A Charmed Life

"' ...Oh, I dont hate you,' [Baryl] muttered quietly, 'but you know perfectly well we're all enemies in this house.'" -excerpt from "The Charmed Circle" by Anna Kavan

You've watched your home town change while you lived in the box your family built around you. You're stuck. Just out of reach is the life you've always dreamed of living. It's so close you can taste it. Two questions make you hesitate: How will you get there and what will you have to sacrifice along the way?

"A Charmed Life" is a solo storytelling game about a character standing at a crossroads. You will begin play by defining this character, their family, and the town or neighborhood they live in. You will discover what hurdles that lie in their path, and you will, ultimately, describe the life they make for themselves beyond those obstacles.

Throughout each game of "A Charmed Life", you will use the illustrations on a deck of tarot cards to inspire your writing. Even if you draw the same cards in the same order, two separate games may be vastly different if you use different tarot decks.

"A Charmed Life" is a genre-agnostic. One game may focus on a dragon fighting against their siblings over who has the right to pillage a kingdom. While another game may pivot around a space-faring family interacting with extraterrestrial civilizations.

This game was written for the "Gaming Like It's 1929" game jam (https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1929) and it was inspired by the novel, "A Charmed Circle", by Anna Kavan. 

Banner and thumbnail art by @icicleteeth.bsky.social

"...His obsessions grew and he found himself unable to throw off the deadening inertia which had fallen on him. He embraced it more and more." -excerpt from "A Charmed Circle" by Anna Kavan