Due to the nature of the game, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
"We promised to stop digging randomly in our flesh."
11:45 A Vivid Life is an Interactive Fiction Surreal Horror game released by Deconstructeam in 2019.
You play as Laynie, a young woman who steals an x-ray machine and a medkit to go out into the country and perform experiments on her own body, which she is certain is not her own. There are 5 endings, each based off your conclusion of what happened to her body.
You can play it here
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This game contains examples of:
- Apocalyptic Log: Invoked by Laynie at the beginning. She records the entire experience and her interpretation of what happened to the body in case she doesn't come back.Did you get the tape recorder?This is gonna get weird.No matter what you hear, please, stay put.If anything were to happen to me, this transmission will serve as a testimony.
- Arc Words: "Please, come home". The person over the radio keeps repeating this phrase throughout the story as you report to them, and the person (different depending on which ending you take) who finds you at the end of the story repeats it to you one last time, with added context.
- Body Horror: Throughout the game, you have to extract various items and perform impromptu surgery to find out what happened to Laynie's body.
- You have to extract Laynie's glass eye.
- There's a chip buried in her hand, which you have to extract.
- You have to pull some of her teeth out, too. Before doing it, she says "I should have stolen some vodka, too."
- Cryptic Background Reference: If you click on the medkit before examining any new body parts, Laynie says to herself, "We promised to stop digging randomly in our flesh".
- Dark and Troubled Past: Laynie's backstory in 5 of the 6 endings. You just have to figure out which it was.
- The Government: In one of the endings, you're a Child Soldier, and the government put a tracking device and a glass eye with a code on it inside of you to track you.
- Hand Wave:
- The fake teeth, the chip, and the thing in Laynie's stomach all end up back in her body after being examined, even when they can't, or shouldn't, be put back in.
- The strange parts found in your skeleton if the ending contrasts with them. For example, if Johann is the reason Laynie's skeleton is so strange, then why does she have a weird plastic mass in her stomach?
- Identity Amnesia: The premise of the game. Laynie can't tell who she is and why her skeleton is so weird.
- Multiple Endings: 6 in total.
- Child Soldier: You were drafted as a child.
- Artificial: You're part of a dystopian society, and these are all adjustments made by the government.
- Johann: You had an abusive ex-boyfriend named Johann, and the injuries are resulting from him.
- Alien: The strange parts of your body are all due to you being an extraterrestrial being.
- Activated: You're a Russian sleeper agent.
- Acceptance: You accept that this is your body, and the strange parts of your skeleton are natural.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The premise of the game. You are absolutely certain that
the body you're living in is not yours, and the abnormalities of your skeleton are because of a vague event you have no recollection of. - The Runaway: Laynie runs away to the country to discover what's up with her body.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: You get a full view of Laynie throwing up the mass in her body.
Please, come home.
