Efflorescence Games

When this blog reached 100 followers I was so excited, and it's hard to believe a full year has passed since then. So many of you have hit the "follow" button for Garden of Bones updates!

1,000 is such a special number.

The published version of this game has been much slower to unravel than first planned, and even 2 ROs will be challenging for me [Z was your only option in the original outline!], but in April 2025 I launched the demo with a hope that there would be a niche for this IF somewhere.

And there was! ⸜( ╥ ᴗ ╥ )⸝♡

I'd love to say 'thank you' for supporting my work on this (very free, very unpaid, very time-consuming) labour of love, in the only way I can, so...

How do you want to celebrate?

NOTE: the Chapter 2 moment will make sense only for certain paths, the Chapter 4 excerpt does not feature MC (because it is a flashback), and I might have to put out another poll for which character - side-characters included - if the Chapter 3 option wins, but let me know and I will happily provide!

These excerpts / shorts would all be longer than usual so if you have a preference, consider voting for whatever you'd like to see most!

TYSM FOR 1000!

Let us say your MC has continued sketching in their notebook, and one portrait in particular stands out among the rest. How customisable do you want this sketch to be?

Hello, and welcome to interim hell!

Preface: this should be an interesting (read: busy) summer, so I'll be trying to get as much done in the late spring as I possibly can. Getting right to work on Chapter 3! The wait times may be indefinite, but I am not someone who likes to put a WIP on hiatus, and am here to reassure you that progress is being made.

By the time release day came, after reading, revising, editing, and playtesting the spring update for so many months (in between headaches, etc.), I was not at all certain how it would be received by returning players.

So thank you again for the kind and lovely messages both on and after April 1st - and your inestimable patience in waiting for Chapter 2.

But this has taught me a valuable lesson.

I will need more beta readers for Chapter 3.

There is no getting around it.

Playtesting Chapter 2 this year nearly broke me. I hesitate to give an exact word count because for the most part, I type everything directly into VScode, but the total is 100,000+ for sure, and my Chapter 3 outline is longer than the last one.

I had to beg my alpha reader and one of my lovely betas to run through the chapter a few too many times, especially toward the end.

They were kind enough to do it and I owe them my life, obviously, but it might be time to open my arms (and my demo) to more early and last-minute feedback.

This is only mildly terrifying, I assure you.

More on that another day.

Probably.

ROADMAP

UPDATE 0.2.1

This is going to take a bit more time than the patch I put out for typos. It will include some audio tweaks, extra flavour text in both chapters, and the two alternate paths to acquiring your MC's notebook! Yes, you will be able to ask the servant and the guard for a notebook instead. I may also add a few new questions to the informal Q+A with U at the end of the chapter, if time and mental space allows...

UPDATE 0.3.0

Luckily I had some Chapter 3 scenes in progress from last year, before I knew exactly what Chapter 2 would become! That said, they will need heavy revisions and a lot of content must be drafted from scratch. Which I am in the process of doing right now! I am VERY excited to share all of these scenes... But it will be another long episode, so Chapter 3 may be better off split into more than one update this time - still deciding and might even put out a poll on this if the first half or third of the chapter is looking playable later this spring / summer!

This is all very tentative and there are no set dates for the sake of my fairly fragile health (more deadlines don't help unless I know I can reach them), but this is the order in which I plan to progress.

Other than that, everything else is pretty self-explanatory.

Another update will be posted when there is something of significance to share, and I'll be replying to a few asks that have been sitting in my inbox - hopefully soon!

NEW CHAPTER PROGRESS

"Effie," I hear you saying. "Chapter 2 took you almost an entire year to complete. Are you going to make us wait that long again?"

And to that I say, "God, I hope not."

Life has been crazy, so I have no predictions for the future, but I would very much like to present you with the next chapter in a more reasonable time frame! Whether that's in 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months, who knows, but keep your fingers crossed for me.

I have 3-4 scenes in progress, and several more outlined.

Accomplished a bit of coding last week as well - trying something new for the introductory scene in Chapter 3... of course... because I have an irrepressible desire to make things more difficult when I already know what works.

FANART

Before you read any further, @iv-plays-if recently posted THIS amazing artwork of Lenity and Umyra from Chapter 1! I am still overwhelmed, tbh.

If you want my thoughts on it, I left a longer comment under the post! It is impossible to overstate how beautiful this art style is, and so detailed. [Currently very glad my main blog can like posts and leave comments again - I will always be haunted by the shadow of 2025 lol.]

Please enjoy, and check out the rest of the blog!

EXCERPTS

CONSES ARE QUENCING + COFFEE WITH Z

As proof that I have been hard at work on Chapter 3, I offer you TWO excerpts! The first with U, which only your most chaotic (or angry) MCs will ever see.

I am calling it the "FAFO" scene:

U watches you seize in silence for a very, very long time. Stunned, maybe. Or maybe enjoying the sight. You don't know. You don't have any thoughts left in your head. You are back to the beginning again. The undoing. Unravelling. What you were, before you remembered yourself. You wish you could go back further, to a time before pain. An age passes, slowly. Then, they kneel... And when they take your face in their cool hands, you are frothing at the mouth, blood-tinged foam spattering the front of their tunic.

Whatever could MC have done?

And here, as promised, is another excerpt. This time with the not-so-mysterious nightly visitor in an avoidant MC's restless dreams - or are you visiting them in theirs?

"Please... you haven't finished your coffee."

THAT'S ALL YOU GET MORE TO FOLLOW LATER I PROMISE.

Ahhhaha me too!

There was a poll on this a while back when only Chapter 1 was out! Before the demo was released, people were most interested in Z by 55%, and after Chapter 1 it was romancing U by 31%.

If I were to guess now...

Probably even more skewed toward the Younger Twin, U.

Not only because of first RO bias, but also the ratio of asks about the twins. As it happens, everyone loves a fictional red flag! And I think the "forced proximity" trope x "nobody else understands what I've been through except you even though you did this to me" trope (is that a trope?) are too powerful combined.

That's not to say U doesn't have their haters, because they definitely do, but I don't think Z has been present in the story enough to steal any indecisive mortals away - yet.

The beetle poll still has a few days left (it's here if you missed it), but let's ask anyway! Is anyone else who's played Chapter 2 willing to chime in?

Pick one, please.

I had drafted a different poll to celebrate update week, but after reading and replying to some of your asks, I'm much more curious about this instead...

In what manner did you acquire the beetle? How many of you chose NOT to keep the beetle?

If you have time to share, I'd love to know.

Definitely SPOILERS for other paths through that scene!

HAPPY EASTER SUNDAY!

First, thank you so very much for the feedback, error reports, follows, tumblr notes, and recent ratings on itch.io - I am still in the process of replying to your messages - and also for your patience! My greatest worry was that Chapter 2 would fail to meet your expectations after such a long wait, but I am relieved this has (overwhelmingly) not been so.

Today I put out a VERY minor patch to the game!

Nothing too crazy. I wasn't able to fix everything (especially some of the bigger issues like light mode being a bit broken, flavour text discrepancies with height, etc.) so I'll save that for 0.2.1, but I did correct some errors. Mostly typos, and a few moments where I used U's pronoun variables for other characters out of habit (oops).

Most of March was spent playtesting the demo every few days without fail, so for fear of burning out (or breaking your saves again), I don't want to make too many significant changes until later.

Now that that's out of the way...

I'm going to start working on Chapter 3 while I'm inspired.

I've already got an outline and a few in-progress scenes.

Just you wait.

DEMO LINK | INTRO POST | ROMANCE OPTIONS

Happy April 1st, otherwise known as Chapter 2 Release Day!

THE LOADING TIMES ARE BETTER as of August last year. If you couldn't get the game to load when it launched, and still want to play, please try again and let me know how it goes! I have more improvements planned to make it faster, but those will take some time.

And now - the update is finally live!

YEAR OF AGES

This is more a collection of vignettes (starring your MC) than a single storyline, but that is very intentional - everything here serves a purpose! Depending on your choices and how fast you read, it should be anywhere from 1-2 hours of new content.

It will, however, certainly break your saves.

There now a "skip to chapter" index, so you can set your most important variables there instead of speedrunning through the original demo! Unless, of course, you haven't played since release day and are interested in seeing what changed with the previous update[s] à la the arson route and some new descriptions of the servant and the guard.

Chapter 2 is also the prelude to what I am calling your first "companion cutscene" in the next chapter; not that your choices in THIS update won't echo through the narrative and future gameplay.

Because they will.

For now, I hope you enjoy version 0.2.0!

Note: there are NEW content warnings for this chapter, so although there is a possibility of spoilers, consider re-reading them if you have any concerns.

IN THIS CHAPTER

Lose all track of time and your grasp on reality.

Encounter the Land which binds you...

Adopt a tiny winged friend [optional].

Get to know the servant and the guard slightly better.

4 new achievements.

Unlock a new codex page and item.

Training montage. Git gud, scrub.

Flirt with the Younger Twin - or return to your senses.

Find more reasons to hate the Younger Twin - or understand them?

Enjoy a hazy conversation with your benefactor [mostly optional].

Suffer [not optional].

FEATURES

100,000+ total words

carefully curated soundscape

a few original background WIPs

codex pages under construction

4 in-progress personality variants

chapter index for returning players

CHANGELOG

you can set your MC's height now!

custom titles for saves [THIS TOOK SO LONG PLEASE APPRECIATE MY EFFORTS]

new chapter selection page to set the important variables

the affection stat for the Younger Twin will not appear unless you either flirt once [deceptively or genuinely] or find them physically attractive

currently overhauling the trust / affection stats, so the skip feature might be a bit broken until a future update [I am frankly too tired to tear Chapter 1's code apart atm]

finally eradicated an error [repeated word] on the introductory page that has been making my eye twitch for months now

new codex background image [was changed in an unofficial patch for load times so may not be new to most of you]

a few minor changes to Chapter 1

UPDATE NOTES

Ignore if you don't want any spoilers!

As with the previous chapter, don't sweat too many of your decisions here... although if you managed to make U (the Younger Twin) unhappy with their chosen mortal by the end of Chapter 1, your experience might be slightly different in tone.

Not an abundance of Z (the Elder Twin) content, but they'll have their time to shimmer and shine like the ghostly ethereal being they are in the coming chapters! Trust!

The entire story is a slow-burn and this chapter is no exception, so grab your tea and settle in.

If you have any suggestions or possible improvements, my inbox is open! Even if I can't reply to everything, I'll see it and take it into consideration for future edits. This update has spent sooooo much time in limbo, but rest assured I've poured my heart into it for you. Once again, this is all early access, my first attempt at coding anything ever, and my very first IF, so please be kind!

STILL RECOVERING FROM MY NOVEMBER ILLNESS, BUT THAT COULD ONLY DELAY ME, THE GARDEN OF BONES UPDATE IS (MOSTLY) FINISHED.

Loosely planned on a New Years or Valentine's release this year, but after watching all the holidays roll by in a state of chaos...

We got there in the end! Most importantly, I WON'T NEED TO PLAYTEST THIS CHAPTER EVER AGAIN, HOORAAAAAAY!

Although nothing could be worth such a long wait, I'm so glad no commitments about release dates were made or broken, and now we can only hope the end result is delicious.

You can see for yourself how it turned out on...

APRIL 1 💐

Yes, you read that correctly: Wednesday, the 1st of April, 2026.

It's not an April Fools prank, I promise!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. 2025 was a long year and honestly, a bit of a rough start for this WIP - but I'm excited to see where future updates take us.

This update is ONLY concerned with LOADING TIME.

So before I go ahead and announce Update 0.1.3 in an itch.io devlog, I have a favour to ask anyone following my tumblr blog!

There's no new content to play, but it would be so incredibly helpful if you have time to visit the Garden of Bones itch.io page and simply load the game to see if it's faster. I made a big change to how the source files are compiled.

Feel free to message me directly if you have more detailed feedback! Otherwise, please at least consider running the game and voting in this poll, because that would really help me out a lot. It's loading much better for me, but everyone has different load times.

If loads in seconds for most of you, that's fantastic, and if not I have more improvements I can make tomorrow or the next day!

Great News + Hmmm News

The great news is, I'm making heaps of progress on Chapter 2, even if I don't know how to quantify it for you! There are So Many Scenes. A few are completely skippable. Several of them you'll only get if you made certain choices. One scene requires a character customization feature. Some are finished, some are not.

And, put simply, if you managed to make U angry, you are going to have a different experience from other players. But this is not necessarily a bad thing - so don't despair if you secretly (or not-so-secretly) like U but gave them a hard time in the previous chapter!

Your choices here matter just as much... and more.

All said it's a tricky update that has a few different flavours depending on your decisions in Chapter 1, so even this much is no small achievement.

Coding it has been absolutely WILD.

$U looks to the window, as if the answer for this inexplicable turn of events lies somewhere in the desert sands, and then glances back at you with a puffed sigh. "You are ridiculous."

In hmmm news, I have a mild cold, and my tablet is running a bit louder than usual... keeping my fingers crossed it's an update issue that will resolve itself shortly, because this device is where I do all of my coding and audio editing and artwork for Garden of Bones - and a tablet upgrade is above my pay grade at this present moment in time, if you catch my drift.

But what can one do besides hope for the best, really?

I'll make sure everything is backed up and keep working!

Anyway, I've split this chapter in half in my mind: the final scene, which will be insane to draft, and all scenes leading up to the final scene. Those first scenes have a bullet-point outline of which order each scene should end up in, but the final scene has its own flowchart if that means anything to you, lol.

Similarly to the arson choice from last time, there might be a blocked path or two when the chapter is first released.

My usual alpha tester will be running through the choice-limited version of the beginning in a day or two for some early feedback before I complete the chapter and send it to betas, which is always helpful, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Rest assured I'm working as quickly as I can without giving myself burnout.

PROGRESS!

Come restrict player's choices with us :)

We will track entries on Tumblr with the #singlechoicejam, but you can also tag @neointeractives!

I have decided to attempt a full-colour digital portrait for both of the twins... but I'd like your input. My initial thought was to include silhouette images with the game, but now I plan to actually render Z's eyes, since you have already glimpsed them in the painting you were given, and U's mouth, because you cannot see their eyes behind the veil... yet.

So to be clear: I won't be illustrating any more of their faces than this. Only the gaze, the smirk, to give you a place to start with your own headcanon of their appearances, if you wish for it.

Here is a VERY blurred look at my rough sketch of m!Z and m!U. And yes, I'll be sketching f!Z and f!U too based off what I'm outlining here.

NOTE: some of Z's features have been altered for spoiler reasons, and I'll leave you to guess at what that might be...

Nothing about this is final, but it should give you an idea of what it might look like when finished! I'm not a professional illustrator, but I am really hopeful that the final versions won't make me mumble "skill issue" under my breath...

If they do, rest assured I will not ruin the integrity of the game by including them!

Will probably reblog this a few times.

AND I FINALLY GET TO READ ABOUT IT AN ENTIRE MONTH LATER! This was such a nice message to find in my inbox.

YES to the questionable behaviour.

YES to the manipulation.

YES to refusing the gifts!

I'm so glad you're having fun with these options - that was always the intention.

Comply. Flirt. Do neither. Do both. Keep secrets. Be scathingly transparent. I support engaging in mind-games with your local fey royalty, lol. After all, U is clearly weaponizing some level of manipulation at all times - why shouldn't their chosen mortal be able to respond in kind?

How you have shaped your Justice and their introduction to the world also shows me how collaborative the storytelling can be, which is amazing to hear. It's both tragic and a bit cute that a smile was Justice's first response, and so fascinating that their "endgame" is regaining control, because that lack of control is something we'll start defining in Chapter 2!

The personality archetype names are still placeholders, but the "delicate flower" is a set of traits that I'm currently intrigued by: those unassuming petals can also be quite deadly.

I hope Justice gets the revenge they're looking for and takes back that lost sense of control... one choice at a time.

Belated thanks for the ask, Anon!

Hello at long last, Anon from the previous blog! I think all of the options have merit. You might try saying them all out loud to see which one sounds like your MC!

Honestly I'd love to "yes and" this scenario by declaring that whichever name you choose, your MC's forgotten Self haggled back-and-forth with U right up until the beginning of Chapter 1, and even then they managed to postpone the deal for upwards of several hours, convincing them to give you "five more minutes" or "a few more seconds" or "one moment more" every time you felt you had almost lit upon the right name.

Even better if, in the end, your MC circled back to whatever name was mentioned first, because that would make U infinitely more frustrated with the entire situation lol...

"That was a very daring and pretentious waste of my time, Irenmalegance—and I have more time than you would ever know what to do with."

Thanks so much for your extra thoughts on the name choices, Anon! I wish I could have gotten back to you much sooner.

New side-blog @gardenofbones-if.

Awwwww!

Thank you so much, Anon! I have to admit I was wondering for over a month who Umr reminded you of, because I couldn't read more than the message preview until my inbox was restored!

It really says something about the popularity of "Obscura" in the Otome / IF community that I knew exactly who Cirrus is without having played the game, ahaha.

I definitely see it now that I'm looking at him again - there are a few very similar motifs! Including the mask. But I'm happy to hear that Umr stands on his own in your opinion. "Extra" is a good word to describe Umr, I think - he's less of a psychopath than what I know of Cirrus... although your MC may decide otherwise by the end of the game.

Playing a crybaby MC will affect how your personality is shaped, but maybe not as much as you're thinking it will. I'll do my best to explain without spoiling any of the character development!

If you cry a lot, you're more likely to end up with the "softhearted" trait, as opposed to being "blunt", but it won't affect anything else about your MC or the endings that are available to you in later chapters. However, if you choose to break down crying after your first conversation with U (the choice is marked as important), then that is most likely to be how you break down again in the future, if you do. It will also colour many of your interactions with the world!

So crying will become one of your "automatic" responses to stress that just happens occasionally. When it comes to choices, you can always decide how your MC reacts in the moment, although different options might be available to you because of that automatic response.

For example, near the end of the chapter, before U leaves your MC, you can shout for them to "wait!" and ask one last question.

MCs who broke down crying in front of U are able to ask this immortal entity if they have ever cried before, and get a predictably cagey response. It's not that important but those are the details I personally enjoy in IFs, so I'll be including them where possible.

But depending on your combination of choices, you can be an absurdly optimistic crybaby, or a very angry one, or a crybaby who's just too tired to care anymore, lol!

Your English is lovely by the way, and I see no misspellings whatsoever. :) It's honestly just amazing to know that someone took the time to play the heavily text-based Garden of Bones when it's written in their second or third language. Thank you so much for playing, and for the kind message!

New blog is @gardenofbones-if, by the way.

I'll reblog this reply and any other messages I respond to from the old blog to the old blog to give the original anons a better chance at seeing them.