▸ Case Study 01

Hanging
by a Thread

Visual Novel Ren'Py Ludonarrative Harmony EMDD 630 · 2026

A branching visual novel set in a purgatory boutique where sinners sew for deities. The mechanic reproduces the tension between survival and solidarity — it doesn't describe it.

4 Prototype Rounds
3 Distinct Endings
2 Tracked Variables
94 Score / 100
∞ Times Complicity Felt

▸ Design Process

EMPATHIZE DEFINE IDEATE PROTOTYPE TEST
Step 01

What I was researching, and what I was really researching

The game started with a question I couldn't stop asking: what does it mean to comply with a system that was never built for you, and what does solidarity cost when survival is on the table?

The research was primarily lived — drawn from growing up in India watching people navigate institutions requiring performed contentment in exchange for less. Hindu cosmology gave me the setting: a bureaucratic afterlife full of moral ledgers, where labour clears spiritual debt. Colonial ethics layered obligation and gratitude onto that structure in ways that are hard to name and harder to refuse.

Omori
Horror that lives in the interface — dissociation as mechanic
Papers, Please
Bureaucratic complicity through system design
Hindu Cosmology
Labour as duty; suffering as moral ledger clearance
Colonial Ethics
Obligation and gratitude as systems of control
Can a game's structure carry the politics of its content?
Step 02

How do you make a player feel the pull?

Most political games tell players what to think. The design problem I set myself: make complicity felt, not illustrated. The purgatory setting solved multiple problems at once — it made labour and spiritual obligation literally synonymous, and gave me a flashback structure where memory disrupts the present.

▸ Core Design Constraint The HUD must be visible at all times. The player must always know they are being measured. But the logic of what moves each bar should only become legible in retrospect — after the consequences have played out. Being inside a system of measurement you didn't design and can't fully interpret is itself the point.
✊
Harmony
Solidarity with other sinners. Rises through collective action; falls when you advance at their expense.
MAXIMISING
ONE⇄COSTS
THE OTHER
👁
Angel Favor
Goodwill with the system's enforcer. The gold options feel like shortcuts. They cost you in ways the interface doesn't announce.
Step 03

Building purgatory: world, characters, choices

The boutique emerged as the central space for its dual valence: labour and beauty, compliance and craft. A place where beautiful things are made under conditions that are not — which describes most of the fashion industry and a great deal of creative labour.

The Angel
Not a villain. Middle management: enforcer of a system she's also inside, doing her job with conviction.
Raji
The newcomer whose presence destabilises the player's hard-won equilibrium and surfaces suppressed memory.
Visual Language
Afterlife scenes: hand-painted, saturated, formal. Flashback scenes: drawn on actual notebook paper, scanned. Imperfection is permitted only in the human world.
Gold Choices
The most distasteful options are visually marked as shortcuts. They feel like winning. They aren't.
The Angel character The Angel
The purgatory boutique The boutique
Notebook paper flashback scene Flashback — notebook paper
Title screen Title screen
Step 04

Building in the dark

Built in Ren'Py with a Python backbone. The HUD required custom screens and persistent variable tracking across scenes. Each prototype round responded directly to playtester feedback.

Prototype 1
Simple minigame with two branches. Core mechanic established.
Prototype 2
Added tutorial screen, timer, and task variety to increase urgency and friction.
Prototype 3
Refined variables for ludonarrative harmony. Fixed audio. Added spacebar-tap interactivity to memory sequences — eliminated passive watching.
Prototype 4
Per-item timers. Stations become inactive to build tension. Different keys per task. Improved SFX, music, and UI polish.
▸ Play the Prototype Ren'Py web build · playable in browser

Hanging by a Thread

Audio plays on load — turn down your volume first.

Open full screen on itch.io ↗
Step 05

What players actually did

Playtesting with EMDD 630 peers. Every player could identify what the HUD bars were tracking. The more significant finding: players felt guilty about choices they had consciously made — not because the game told them to, but because branching structure makes complicity impossible to attribute to chance.

You chose. The bar moved. The mechanic doesn't describe the tension between solidarity and compliance. It reproduces it.
✊
Workers' Strike
Collective action prevails. The system cracks. Briefly.
Most emotionally satisfying · hardest to reach
⚙️
Absorbed
You become what you arrived in. The boutique continues.
Players who felt most guilty often landed here
🧵
Endless Cycle
No resolution. The work goes on. The thread never ends.
Most unsettling · players recognised themselves
▸ Symposium Finding Live presentation at the EMDD Symposium (Letterman Lobby, April 2026) exposed an accessibility gap private playtesting missed: players who were visually tired lost task instructions because text sat too small at screen edges. The "clutter of bureaucracy" was competing with functional clarity.
© Swetha Siva 2026 · Case Study 01
Case Study 02: Sort It Out → ← Portfolio