This queer horror narrative deckbuilder is a video game based on the delightfully moody tabletop RPG by Avery Alder and Powered by the Apocalypse.

The game is coming out soon, but we want to make sure everyone has access to it. That's why we're launching this BackerKit to add controller support and make it playable on Steam Deck! We've also set a bunch of really cool stretch goals (see below), including localization and animations.

Welcome to Drowned Lake, a small town in northern BC in the 1990s. When your character is faced with the murder of your best friend, you have to unravel local mysteries and find your footing among bloodthirsty supernatural factions.

You might choose to:

Want a taste of what it's all about? You can play our demo now on our Steam page.

Ludic Lemur makes games that are radically playful. A queer women-led indie studio, we make games that expand play to a new level of inclusivity.

Founded in 2023, we’ve shipped an experimental interactive narrative proof of concept called Calm the Storm and completed conceptualization for Deep Space Dysphoria Blues, fusing transgender narratives and hard sci-fi into a 2D space tactical simulator. Our narrative paint-by-numbers game, Sun Catcher, is coming out in August 2026.

If you'd like to chat with anyone on the team and ask questions about the game, we're all active in our Discord server. Come say hi!

When they formed a company, they set out to make something from nothing. All they needed was a CEO who could direct art and sound. And once the moonlit sacrifices paperwork filing was done and the ink was dry, there you were in the meeting: a multi-media writer and producer. Your CV says you've written for newspapers, games, comics, and audioplays. The Gender Equality in Media Society remembers giving you an Innovator award for DEI. They must be correct. it's not like someone could retroactively.... Whatever. A corporation? A games company? It's legally a person, so you're good, right?

Darkest self: Kyriarchy is a prison. No one belongs inside of it. Work on a dozen projects for ridiculous hours until you're so far past the point of diminishing returns that it's obvious to everyone. Even you. To escape your darkest self, take a day off and bike to a friend's place for board games and weird movies.

Obsessed with play and games on a philosophical level, you sold your soul to the being on the other side of the computer screen, the spark of learning and art that powers the world. And for twenty years, that bargain delivered: you programmed and designed for award-winning games. But the being demanded more and more, and you paid the price in burnout and churn. You escaped that cycle for an independent life, but living without creating isn’t living at all… and the being calls out again.

Darkest Self:With the expenditure of great power comes great exhaustion. When you’re in your darkest self, the world falls away and only darkness remains. Escape your darkest self by hibernating and recharging in total solitude.

You recognize what makes each and everyone special, and you want the world to see it too. You see the potential in those who don’t see it in themselves, and you’ll go to great lengths to make sure they know it, and know there's a place where they belong. And by gathering them and bringing them all together you’ll become better, too. Because we make each other better when we share what makes us great. Stronger, more beautiful, complete. That’s how we form a community. That’s how we win.

Darkest self: Whether real or perceived, they’ve done something that has made you second guess your commitments. You need some time to recalibrate, to be weird and reclusive and remind yourself that you exist outside of just being a lynchpin in a community. Remain in your darkest self until you pass off some responsibilities or you realize you have caused harm to your community by taking on too much at once.

The Mortal moves through the world by listening: to melodies that linger like memories, to silences that ache with meaning, to sounds that shimmer with fragile beauty. For you, design is never just technical craft; it's the shaping of sonic experiences that stir the heart and reveal hidden truths. Every note is chosen to awaken feeling, every rhythm a thread binding reason to emotion. You believe that sound is not decoration but revelation — a way to uncover beauty, to touch what words can't, and to remind us that to feel deeply is the most human act of all.

Darkest self:Beneath this devotion lies a fragile core. When thoughts and emotions overflow, you feel consumed, your energy dimmed by noise, by endless movement, by the demands of the outside world. In these moments, you turn inward — to meditation, to books, to the quiet ritual of writing — finding in solitude the stillness that restores you and the clarity to create beauty once more.

In every dialogue flag, every stat bar, every mechanic that lets a player interact with the story-world they're in – there is an invitation to take the player for a ride. Not that witchcraft is about riding players, but it’s hard not to notice how guided a game can be (and shouldn’t be!) when you know a thing or two about game and narrative design. So a good witch like you knows restraint. A good witch turns a blind eye to the invitation, and doesn’t succumb to cheap tactics like one-hit kills and delayed attacks to elicit emotions from a player. And that’s why a good witch like you has a games industry award to their name.

Darkest self: The time for subtlety is over. The whines of the loudest players have reached a fever pitch. You turn the game into a theme park ride, and let players min-max all the fun out of it. To escape your Darkest Self, you must play a game with good design principles and remind yourself of the balance to be struck between player and creator.

As a ghoul, you're given a chance to unlock unknown information of the mishaps that happen outside in hidden areas at night. Once an artist, you draw out situations and people in abstract forms so that you can understand what could have happened and why. No one should approach you with a hand empty of snacks of your favourite cravings — dangers may arise otherwise.

Darkest self: You knock out in the middle of walking outside, unable to wake up from sleepwalking. Escape your darkest self by eating your cravings (steamed potatoes, pasta, grass, flowers). When your hunger is met, you are able to draw out what you see and talk.

At Ludic Lemur, we champion both the power of human creativity and the importance of a healthy environment, and we find that Gen-AI too often undercuts both. That’s why we don’t believe in the use of commercial generative artificial intelligence, and we’ve chosen not to use it in our business or our games. We don’t use it to draft emails, write games, program, create art… the list goes on. 

We do, however, believe in the power of the em dash — and its ability to survive the AI smear campaign against it. So if you see it in our work, know that that’s a home grown em dash, birthed in the dark forge of workshop classes and editing courses and delivered to you, our players and fans, with love — and perspicacity.