Ladies of the Almanack

Ladies of the Almanack is a quest-driven walking sim set in Paris in 1928. It was created for the GAMING LIKE IT'S 1928 game jam and is based on the short novel Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes.

The concept of the game is to use the Almanack as a guide to the queer literary underground of Paris. Over the course of a week, the player would need to match the book's characters with the real-life women who inspired them. The player would also have to find the (recently heartbroken) author and convince her to attend the book's first scheduled public reading.

Most of the mechanics are in place, but unfortunately the plot is not! So this jam version is an extremely short demo of the player's arrival in Paris. 

While the game encourages you to head straight for the metro, there's nothing to do after that. So, instead, I recommend walking down the street first to check out the boulevard.

There are two cafes open late and playing music from newly-public domain 1928 piano rolls. The cafes are populated with some random characters from the game to give an idea of what a finished game might feel like. But these characters won't interact with the player. Sorry!

Bonus points if you spot the Djuna Barnes character who is furtively wandering Montparnasse carrying a copy of Ladies Almanack.

Content warnings: PG-13 content including alcohol and tobacco use.

HISTORICAL WORKS USED

See this devlog for an introduction to the book Ladies Almanack and my thoughts on creating a game from it.

The illustrations on the main menu are from a rare first edition copy of Ladies Almanack, and painted by the author herself. The edition is gorgeous and fully digitized at the University of Maryland library (see note below on copyright). In a demonstration of the full circle of the public domain, Djuna Barnes had hand-traced these woodcuts from the 1869 Histoire de l'imagerie populaire (available on archive.org), with alterations such as drawing in Natalie Barney's face for the main character.

The two Montparnasse cafes are playing music from 1928 piano rolls: "Thou Swell" (by Hart and Rodgers) at La Coupole and "Sorry for Me" (by Henderson) at Le Dôme. I recorded MP3's of the MIDI files archived by the International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists.

The in-game artwork is based on the public domain works of Georges Barbier, the French fashion illustrator. Character models and faces were copied from illustrations which date from the 1910-1920s. Much of the clothing was too fanciful for the characters, so I added clothing based on designs in contemporary fashion magazines. (Of note, there's a fascinating discussion about Barbier's depictions of queer women here.)

The map is a real Paris tourist map that likely dates to 1924.

 See the full list of credits and licenses here.

REQUIREMENTS

•  Play in the browser (desktop browsers only; full-screen recommended)
  • Browser version may have performance issues or problems with saving games and settings. If you have problems, please try a download version.

• Download for Windows, Linux or Mac

• Mac download is not notarized, so requires extra steps to launch (instructions).
• Playable on Steam Deck. Use the Itch.io launcher in Steam (instructions) or manually add the download to your Steam library (instructions)

• Keyboard or controller required. Movement uses WASD, arrow keys, thumbstick or d-pad. Other bindings can be changed in Menu > Settings > Controls:
  • Accept: z / enter / bottom action button
  • Back: x / right action button
  • Previous: q / left shoulder button
  • Next: e / right shoulder button
  • Pause menu:  backspace / esc / menu button
  • Game menu: c / select button

Note: The copyright notice on the linked page for Ladies Almanack has not been updated to reflect it entering the public domain in January 2024. It should fall into the same category as Lady Chatterley's Lover, but without the complication of multiple editions, and there is an informative discussion on the Copyright Lately Roundup about why that work is now definitively entering the public domain in the United States. Ladies Almanack also was published abroad, smuggled past censors, and copies were sold in the United States in 1928 without a written copyright notice, so it is also possible that it was never actually covered by U.S. copyright. The University of Maryland libraries state that they do not claim extra rights for their digitization of public domain works.