wrong through fragmented memories.
/THE YEAR IS 2489.
Acid rain rots away exposed rebar in the half-developed megacity once known as Toronto. Humanity modifies itself at a frequency never seen before. A housing crisis not only endangers the market, but the displaced and unhoused. One dilapidated house, only referred to as The Commons, is the the center of our story. What was once meant to be a safe haven has turned against every occupant to have dwelled within.
You can't remember how you got here, and you are trapped inside. You must use a strange collection of digital memory cards holding the recorded memories of the past and present residents to manipulate time and navigate the house.
Play as Haze, our non-binary, mixed-race, cybernetic medium struggling with Complex PTSD and amnesia. Experiencing their past brings forth memories of kidnapping, forced imprisonment, inhumane experimentation, and mind-control. Haze must come to terms with their experiences as well as the violence they have perpetrated against their peers during their time in "The Classroom".
Explore a relationship between Salem, a trans woman and her disabled lesbian partner, Agatha. Through their story, you will witness what it means to eke out a living in a dilapidated future Toronto, a megacity that continually perpetrates economic oppression and violence against its citizens.
Become a zealous, neurodivergent bioengineer in the midst of a huge break through developing a memory-editing neuralware program. Discover what she is willing to sacrifice in the name of progress while sinking deeper into a cult that cares little for its member's humanity at the cost of its underground research program.
FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT
TIME JUMPING.
- Use a cybernetic memory card system to navigate through time.
- Gain the perspective of others' stored memories.
- Gain access to new parts of the house.
CYBER POSSESSION.
- Allow the digital ghosts of the past to possess your body in order to descramble memories, solve puzzles, and see through their perspectives.
COMMUNICATING WITH THE DEAD.
- Use an interactive Ouija system to speak with ghosts and gather info that would otherwise be hidden.
DIVERSE CHARACTERS
- Play as [HAZE], our non-binary, mixed-race protagonist
- Explore a relationship between [SALEM], a trans woman and her disabled lesbian partner, [AGATHA].
- Engage with neurodivergent NPCs.
- BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ characters are central to the narrative.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Psychroma Release for Itch.io78 days ago
Comments
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Was that really the first comment here...
Possibly the success of the steam store...
Oh to followup.
I started it back up, surprised to find the continue button taking me to the hallway with the elevator again. Unfortunatly, the elevator only went to floor 3, which makes it seem perhaps i entered the memory of haze on the 1st floor...
Though iam 90% sure i wouldnt have made that mistake.
Entering the door on the right took me to the altar with domino.
Though i talked to domino, it continued to show memories from the first haze card...
so every sentance from domino showed 2-3 sentences of the characters discussing who found haze first, even though only the young haze and domino were on the screen. It continued going back and forth between the characters discussion and haze and young domino talking to the alter about going deeper.
It then showed the table with only hazes memory card, upon inserting, and playing the headset animation, it took haze out to the bedroom in the dark, waking up to a scream, but at this point the game was locked...
As haze would not move.
I could access the menu, quit, but not move or interact.
So then i had to start a new game.
Hi, I got this game without knowing anything about it,
and was pleasantly surprised.
The beginning scenes in the house and kitchen gave a very mild and homely feel that completely disarmed me for the later subject matter. It wasnt until finding the eye in the sink when i realized "This is gonna get pretty heavy, dood"!
I enjoyed it, playing through almost the whole thing in a single setting.
I didnt even notice the lack of a menu or save function... Though i confess a few times i was tempted to find a walkthrough, the first small, then large, but still managable, gameplay area limited backtracking somewhat. The building ended up being exactly as large as needed... Though letting you go outside in the start did make me think the scope would be larger...
The different versions of the building fixed that real quick...
THough with the style of the game, naturally, it made it very difficult to tell if a bug was encountered, unless it happened to break the game...
It is so rare to see a game like that,
so imagine my surprise when i did encounter such a bug...
Sorry to say here, iam currently afraid to open the game as iam worried it may make me restart from the beginning... Partly because i feel i shall be tempted to actually play all the way through it again, lol.
After finishing the dollhouse and finding the vial, i had trouble locating the panic room.
So i entered Hazes Memories from the upstairs altar. I was like "Aw damn" when it made me watch the scenes in foxes bedroom, then the kids bunkroom, over again.
Except when extering the hall agatha was not there.
I dont recall if i entered her room,
but iam 90% sure i tried to ride the elevator to the 7th floor, thinking she went up ahead.
Then i found myself in the hallway near a door, with the caption "Entity Name" over it, then again s few feet left of it. Interacting with the Spot left, also labeled "Entity Name" Said something about "Interact with String... " With the options "True or False", though neither options did anything. Going right i could crawl, though the background was entirely black here, and there was nothing at the end. Going through the door put me in a hallway by lights, where going through the lights turned me into domino. There was jones right of the lights, but interacting with her did nothing, and a crawlspace after her, but you could not crawl in this room to procede. Passing the lights turned you back into haze, though passing back and forth kept you as haze, but still didnt allow crawling.
All you could do was open the door with a tall rectangle window behind it, but it took you back to the previous empty hallway as Haze, with only the single door labeled "ENtity Name"...
Again, i was 90% sure this was part of the game, LOL,
and ill feel really dumb if youre supposed to close and restart to continue...
But I could not leave those 2 rooms...
So i had to shut down, with my only consolation that i was close to the ending...
Though watching the demo video made me realize there was still a good bit of story left...
Mainly the whole ending,
something you get a feeling for after the many CPU entries, but are still no closer to realizing...
Unless of course, haze is an amalgam of the different memories, and never existed, while you are really Demi... With the game being a dying dream, as she is herself immolated in a lab fire, only to be saved at the last moment, though remaining burned, alive, but comatose...
Nevermmind...
I guess i will see....
Hope there were no spoilers here...