Curate of Curiosities

You've probably noticed at this point that almost none of Cornwall's games can be called properly finished. Both Deliverance and Beast Signer ended abruptly with an NPC telling you that there's no more game past a certain point, MARDEK only had 3 of its planned 8 chapters released, Miasmon ended the same way Beast Signer did, and Taming Dreams was abandoned after 3 episodes. The only game of his with a proper ending was Clarence's Big Chance.

Speaking through personal experience, there can be a number of reasons to abandon a game in development. The one that's most relevant to this case is that at times, one can find themselves moving past the mindset that led to the project's conception, so that continuing it becomes infeasible without giving it a jarring tonal and thematic shift. This is especially true when a creator faces considerable inner turmoil.

Sometime in 2017, Cornwall made a post ruminating on gender relations. Two, in fact. In both of them, he talks about his experiences exploring the manosphere. In his view, movements such as #MeToo have brought to light not only the prevalence of sexual predation in our society, but also the differing ways in which men and women are socialized to respond to harassment. He also gives his interpretation of two key terms popularized in these circles, incels and MGTOW. Not something that I would reasonably expect him to get involved with, but since his games used to be hosted on Newgrounds...

Both of them were accompanied by screenshots a game that he had started developing, but never published in any form, where you play as a creature called a sindrel (which might have been mentioned in one of Taming Dreams' loredumps) as they attempt to reproduce in the short time they have before winter comes and kills everyone. Male and female sindrels would have very different social roles, which would be reflected in the gameplay; while the males hunted monsters in the wilderness to literally earn their wings, the females would sing to nurture the plants that sustained them, as well as to attract males. As you can tell, he wasn't exactly lucky in the romantic field.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that Cornwall was diagnosed with a brain tumor? Since then, he underwent a number of rounds of surgery and treatment, during which he was told that his memory would start to suffer. And you can only imagine what it did to his motivation. It got to the point where he made several posts expressing, at the very least, uncertainty about whether or not he had a future in store. He even published a web game called Embracing Eternity, with gameplay vaguely reminiscent of Taming Dreams, that revolves around three people who killed themselves.

Early in 2018, he announced that he had started work on a game called Sindrel Song. It would be a game about a sindrel named Glimmer (yes the same name as the wolf girl from Divine Dreams), as she sang a bunch of songs while dealing with her own self-worth issues, in a clear parallel with Cornwall's own. It might have also served as a prequel to Taming Dreams, since Glimmer was meant to join Mardek and friends on their quest to save the world from whatever vague apocalyse was on the horizon.

The game only took him a matter of months to finish, and not long after, entered its beta-testing phase. In August of 2019, Memody: Sindrel Song was released to the public. Little had changed concept-wise from his announcement post; the one major difference was that the main character's name was changed from Glimmer to Memody.

In two ways, this game represents a milestone for Cornwall. First, as you can see from the screenshot above, it was his first completed game that used 3D graphics. Second, it was his very first paid game (not counting Taming Dreams' episodic microtransactions). Both of these give this game a very slight sense of prestige compared to Cornwall's earlier, mostly browser-based fare.

Initially published on Kartridge, Kongregate's short-lived digital distribution system, it was shortly afterwards published on Steam, where it remains available to this day. No more would Cornwall's games be relegated to Flash game portals.

Its description:

Mimic memorised musical melodies to give life light despite the darkness in your mind.

Pretty cute with its alliteration, but not something that will exactly lead most core Steam players to try it out.

The game starts by thrusting you right into gameplay. No opening text crawl or any sort of establishment as to what's going on.

The gameplay is basically what would happen if Parappa The Rapper was an artsy indie game. The game plays a string of notes, then you have to repeat it yourself. If you mess it up, the game forces you to play the melody again until you get it right. The goal is just to make it to the end of the song.

At the end of this sequence, we finally meet our heroine.

Her very first word is also her name: Memody. No, not Melody or Memory, her name is Memody, like in the title. (P.S. someone tell Cornwall that Square Enix ripped him off!) She is greeted by Hearth, an older, wiser sindrel.

Her name's not the only thing about her that's out of the ordinary. Normally, each sindrel is born with a symbiotic "daemon," an organism in the shape of a flower that grants them higher mental functions. Hers is, unfortunately, being used to facilitate an extremely on-the-nose metaphor for mental illness, something which Hearth almost immediately catches on to.

What's more, this isn't the way that sindrels are normally born. Female sindrels, or owa, are usually born from a pool of nectar in a living plant-house, but for some reason, she's been spat out into the wilderness, just like a male sindrel, or imi. Do you understand the deep, complex metaphor for gender relations yet?

And it turns out that the island that she woke up on is populated by wintrels, a special group of sindrels led by Hearth.

Since this game is set in the same universe as Taming Dreams, it of course attempts to explore certain ideas that were introduced there, such as the distinction between one's mind and one's essence.

Whoa. Still a newborn, and already has crippling self-worth issues.

I guess acquainting ourselves with the other wintrels might help. This is Remedy. For lore reasons, every sindrel has an on-the-nose name like hers.

She'll be serving as our tutorial character, even though the intro scene gave us a pretty good idea as to how the game works already.

I might not have mentioned it back in the Taming Dreams writeup, but each and every character there had a motto, which served to sum up their personality and (what little we see of) their character arcs. The same is true in this game, but here, they're also set to music, which, of course, you not only have to repeat, but also have to sing along with them.

Remedy's is about how she'll always take care of Memody, even though they've literally just met!

With each stage you finish, a new article of clothing is placed on Memody. Hopefully, we can put a shirt on her soon.

Despite her rather pleasant encounter with the island's two-sindrel welcoming committee, Memody still doesn't have the highest of hopes for her barely even started life.

Hearth asks us to introduce ourselves to more of the island's sindrels, so the next day, Memody goes further along the shore to meet Hammer. He's named that because this game's messaging is about as subtle as being hit over the head with one.

As you can see by his magnificent wings, he was quite the successful sindrel in his time. A veritable Chad Thunder...Energy Blade.

Second song. It has a slightly higher tempo than Remedy's song, and has a section consisting of short measures that you need to react to immediately, but it still isn't too hard. Hammer takes the opportunity here to introduce us to Challenge Mode, in which you start off with six chances, and lose one every time you get a melody wrong, and slowly regain them after each successful melody. It's the one mode with an actual scoring system, so you're incentivized to match the rhythm, not just what notes are played.

Hammer's lyrics are all about how he sees everything in life as a challenge to be conquered, something which was no doubt the reason for his success.

Finally, a shirt!

In some respects, due to the daemon-flower, sindrels are basically fleshy automata with pre-existing programming. Part of this programming is the instinctive urge to reproduce. And Memody here is no exception, despite her not being fully aware of how it works. That's right, this whole entire game revolves around our heroine's attempts to get laid. And to top it off, the name for her gender is one letter away from "owo." This may be the most sexually charged thing I've covered on this site since Tamara.

But come to think of it, this plot is not that different from Parappa's, right? That game was about some guy doing a bunch of weird stuff to impress the girl he liked

Anyways, Memody suddenly asks to charge Hammer's gem. But you see, Hammer doesn't have a gem, he has a wrist mounted energy sword that's used to both slay monsters and charge female sindrels' gems.

That evening, Memody, ashamed by her tactlessness, envisions all the other sindrels, and even some of the wildlife, mocking her for it. This may seem like overreaction to a minor slipup, but who said anxiety was rational, anyway?

Day 3 starts with Hearth showing you something special.

The gods were considerate enough to leave these 2001-style monoliths lying around within easy reach of these creatures. As you level up, you can get the monolith to give you more accessories, because it's not like they have the ability to start their own textile industry. And by the way, Memody's protruding chest gem produces a rather interesting side silhouette. It made me do a double take the first time I saw it.

Dhurge is emo, and he spends his days holed up in his cave, fiddling with that instrument of his. And if you thought that innuendo was unwarranted, then this is what he himself has to say when you meet him:

It's like the guy behind the irreverent Flash RPGs never left! Furthermore, he didn't get to charge anyone's gems because they were driven away by his dark skin. Oh dear.

By the way, the beauty standard among sindrels is bright blue or pink skin. Just have a look at Hammer in the screenshots above.

It's at this point that you wonder what the gods were thinking when they created this world. Whose idea was it to create a world that regularly gets ravaged by winters that kill everyone on it? The one plus side I can think of is that it might prevent them from developing their own Manhattan Project, like Fracture's residents did.

His stage, appropriately, not only has lyrics revolving around death, but also introduces dark mode, which is a toggle that switches between a major and minor key. Still not very hard.

Speaking of, I wonder how long would it take for the sindrels to die naturally? I mean surely, the gods would have added a failsafe just in case any of them somehow managed to survive the winter, right?

However, Hearth managed to find a way to subvert this cycle of life and death through the arcane art of hiding in a hole in the ground, and taught this secret to a number of other sindrels. Dhurge was one of those who took up his offer, believing that a long life would be preferable to a short one with nothing to show for it.

Despite this, he still has a preoccupation with death, and wonders whether life is really the wonderful thing that Hearth and the others make it out to be. No guesses for what he's based off of!

As you can see, being around someone as gloomy as Dhurge has done wonders for Memody's outlook.

The fourth day leads Memody to Vivace. In contrast to Dhurge, she's filled with a lust for life, so it's easy to see why someone like her would join up with Hearth and the others. It's her dialogue in particular that reminds me of Cornwall's earlier games, particularly Deliverance.

Vivace's stage is the major difficulty spike for this game. Her melodies are longer than those in the earlier stages, you're required at several points to switch between light and dark modes mid-melody. This was the very first stage in which I switched from Challenge mode to Casual Mode in order to finish it.

Her lyrics are about how music is what drives her and the other wintrels. Pretty simplistic stuff, especially after Dhurge's ode to inevitable doom.

While she loved to sing at first, after her first winter, she found her voice starting to crack and fade away. So there is a failsafe after all!

Her advice to Memody before she leaves is to smile more often, and happiness will come to her. Sounds like something that a third-rate motivational speaker would say, and I don't need to tell you that it doesn't work at all.

Before we move on, I decide to tackle the very first song again. This is the very first time I got this very easy to obtain achievement, which goes to show you just how much I was looking forward to playing this game a second time.

Day 5 introduces Memody to Course, who she finds standing right next to a flowing river. Memody tries to take Vivace's advice to heart, and...yeah.

True to her name, her melodies are long and a bit meandering, so don't expect the difficulty spike to let up. The lyrics are about how, despite her circumstances, she grew to accept where her life took her.

I don't have any screenshots of the scene after her song, but I did record it in the video. Here's the thing, Course is pregnant. That is to say, she's had her gem charged enough to reproduce. The problem is, a sindrel has to die in order for her fertilized gem to become new sindrels. To this day, she still asks herself whether, in light of this, surviving the winter was the best option. There's a pretty obvious allegory here, even though it's possible that Cornwall didn't intend for it.

Hearth is quite aware of this, and is himself bothered over the fact that he prevented Course from fulfilling her pre-programmed goal. This reminds me of something you'd find on certain manosphere blogs...let's move on before this gets too weird.

With that, Memody has met every single sindrel on this island. But there's still one whose song she hasn't sung.

It's Hearth, the very first sindrel she met. What a surprise.

I happen to know a thing or two about the manosphere myself, and can tell you that these circles sometimes discuss a concept called the "rat race" (though obviously, the term is far from exclusive to them!) which, to them, refers to the expectation for men to push themselves to reach higher social and economic standing in the hope of finding a mate. Some manosphere followers, particularly those that subscribe to MGTOW, believe that the best way for men to live is to reject this and instead live for themselves. What Hearth is saying here kind of reminded me of this, even if his methods are more altruistic and not gender-exclusive. And now I'm starting to wonder what would happen if this game was made after Andrew Tate became popular.

But enough about that, on to his song!

Hearth's song has it all. Long melodies, switches between light and dark mode, sections with lengthy gaps between notes, the works. And the lyrics are all about how, although there are dark spots to life (being a bit literal, are we, Cornwall?) these moments will eventually pass, so overall, life is something to be cherished.

Hearth promises us a special accessory if we manage to finish his song with a score of more than 180%. Yeah, that's not happening anytime soon.

But in case you were missing Cornwall's fourth-wall breaking jokes, don't worry.

With every song sung and every sindrel met, Memody returns to the beach where she first awakened.

The final day is almost over. Winter is about to envelop the world, and the time has come for Memody to make a decision. Will she accept Hearth's offer of "eternal" life, or will she roll over and let winter claim her?

And here it is, the final song. I was expecting something a bit more grandiose for the finale, but I guess this is fitting, given the entirely personal scale of Melody's conflict. Anyways, this is the longest song in the game, and it pulls out all the stops. While it starts in dark mode, a few flickers of light slowly start to seep in, so you have to stay on your toes throughout. Worst of all, you have to sing each of the previous characters' melodies in unison, without them being sung to you beforehand. The one saving grace is that, for plot reasons, you're forced into Casual Mode, so you can't fail it on your first go.

The lyrics can be summarized as follows: "AAAAAAH I don't want to die...wait a minute, I have friends now! Maybe I don't need to die after all!"

This is one of two videos that have ever been uploaded that showcase this stage. The other one took about 10 minutes longer than I did to finish it, and I honestly considered just linking to it instead of playing through the stage myself.

And so it is done. Memody has decided to join the other sindrels in hiding from the winter, and while her mind certainly isn't tamed, it likely won't be as much of a problem as it was before.

This game didn't sell very well, something that Cornwall readily admits, and it's very easy to see why. While it was generally well received among those who played it, its unique, idiosyncratic setting and gameplay wouldn't be very attractive to those casually browsing the platforms it was published on. And that's before you take into account that its premise can be summarized as "a furry with anxiety tries to get laid." Though, as games like Celeste have shown, metaphors for mental illness aren't necessarily indie gaming poison.

I can admit to not enjoying it as much as I did Taming Dreams. While I'm in my element with turn-based RPGs, I wasn't quite as able to latch on to this game. The memory-based gameplay is easy to get into at first, but it proved to be more and more frustrating the further in the game you get. But then again, I understand that he made it to excercise his memory following brain tumor treatment.

While this game is pretty text heavy, I feel that a sizable portion of it is gated behind high scores in the later stages, so I didn't get the impression that Cornwall would be better off making a visual novel instead. (By the way, did I mention that he briefly considered making Taming Dreams into one?) Speaking of visual novels, the game's overarching message about making the most of your life reminds me of Moe Era, the visual novel that I played through way back when I first started this site. Though, unlike with Moe Era, there was at least something about this game that I could personally identify with.

So that was Cornwall's most recently published game. With that, we're finally caught up to the present day. Almost.