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There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings

Enter the doomed town of Pareildas. Watch as the flames turn bone and stone to ash. Like joined wicks, we'll all burn together.

Steam Page
Developer
Conor Walsh, Quinn K.
Publisher
Poison The Inkwell
Release
September 15, 2022
3 years and 322 days ago
Steam Reviews
Very Positive75 reviews97.3%

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Updated: Jul 14, 2026Developer scaleThe operating scale of the game's developer.
Updated: Jul 14, 2026Publisher scaleThe operating scale of the game's publisher.
Poison The Inkwell is listed as a separate small publisher for this title.
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Poison The Inkwell is listed as a separate publisher for this release.

Media

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About the Game

THERE SWINGS A SKULL


The town of Pareildas stands in the center of a vast desert. Its citizens live their lives quietly. Or, at least, they once did.



In recent days the speaker-gallows sprang, weedlike, in the heart of the town - and since its inception the denizens of Pareildas have been sacrificed, one by one. The electric words that spew from the gallows claim this is to staunch the blistering hatred of the vengeful sun... but the heat has only grown more and more unbearable.

OUR PROTAGONISTS



Anatoli works for the town train station. He dreams of leaving Pareildas, so that he might peacefully live out the rest of his life with his husband. His dreams share much in common with the blackened husks of the town's denizens that line the streets.

Pyotr is an independent artist. He hopes, deeply, that he might do something to stop the hellfire slowly consuming Pareildas. But the price of stopping the natural order is immensely steep - and, of course, there's no guarantee this is a natural occurrence at all...

ABOUT THE GAME


There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings is a narrative-horror game built in RPG Maker 2003 by Conor Walsh and Quinn K., with music by Leaf Let. Though the game initially released as a jam game it was so well-received - and sat so well with our team - that we decided to build it out into a full game.

Conor Walsh is a professional narrative designer who has written on such titles as The Outer Worlds, A Place, Forbidden, The DreadX Collection 2, and many others.

Quinn K. brought indie darling OFF to the English-speaking world and recently released the stylish and moody AN OUTCRY.

We hope you enjoy our work.

FEATURES

  • A deep central narrative
  • Gorgeous pixel and fullscreen graphics
  • A unique, haunting soundtrack
  • Two separate routes and a third that we dare not mention
  • Multiple endings
  • A hateful sun
  • The endless ocean
  • Death
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