Stranded — Chapter One

Mel and Liv got carjacked after a concert. Shoes, purses, credit cards — gone. What's left is forty dollars from the ride, a very long walk, and the only lights for miles: a desert motel whose manager has rules.

Dale will rent you a room for $80, a driver's license, car keys, and the vehicle itself parked on his lot. You have none of those. He is not kidding. He says it's for your own good.

Stranded is a sandbox visual novel about getting past that desk. Work the pumps in a uniform you didn't exactly steal. Talk your way around a man who answers every rule with "Mother." Find out why the only long-stay guest arranges her whole porch so she never has to look at the mountain.

Pick who Liv is. Before the motel, Mel asks how Liv always gets what she wants — and your answer is your class: Sweetheart (ask nicely, and mean it), Tease (it's all in the smile, and the pause after the smile), or Hustler (everything's for sale; know the price first). One shared world, and every obstacle in it has an earnest way, a charming way, and a way that costs somebody. Your class isn't a script — it drifts with what you actually do, and the people around you notice.

A world that keeps its own hours. Everyone at the motel has somewhere to be. Dale works the desk by day and is nowhere at night. Buster answers his door in the morning and sleeps like a felled tree after dark. Elisabeth sits with her car in the mornings and with her bottle in the evenings. Travel is free; time is what things cost.

Early access: Chapter One

Stranded is a game in development, released a chapter at a time. Chapter One is complete: it plays start to finish in about 45 minutes and ends on a cliffhanger, on the first night in the rooms you earned. The story does not stop there, but this build does. Act 2, where the search begins, is being written now.

Chapter One is free. If it earns it, pay what you think it was worth: that is what funds Chapter Two. Later builds of Chapter One land on this page either way. Still to come in Chapter One itself: music (this build has none yet) and a few more sound effects. Saves are meant to carry forward between updates, but early access means that is a goal, not a promise.

Content

Mature themes, for players 18 and over. Stranded is suggestive, not explicit: it has flirting, innuendo and sexual situations, but they happen off-screen, and no sex is shown or described. Themes include sex work, voyeurism, drinking and an abduction. Comedy first; the horror is in the wiring.

AI disclosure. Made with generative AI tools: the art mixes 3D renders with AI-generated images (Stable Diffusion), and the writing and code were made with an AI assistant.

Details

• Ren'Py, Windows. About 45 minutes for Chapter One.
• Three classes, every task with three solutions; your class drifts with what you do.
• A quest journal, a scene gallery with replay, save anywhere in free roam, rollback everywhere.
• Sound effects; no music yet; no voice acting.