Never Gives Up Her Dead is an Interactive Fiction game created by Brian Rushton, also known as MathBrush, and published in 2023. It is the story of Emrys Tisserand, and how she dies.
The game is set aboard the starship Tragwyddol. Emrys is a Storyweaver whose job it is to record history for future generations. When disaster strikes the ship and strange rifts begin opening up that only she can notice, she must dive in and help the crew members by exploring rifts and using items between them. The game is notable for its Metroidvania style, where the rifts can be completed in any order, and some feature unique gameplay mechanics unseen elsewhere.
Never Gives Up Her Dead contains examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The game allows you to replay conversations you've already had with the REMEMBER command, in case there's any details you forgot or didn't pick up on the first time around.
- The Locator setting on the multi-purpose tool will alert you to any items that belong in different dimensions, and tell you what they are (using labels you set yourself).
- You are allowed to use abbreviated names to refer to the bots in the final challenge of Adventureland, which is helpful because you will be referring to them a lot. The game's post-ending text also mentions that Dan and Max's names were specifically made short for this reason.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- The game takes place on the starship Tragwyddol, which means "eternal" in Welsh.
- Emrys's name is also from Welsh, meaning "eternal" or "divine".
- Emrys's surname, Tisserand, is French for "weaver", also connecting to her job as Storyweaver.
- Creator Cameo: You can read graffiti written on the walls of the Stonehenge area. The tags listed are the (usually first) names of people who helped beta test the game.
- Developing Doomed Characters: You are told very early on that Emrys is going to die at the end of the game. Still, the rest of it explores her relations with other people aboard the ship, along with exactly how and why she will need to die.
- Equipment Upgrade: The tool you find in one dimension slowly gets more features, or upgrades to old ones, the more crystals you find for it.
- Final-Exam Boss: Downplayed with the final act of the game. You have to use the same robot recording and replaying from Adventureland, and you build a seesaw like you did back in the castle section.
- Foreshadowing:
- The game's opening is Emrys improvising a speech using random junk she finds in the closet as visual aids. It's hard to notice on first play, but every item you can use here connects to one of the dimensions you enter over the course of the game.
- Gareth's various monster-themed memorabilia around his room are of same monsters you encounter during the Monsters Inside segment.
- Gameplay Roulette: Downplayed. While the game stays with Interactive Fiction the entire time, most dimensions have different gameplay elements used almost nowhere else. Adventureland uses turn-based combat against robots, the horror caves involve using a spellbook to find scrolls and solve puzzles, and the train segment is a murder mystery involving linking together facts to find contradictions.
- Meaningful Name: Emrys's first name is French for "eternal" and her surname is Welsh for "weaver"; the game revolves around her legacy and she works as a Storyweaver.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: In the train dimension is a box full of fake crystal shards, but there's a real one in there somewhere as well. You use these real shards to upgrade a tool you have throughout the game. You can only find the real shard once you've upgraded the tool enough that it can detect items that are displaced in time; bringing it back to the box allows you to pick out which one it is.
- Ominous Save Prompt: Emrys making a Heroic Sacrifice is necessary to save everyone on board the ship; the entire game is building up to it. Near the end, it turns out that since body was burned beyond recognition, it's feasible for someone else — Arawn — to take your place and still have the same future. When a rift opens to take you back to the critical moment, you can either go in yourself, have Arawn do it for you, or Take a Third Option and destroy your recorder altogether to purge the timeline. The last bit of text that appears before you make your choice: "This would be a good time to save the game."
- Philosophical Choice Endings: Near the end, it turns out that it may not be you who has to die. Due to the specific details, your guide Arawn is willing to take your place at the fateful moment. Whether you choose Emrys or Arawn, you are given a Bittersweet Ending where they die, but save everyone's life, and are remembered fondly for it. Alternatively, Emrys can destroy her recording device to restart the timeline back before that point. In this case, an insane criminal you helped accost earlier will still be on the loose, killing many people aboard the ship. You and one of your friends can still make it out, but you have to do some terrible things for it.
- Seesaw Catapult: One puzzle in Monsters Inside revolves around using an iron bar and a crack in the wall to springboard yourself to a higher area.
- Shout-Out: The title is an allusion to a line from the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
- Spotting the Thread: In the train murder mystery segment, you are given four suspects with their own alibis. The things you learn from talking between them will reveal a contradicting claim that you can use to press further and reveal more of the truth for that person's defense. For instance, if novelist suspect Maeve described the victim as a big fan of her writing, why did he request to get her book signed under his friend's name?
- Thriller on the Express: One segment of the game is a murder mystery aboard a train. You act as a detective and can ask questions to the four people on board to hear their alibis, and it's your job to pick up on accounts that contradict each other and press further. The conclusion: it turns out the corpse was fake and everything was just a game, And You Thought It Was Real.
- Time Travel: As the game goes on, it is revealed that each of the rifts actually sends you back or forward in time.
- Unreliable Narrator: The train murder mystery segment involves you slowly learning that the supposedly glamorous and impressive lifestyles of the suspects on board aren't what they seem. Usually, the stories were obfuscated to hide embarrassing details, cover up motives, or respect the deceased. For example, Maeve starts off her story by claiming she's a millionaire author who had an entire room rented out for her book signing. When this doesn't line up with other facts, she says she lives in a luxury apartment and had a front-row table with a few dozen fans. This still isn't the truth, and she finally confesses to living in a crappy house and only getting one person attending her signing. (But since everything was just a game put on by the participants, it's debatable how much of this is true at all.)
