Sweepstakes
A downloadable game
It is the 90s.
You are a participant in a late night local access reality television program intended to help adults who suffer from food insecurity.
The premise is simple. You are drawn periodically from a lottery to be a shopper. Every time you are drawn, you must go at night to the crumbling supermarket on the edge of town and take a cart inside. The supermarket is illuminated and set up with security cameras. Select anything you like from the aisles and leave via the back door.
If you see a dog, you may beat them or you may run.
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Sweepstakes is a 13 page solo horror ttrpg inspired by Puppet Combo games. It was received by me in a dream.
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Updates:
- 3.28.25 Corrected embarrassing numbering issue. There is no longer a phantom day.
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I noticed that there doesn't seem to be an 8th night, it jumps from 5, 6, 7, and then 9. Is the 8th night the same as 5,6,7, or am I missing a page?
Either way, this is REALLY GOOD. There are very few solo games that really hook me, but this one is just oozing with immersion and terror.
Defeated once again by my oldest of enemies: basic counting.
Good catch! I've updated the PDF to correctly reflect that the game is eight days long, not nine with a weird gap of missing time (although that would be kinda thematic, it was not intentional.)
this one stings in its effectiveness. It makes me feel like the character in an immersive and gross way (compliment). I picture the dogs, I picture the store. There’s something so unsettling and evocative here.
I also made the mistake of reading most of it ahead of time but it didn’t ruin much for me, it just let me know what sort of exploitative horror I was getting myself into.
Some of the words in my review might be normally bad but I mean them in the best way here especially when discussing horror!
Glad you enjoyed it! The horror I usually consume is typically more fantastical, less grounded and nasty, so I wasn't sure if I was hitting the right beats, but I'm glad it worked!
You had me at solo horror TTRPG! Inspired by Puppet Combo games, too?
This is a dark dystopian dream set in an all-too-relatable modern world. The mechanics are light but enough to engage the imagination for the narrative prompts. The horror isn't an esoteric cult far away in the woods summoning an elder god, it's desperate people in a neighborhood near you taking a chance risking more than they know for no more than some free groceries.
Sometimes "free" means the real price is more than you'll want to pay.
Looking forward to playing this. If you play, my advice is not to read the whole thing as I did, but take it a page at a time. Keep a record of your play, inventing details as prompted.
Oh, yep. It was definitely designed to be played as it was read, and I don't think I communicated that as effectively as I should have.
I don't do a ton of solo game work, so a good bit of this was just me tinkering with mechanics and ideas. I'll roll the knowledge I got from it forward into my next thing.