Once We Were Slaves

The Game That Won't Quit Haunting You

I found Once We Were Slaves on itch.io about three years ago. The premise sounded like something that wouldn't last five minutes of playtime. It did not last five minutes of playtime. It's a short, free-to-play interactive fiction game built on a modified Twine engine. The core loop is straightforward: you read a passage, make a choice, and the narrative branches into one of several routes. There are combat scenes, but they play out as text-based encounters where your decisions in dialogue trees determine outcomes rather than hitting buttons in a fighting game. The game was developed by a small team and released under an open license, which is why it lives primarily on itch.io rather than Steam. The story follows a protagonist navigating the aftermath of emancipation in a fictionalized antebellum-era setting. That sounds like textbook historical fiction territory, but the game makes some genuinely strange choices with its tone and structure that I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.

How to Download and Install It

Head to the official itch.io page for Once We Were Slaves. The download is a Windows executable file. It also runs natively on Linux without Wine, which is unusual for Twine-based games of this era and worth noting if you're on an alternate OS. Mac users get a standalone .dmg build as well. The file size is under 200 MB, so it doesn't require much in the way of system resources. You can also play a browser version directly on itch.io without downloading anything. I recommend the browser build if you're just checking it out first. The touch controls on mobile browsers are terrible. Don't bother with the mobile build. I tried it on a tablet and the text selection barely worked. One thing the itch.io page doesn't mention prominently: the game requires DirectX 11. If you're running an older machine, you may need to update your graphics drivers before launching. The installer doesn't prompt you about this. It just crashes on startup with a generic error code that tells you nothing useful.

How the Gameplay Actually Works

The game tracks your choices through a hidden flags system. Every decision you make, every dialogue option you pick, sets a flag. These flags determine which story branches you access and which endings you reach. There are four main endings and approximately eighteen distinct story paths. Most players only see two or three on their first playthrough. The combat system deserves its own explanation because it confuses people. When a fight triggers, you get presented with a turn-based encounter. Your options are Attack, Defend, Use Item, or Try to Talk. The Talk option is where most players get screwed over. Talking in combat doesn't work as a pacifist shortcut like it does in most RPGs. It works conditionally, based on flags set during earlier dialogue scenes. If you didn't pick the right option during the introductory conversation with that particular NPC, talking in the fight is a guaranteed failure. This is intentional design, not a bug, but it trips up literally everyone who plays it without a guide. Items are scarce. I went through roughly forty percent of my playtime with no inventory items because I kept skipping the shop dialogues thinking they were optional flavor text. They are not optional. The shop dialogues contain the only way to acquire healing items in the game. Missing them makes the mid-game difficulty spike brutal.

The Route Guide Nobody Asked For

If you want to see everything, you need to approach this methodically. Here's what I learned after three full playthroughs over the course of six months: Early game decisions that matter more than they appear: The first major branching point happens within the first twenty minutes. You're given a choice about whether to trust an NPC who approaches you in the opening town. Picking "trust" gives you a companion for the next chapter but locks you out of a hidden weapon in that same chapter. Picking "distrust" gives you the weapon but leaves you without support in a fight that many players fail on their first run through.

The mid-game checkpoint: There's a section around the sixty-minute mark where two party members can die permanently depending on your previous flag accumulation. I lost two characters on my second playthrough because I hadn't been keeping track of which choices locked or unlocked options in earlier scenes. I had to reload from a save file I barely remembered making. Hidden ending requirements:

The fourth ending, the one most people miss, requires you to collect three specific dialogue flags from completely separate chapters that have no narrative connection to each other. There's no indicator in the game that tells you these flags exist. I found them through community wikis after finishing the game twice and realizing I was missing content.

Technical Issues I Ran Into

The game has a known issue where save files created on Windows don't load properly on the Linux build. The file format is slightly different between platforms. If you switch operating systems mid-playthrough, you'll need to start over. This is documented in the itch.io comments section but buried so deep that most people never see it. Audio glitches are another problem. Certain music tracks will loop infinitely if you trigger them during specific dialogue sequences. The fix is to exit to the main menu and reload your save. There's no in-game pause menu, which means if the audio glitches during a cutscene, you're stuck listening to the same four seconds of music until you force-quit the application. My workaround for the audio issue was simple but annoying: I kept a separate instance of the game running in the background just to alt-tab away from the stuck audio. It sounds ridiculous. It worked every time.

What Makes This Game Worth Playing

The writing is the main draw. The game doesn't shy away from the emotional weight of its subject matter, but it also doesn't treat the player like they need to be coddled. The narrative choices have real consequences that ripple through multiple chapters. Some of those consequences don't show up until thirty minutes later, which means early decisions feel abstract until the payoff hits. The voice acting is sparse but effective. Only three characters have full voice lines. The rest rely on text and music cues. This is a deliberate budget constraint that actually serves the game well. The moments where voice is used hit harder because they're rare. For comparison with similar titles, this occupies a space between traditional Twine games like Depression Quest and more mechanically complex narrative games like Slayer. It's closer to Slayer in structure but lacks the combat depth. The combat is functional but not sophisticated. You won't be building combo strategies here.

When It Fails You

The game has a pacing problem in its second act. There's a chapter that runs roughly twenty minutes with minimal branching choices, and it exists purely to advance the plot toward the mid-game confrontation. Players who want immediate engagement will find this section sloggy. The third act picks up significantly, but the middle is where patience gets tested. If you're looking for a game with meaningful mechanical depth or extensive replayability across multiple playthroughs, this might not be it. The game is complete in about four to six hours. You'll see most of the content in two full runs. The hidden content requires a third run at minimum. The lack of a in-game hint system is another limitation. If you get stuck on a puzzle or can't figure out why a particular route is locked, the game provides no guidance. Your options are trial and error, reloading old saves, or consulting external guides. I prefer to keep guides out of it for the first playthrough. It preserves the surprises. But be prepared to spend extra time figuring things out on your own.

Final Notes on Installation

Make sure you disable Windows Defender's SmartScreen if it flags the executable. The game is unsigned because it's an indie project with zero budget for code signing certificates. This is standard for free itch.io releases and not a security concern if you're downloading from the official page. The community has vetted the file through thousands of downloads over the past few years without incident. Save frequently. The game has auto-save functionality, but it only triggers at major story beats. If the game crashes or your computer freezes between those points, you'll lose progress. I learned this the hard way during a power outage that wiped about forty-five minutes of play. Keep manual saves at the start of each new chapter. It takes thirty seconds and saves you from frustration.