The Bottom of the Well

I mean, its alright.

The Bottom of the Well is a short but surprisingly layered interactive fiction experience that builds its identity around storytelling, character creation, and branching decisions rather than conventional action. Developed and published by Red Nettle Studio, it follows Alice as she tells a friend about an exceptionally vivid dream involving the collapse of civilization. What begins as an ordinary conversation soon turns into a grim survival scenario in which the player's decisions determine how Alice responds to danger, uncertainty, and the people she encounters along the way. Its framing device gives the story a distinctive personality. Instead of placing players directly inside an unexplained apocalypse, the game presents events through Alice's recollection of her dream. This creates an interesting separation between storyteller and participant, while still allowing the player to influence what happens. The catastrophic setting deals with nuclear devastation and its consequences without relying heavily on graphic imagery. Much of the tension comes from written descriptions, implications, difficult circumstances, and the constant question of whether Alice has the abilities or pre…

The Bottom of the Well is a short visual novel that takes a pretty simple idea and does something surprisingly interesting with it. I play as Alice, a young woman who has just had a disturbing dream about the end of the world, and the whole story is told through her retelling of that dream to a friend. What makes it stand out for me is how much the story changes depending on the choices I make. A single playthrough can be finished in around 20 minutes, but there are a lot of different paths to discover if I keep going back and making different decisions. The choice system is easily my favourite part. At the beginning I can shape Alice with different statistics, which affects both smaller pieces of dialogue and more important decisions later on. I can make her more focused on survival, more social, or try to pursue the romantic side of the story. I like that these choices are not just there to give me a different sentence every now and then. They can actually change what happens, which makes replaying the story feel worthwhile instead of simply repeating the same thing with a few different lines. The post apocalyptic setting also works well for such a small game. Alice is explorin…

It is a visual novel, not really a game. Atmosphere is haunting, and writing is clever. It's free. Just play / read it already. To Red Nettle Studio : Thank you <3

Underrated

Struggled to figure out which Alice I needed for different branches of the story, but had fun exploring the possibilities. Good game for sure