The Good Weapon
A downloadable visual novel for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Nominated as a finalist at the New Zealand Game Awards 2024 (The Pavs) for:
The Poetic Serving: Excellence in Narrative
The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation
A malevolence lurks outside your bunker. Fathomless, omnipotent, and deadly, it devours the world with each passing day.
The three of you swore to kill it--no matter the cost. Even if it means you've got to nuke everything. Ordinary (good) people won't do it. They can't fathom the horror.
Evil acts out of necessity. Villains know what must be done.
Yet your leader's having second thoughts. She's getting cold feet; and if the two of you can't convince her to use the weapon, then maybe it's time to take matters into your own hands.
Are you ready to save the world?
- three villainous characters (that may or may not be redeemable)
- choices! (followed by J U D G M E N T)
- an inexplicable sense of impending doom
A game by Madeline Wu
Sprites by Rebecca Tan
Backgrounds by Thaw Naing
Additional Art by Lucius Koh
Sound Design by Eric Liu
Thank you for playing!
Download
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Development log
- Game updated and released!Oct 13, 2023
Comments
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i honestly expected the last two nerve clusters to be the two main characters, sleep and dream (i think? i mixed up their names soz)
anyway this was quite impactful. and very scary. good job OP! i look forward to seeing more of your work (ps do you have any sort of social media besides this? i followed you on cohost for a while and was wondering if you had a tumblr or something similar.
Aw damn, the ending made me cry... The feelings in this one hit very much home.
will this ever be released on steam too?
lol idk if it's just my commie ass playing this stoned af, but VIGIL reads as a great metaphor for capital.
either way, great vn, huge existential dread, got teary about clusters 19 and 20 at the end, Sleep is best girl, would recommend <3
I would like if the choices mattered. Now we can only follow the protagonist, let the other two have their way for some bad endings.
Very heavy-handed and pretentious writing. The one-sentence per line style wears thin very quickly and the message conveyed was very generic.
Nice AI-Generated image of earth, the depth truly was equal to a puddle.
It's hand-drawn by an artist. I have the PSD files for every piece of art in this game and the sketches and layers to prove it.
Here is proof from my artist who provided the PSD file that the image of earth was hand-drawn in photoshop. Please refrain from making such blatant, evidence-less accusations as it hurts everyone involved in this project.
https://imgur.com/a/i4YRfwO
Throwing around unfounded accusations of AI only makes things *harder* for creative folks, who are already struggling enough without the risk of Internet randos slinging dirt at them. Please consider kinder and more productive ways of fighting the intrusion of AI into our lives, like commissioning artists you know and avoiding (to the best of your ability) products and companies that actually promote AI.
Before anyone gets mad at me, take nice, deep looks at egypt, the horn of africa, the coast of china, the mediterranean and indochina. With all due respect, if this was not made by AI, then I would recommend investing into a globe to double check. Because I do not remember greece looking like a little spain-shaped panhandle dangling off a malformed anatolia. Cheers and good luck on your future endavors, I genuinely don't mean harm, I'm just a very critical person.
(psssst every map is inaccurate to some degree bc each map serves a specific purpose and recreating a sphere in a two-dimensional format is tricky by nature. ask yourself what the purpose of this map in particular is, then come back and apologize for being a jerk)
Truly loved the story and writing!
(Minor spoiler)
The writing was great, but I was actually having fun with the story wallowing in the horrors of existential despair, I think that part could've gone on longer.
An incredible game there are only three choices and yet they are so significant
too good. i cried a lot. why do we live in a world more terrible than we can imagine and yet more beautiful and wonderful than anyone could dream of?
Enjoyed the game; kinda expected the nukes to be a test by Vigil itself to determine if you were ultimately focusing in the results and so if you were useful to them, but anyway, it was a thoughtful experience, thank you for making it
Such an Amazing Game! had such a fun time playing though it. Admittedly, I found it through the indiepocalypse bundle, but im SO glad i found it!
Thank you so much!
Amazing writing, loved all the stuff you were able to do visually with text placement especially, super creative and exciting to read through.
Also allowed me to hear some stuff I really needed to hear, gave me a lil hope. I don't think I can thank you enough for that, thank you for making this <3
Thank you very much for the kind words <3
one of the best games out there. truly changes your perspective.
This is such a nice comment, thank youuuuu
I tried writing a good comment to convince you to play it, but I can't think of ways to express how much I enjoyed the short (but very well used) time I spent playing it.
It's like finding your new favorite short film on youtube.
Thank you so much!!!
Amazing job on the writing! Everything was smooth as butter. It felt like I read a 10h story in 30 minutes, just wow. Keep up the fantastic work!
Thank you so much for the kind comments!
Amazing writing and the climactic showdown really blew me away!
Short, sharp, sinister.
Brought back some deep memories of The Silver Case 🖤
Hey this looks rad! Gonna give it a play sometime next week when I get a chance.
Thank you! I hope you have fun!