The year is 1482 and the War of Roses rages on in England – but that’s not the immediate concern, here. In a far corner of the countryside, a convent’s anchoress works tirelessly in solitude, sometimes answering questions for nuns without truly seeing them face to face. There is one woman that she becomes acquainted with, but she seems to disappear. Soon however, the Superior of the abbey visits to inform her that this woman had been murdered, and believes that the man that had been arrested for it is innocent. And so, the anchoress – a shy woman named Hedwig – is forced out of her solitary job to join the congregation to be a spy to seek the truth of this unfortunate murder. Her solitude may make her an impartial judge to the facts, but can someone with no social skills and little knowledge of the outside world navigate to the truth? Did that man kill this woman, or was it one of her sisters, or perhaps something supernatural and unknowable?

Misericorde is a visual novel that was released in 2023 by XEECEE. XEECEE is a person that dabbles in a bunch of things, but I most know them from the Shrieking Shack, a podcast that started out examining the Harry Potter series but has transitioned to being about whatever books they and their co-host Liz fancies. I’ve been a fan of the podcast since I was in college, so after years of listening to a bunch of literary analysis, I wanted to see what XEECEE came up with themself.

Almost all the art in the game is monochrome, with emphasis on strong blacks and whites for nice contrasts with a lot of shading work. The color scheme does a good job at establishing a general mood for the setting. I like the character designs and I appreciate that the sisters all manage to feel distinct from each other while all wearing the same clothes. The non-nun characters feel off to me, but I’m not sure if it’s because I think the designs are weird or that I’m just too used to looking at nuns.

Misericorde has a surprisingly large soundtrack, and honestly, it really fucks. You’d expect some standard medieval sounding fare, and yeah, you definitely got some lute playing in this, but so much of the soundtrack is trip-hop that lends a lot of energy to the game while still capturing the mood of what’s going on. Personally, my favorite song is Doghead because it establishes this oppressive tension and then it suddenly hits you with a jazzy drop that I really love. At the time of writing, a game called Pepper Grinder came out that XEECEE’s also composed for and I was listening to that while I was writing. Maybe I might just be a slut for trip-hop, but I’m really enjoying their music work.

Moving onto the game proper, Misericorde Volume 1 is a linear venture that will take you a few hours to get through. The game showcases the escapades of Hedwig as she learns about the world and her sisters in faith while trying to investigate the murder. The writing is a bit mystifying in that the characters don’t feel like they’re written as nuns at a medieval abbey. They all feel more like girls at a modern religious private school to me; in particular, Darcy feels like a girl that had a Homestuck phase in that she near exclusively speaks in lowercase. If you’re a huge stickler about historical accuracy in writing, maybe Misericorde will bother you.

However, while Misericorde’s writing style doesn’t feel like a story for the age it’s written in, the story elements feel right at home. Misericorde feels like it’s trying to be an expose on how it’s like to be part of a Catholic church in that day and age. I had no idea what an anchoress (or anchorite) was until I played this game, and after doing a little reading, I’d say it’s a good portrayal of that practice. Wycliffe Bible? I only know about the King James one. Even if the women of the convent act like private school girls, their duties remain true to the game’s day and age. You know how the Zero Escape games do a lot of asides for pseudoscientific phenomena and ideas? Misericorde is like that but for religious history and Catholic culture of the Middle Ages. XEECEE has a clear interest in this time period and they passionately show it off in this game. So what if Darcy reminds me of a Homestuck character, she’s too busy having religious visions and doing period appropriate farm work to be normal.

The frequent looks at medieval Catholic culture is also important in that it highlights how Hedwig is out of place with everybody else. As an anchoress, Hedwig dedicated her life to studying and reproducing scripture in isolation, and one of the conflicts of the story is her realization that no one else is as devout as she is. Rules that she studied and believed in aren’t followed to the letter in reality, and the Superior acknowledges it as a necessity to allow her flock to live more healthy lives – to an extent. A titular misericorde exists in the abbey where the sisters are allowed to relax and flake on the rules – ignoring that they often flake on them anyway outside of it. Hedwig is hit with a lot of culture shock and sometimes she readily looks down on her sisters for it. At times, she even yearns to go back to the life of an anchorite, because while she was secluded, it never hit her with the contradictions of actual church practices and the problems of the outside world. I think it’s an interesting approach for a character like this, because yeah, it’s cool that she’s making friends and living life and all – but also, I don’t blame her for thinking the way she does, sometimes.

As for her fellow sisters, there’s a wide cast of people to know. The Superior (or Soup, as local musician and explorer Margaret calls her) checks in with Hedwig a lot to see how she’s progressing with her investigation. Soup is a reasonable leader that aims for fair justice, wanting to make sure that accused murderer James actually is guilty before condemning him, and she juggles that with the day-to-day antics of the convent while making sure Hedwig adjusts to her new life. In adjusting to her new life, Hedwig spends a fair amount of time with everyone to give the player a good idea of what their deal is. The character I think people would have the most fun with is the aforementioned Darcy. She’s clearly the quirkiest character, but she’s also one of the most responsible characters besides Soup in that she’s mainly the one that handles the farming and cooking. She’s also the one character that could truly help lend an ear to Hedwig when she experiences some seemingly supernatural things.

Though, the living character that I like the most has to be Eustace. A bit stuffy and focused on her job, but she knows when to pull her punches, like when she accidentally brings Hedwig to tears. There’s a lot of interesting things to her that would be spoilers to bring up, but I really like her and the tense relationship she builds with Hedwig. I think they should kiss tbh, they’re already working across from each other, why not?

I actually think the most interesting character in the story so far to me is Catherine, the murder victim. We don’t know who she truly was or even what she looked like, and we only see fleeting glimpses of who she could have been through what her friends remember of her. There’s a surprising amount of detail in the sense that you know enough to know her general relationship with others and that she lived a rich life, but not enough to truly know her or why she lived the life she did. It’s all interesting to me because I’ve been to several funerals in my life, some for people I only knew as a kid. But you always get snapshots of who the deceased is through other mourners that sometimes shows different sides of that person, sometimes contradicting what you know. I remember going to the funeral of someone I last saw back in middle school a few years ago and seeing one of her friends break down, and that made me cry even though I barely remembered the dead and didn’t know who this friend was. I really felt connected to Hedwig when she learned and mourned Catherine, because she acknowledges that she barely knows her and might not have the same right to mourn, but she knows the pain caused to other people by her loss. I really think that Misericorde Volume 1 does a pretty good job at capturing this specific sense of loss that I have experience with.

There’s still a lot of mystery around Catherine by the end though, as the game does not strive to solve its mysteries in this first part. This first volume is more about establishing the characters and the possibilities of what could have happened to her.

That’s not a problem at all, but damn, it’s been so long since I engaged with something serial while it’s still ongoing. Now I remember why I waited for Our Wonderland to finish before I played it, because damn there are a lot of questions I want answered. Who killed Catherine? Will the War of Roses factor into the story’s future? Will Hedwig and Eustace kiss? What’s Katherine’s deal? Will the Superior ever rein in a sense of order over these girls? What is the meaning of that something Hedwig sees late in the game?

But yeah, I really enjoyed Misericorde Volume 1. It’s definitely a game that presents more questions than answers, and I do mean that in the complimentary sense. I’ll definitely be looking forward to future installments.

Now, what next?

Last time on this site, I promised that I’d be randomly spinning games on my backlog of indie stuff to cover. Well, I decided to make an exception. I got an email from thecatamites, who’s a developer I personally admire. I checked out a few of his things in the past, and well, who am I to ignore thecatamites? So next time, we’ll be looking at the recently finished Anthology of the Killer!