A number of years ago, I ran a game on GRcade by the name of Are You A Hitman?. A werewolf game, it featured the GRcade members trying to survive against a group of hitmen. As the events of the days played out, I crafted a story telling the demise of the GRcade members to these hitmen. The game itself might have heavily favoured the hitmen, but the story it produced was something I felt worked. Thus, Trials of Gore Fest was born.

It would need to be heavily changed to work as a short story, naturally. The nature of werewolf means there were so many points of view as each person was killed off. What I needed was a singular point of view to show the events that person encountered. The story from that game also moved around locations of Elan Valley a lot. Since I now was telling it from a singular point of view, I needed the kills that happened to be a lot more linear.

For characters, it felt wrong to use the GRcade members for it. I’m sure some would have agreed to be in it, but I wanted this to be fully original. And not just because the story involved murder. Much like Alternate Halesowen and Beyond, by having my own characters, I could create their identities to my liking. Even if they barely featured enough to show them. And when it came to naming, it meant I could sneak in a few references to various things.

Then there were the original characters, those of both the bodyguards and the hitmen of the game. Now named Dark Web Intelligence and the UK Gore Fest team. Helen became the point of view character, as she was an investigator. I developed a bit of a backstory to help craft her personality, which also helped for the original additions to the story. Those that happen before the day of murder begins.

When it came to the cover design, I sought help from two communities. Those of GRcade, and a Dutch art Discord that I’m part of. Both were instrumental in the cover achieving my brief for what I wanted it to reflect. That being critical injuries bringing blood to flow and darkness to approach. So a thank you goes out to both communities for helping me with that.

Trials of Gore Fest: Elan Valley is now on Wattpad, available to read for free. As the name implies, there’s graphic depictions of bodily harm. Making this the first mature universe of mine. As such, I won’t provide an excerpt here. Future stories within the Trials of Gore Fest universe will be fully original. I have plans for what I want to do, including introducing new members of Dark Web Intelligence.

While I have ran a second Are You A Hitman? on GRcade, its story felt lacking owing to how I scripted the game. Only certain locations were visited, with a weird structure to how kills happened. As such, while things such as location could be borrowed from it, the overall story would be completely different to how it happened in that game. And if I don’t ever write another story in the universe, Elan Valley acts as a great standalone short.