Judith

Posted in Complete Games judith
By Terry Apr 13, 2009

Stephen and I finished this little thing tonight. Sorry for the delays!

[edit] Thanks to Jani Mikkonen, we now also have a Linux build! Cheers! (A note to Linux users, the windows version reportedly works quite well through WINE.)

Judith is a game about control.

Downloads:

Windows (11MB)
OSX 10.5+ (11MB)
Linux (11MB)
Source (73KB)

267 thoughts on “Judith”

  4. I dunno if anyone else noticed this, but this is basically a variation of the Bluebeard story (it’s mostly similar to Béla Bartók’s opera where the different rooms appear. Even the girls name is Judith in the opera).
    Great game, loved Judith’s storyline, the Jeff-Emily plotline left me a little confused

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  7. Superb game! Maybe if it were longer, I would of enjoyed it more. Only problem, of course, is it’s too short!!!!!

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  9. I don’t think that this works on Lion. I’m getting an error that goes something like this “7/14/11 8:07:10.531 PM ONScripter: CGDisplayBaseAddress is obsolete and returning NULL for display 0x2b103ccd”. Apparently there isn’t a way to fix this because it’s a problem with SDL 1.2.14 or something.

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  11. […] Judith is an eerie, pixel-crafted first person point and click game that feels like an unpublished Edgar Allan Poe short story. Which is not a bad thing. But it’s not a videogame where you shoot endless bad guys or solve intricate puzzles. It’s a game where you turn 90 degrees at a time and worry that a terrible pixel-faced horror is going to be there when you turn around. […]

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  12. I don’t get the story line, it was hard to tell what character you were.
    therefore i got confused and it was just an 8 bit blob of nothingness..

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  14. i beat the game in 8 mins. But it was fun but i jumped at the sound the dieing man made the first time i played and what happon in the story line i have no idea at all

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  21. Never had shivers like that from, well, anything. Building so much atmosphere in such a short time, really really impressive. I’ll be pondering over this a all day, thank you!

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  24. i thought it was cool, but i really need a backstory or an explanation to fully enjoy it. if someone could give me one, that would be awesome ^_^

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  25. This is an excellent little game! It takes the basic find-locked-room/find-key video game experience and does something entirely different with it, all based around a simple but compelling narrative, shrouded in dark atmosphere. I have to agree with all the other commentators that – given the simplicity of the graphics and storyline – I was delightfully surprised to find myself invested, anxious and apprehensive.

    Also, thumbs up for the dialogue! The Judith/Husband stuff in particular had just the right slightly antiquated vernacular (“the weather was quite clement,” “happy in all things” etc…)

    The ending really was just a little anti-climactic. That is really the only criticism I can bring to bear. A number of other people have voiced this as well, so it’s not just me. But the rest of it was brilliant. Thanks Terry! Hope you keep making games!

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  26. Excellence.

    For those who classify this as “not a game” in some sense: of course…in another sense: really?

    *Spoilers* [Don’t read this paragraph unless you’ve played all through…] The ending worked for me, plain and simple. Not familiar with the source material when I played it, to me it just meant Judith was doomed, locked in that room, whether just to starve to death or with perhaps something undefined there to haunt/eat/kill her referred to by her husband as his former lovers/wives. But the suddenness was a surprise, not expected, and perfect for the purpose thereby, I’d say. After having noted the source material from various comments skimmed through over the past few years, I’d say the ending is even more perfect, especially given the ending from the Bluebeard’s Castle synopsis given in the Wikipedia article by that name. Also…not sure why the simple back and forth between the two narrative timelines should confuse anybody, but then again I like stuff with this kind of unusualness and stirring it up, and have played with writing variations myself, so maybe I’m not the best test case for that aspect. Still, seemed pretty clear if you just try and pay attention to what’s going on through the dialogue/stream-of-consciousness text. And leaving it ambiguous at first who you are, until you get into the back-and-forth rhythm of it anyway, worked FOR the purpose, seemed to me, rather than against it…lending to immersion in each character fully, their experience, the whole point to it being in first person perspective. *end spoilers*

    Great stuff you two. Loved Oiche Mhaith recently discovered before this. This was just as well wrought, in different ways, all apropos.

    Also gotta say regarding any complaints or confusions or botherments about the ending (without specifying any spoileriness here) — to me it’s all perfect for a horror/tragedy piece — what you don’t see lets your imagination run wild. That’s kind of a classic element, deftly applied here. Same as why and how the medium of low-res graphics works even better for this.

    Way to go, virtuosos.

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  28. Hey I really dont like to leave criticism because sure you worked hard on it but it didnt give me the chills at all, to me the story made no sense and it only took me about 5 mins to complete.

    I use a netbook which cant run very advanced stuff so i was looking for something scary that my netbook could run. Unfortunately this isnt it 🙁 Is there one like this that is a bit more scary? and longer and maybe has a few jumpscares? thanks 😀

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  31. I almost cried, a nice story. It was some kind of horror when i saw blue beard. LOL. But i enjoyed this fantastic 8-bit game.

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  33. Hi! I’m not sure whether you check the comments here, since this post is quite old, but like most people who have commented, I’m here to tell you what an amazingly superb job you did with this game. Wow. The old bit of it though was that I misinterpreted the entire story the first time I played it-

    I thought that the events that occurred to Jeff and Emily BEFORE the ones of Judith and her husband.. where Judith’s Husband was Emily’s (ex?)Husband. Jeff and Emily were caught in the room together, and Judith’s (Emily’s) Husband had killed Emily (the former lover) and that Jeff was the tortured prisoner. Judith was newly wed to Emily’s husband, and Judith was discovering the story of Emily and Jeff.. playing it a second time I realize I was just incorrect, but hey, it was still an amazing experience. From the music to the atmosphere, it was all to amazing.

    Thank you for allowing me to experience such a beautiful story. Also, what is the name of the piano piece played throughout the game? Sorry for the wall of text.

    Thanks again,
    Esther

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  35. I must say this was a huge disappointment. Games should have options and consequences that allow you to progress as part of the game. This was more like a interactive movie than a game. Good thing it was short and good thing I never have to play it agian. Next time I’ll just stare at a wall or something, thats about how interesting this was to me. Do not reply to my comment because I do not cccaaarrrrreeeee!!!! And do not play this “game”. yours truly Bob =^.^=

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  36. Any good game will play like an interactive movie. I want to apologize on behalf of the chumps who are too dim-witted to appreciate this work because they weren’t able to fight a swarm of zombies

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  38. *SPOILERS*

    Okay, never mind, I finished it. Now I just don’t understand how both stories come together. I wish someone would explain it to me. :'(

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  43. I haven’t played this game, but it looks a lot like a game called “imscared”. Maybe I might play it sometime 😀

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  44. Wasn’t in the least bit scary, and the controls were a bit annoying.

    Aside from that the game had a nice story along with it, it was a pretty game with a creepy aspect. I never felt that the game was creepy but the music and game itself was pretty, the story had a nice touch as well.

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  46. It was amazingly done by cry!
    It was just perfect!
    I Wan to play it NOW but my computer is broken and I’m on
    My ipad 2 right now!

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  47. This is one of a handful of examples of how to do creative storytelling properly in a game, similar to Stanley Parable and Thirty Flights of Loving.

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  49. Hi there! I saw the opera Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók 3 days ago and after some minutes I realized the resemblance between the opera and your game. You’re awesome! 🙂 Judith is definitely a masterpiece and an inspiring indie game! Well done! 😉

    Reply

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