Lilancholy
Lilancholy is a guide to surviving encounters with fairies. I jokingly call it “evil warioware” as it’s filled with a plethora of tiny games that fairies will challenge you to. A collection of school yard games warped into horror experiences, all wrapped inside of its own fiction.
This is a special book. An experiment of form. A marriage of fiction and play. The end product of the lyric game movement. Originally published in 2022, it was updated in 2025 with new layout, writing, and corrections.
It’s a novel. It's meant to be read and experienced.
It’s a guidebook. It's a collection of rules and spells.
It’s a (lyric) game. It’s meant to be played.
You can buy physical copies at nerves.store.
Writing, art, and layout by Snow Battle
Editing by Vi Huntsman
Hi, I'm Snow. I'm a trans writer living in Chicago with my two partners and our cats. I am a full time writer and game designer. I made the award-winning .dungeon and My Body is a Cage. I write non-fiction for youtube and my blog. I love how, when it snows, the world becomes as it was when I was a child, as if that time exists forever-and-always in the sky, waiting to fall slow to the earth. I am safe. I am in love. And Everything is perfect.
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is there going to be another chance in the near future to order a reprint? i'm really really sad, because i got the email announcing there would be a reprint, and i signed up to the backerkit email list and was checking my email alot hoping for the announcement to come when it was time to preorder, but no such email ever arrived, and only came here today to find out that the preorders are already sold out, and i am just really sad cuz i was desperately hoping to get a print copy of this game. :c
The backerkit will launch in November!
oh okay good to know !!thank u ^^
This did hurt. It reminds me of my childhood and the people I grew up with.
"Hauntingly beautiful" suits the writing well.
Fairies resonate with me, and I've always been drawn in by monsters that didn't always make sense, whose motivations were unknown, who sometimes cause pain simply by nature. Creatures who are dangerous but not necessary malignant. To children, abuse is much like that.
The abrupt ending and lack of closure at the end left me feeling bereft, but that's how trauma is; you don't always get closure. You carry it forward, always, and even as your memories fade, the feelings are still there.
I wonder if Lily was one of her names.
I don't think I like her. But I don't know who the author is, now.
This book is absolutely captivating. I wasn’t planning to read it all in one session, but pretty soon I couldn’t put it down. The descriptions of Lilancholy are both beautiful and terrifying, a sort of haunting beauty. The emotions feel so real and true. It’s enough to make you believe, even if only for a moment. And it is real, in the way that fiction so often is real. Thank you for writing this, and for sharing it with us.
The layout, art, and typography elevate the writing but it would be worth deciphering off a shattered clay tablet or corrupted .txt
How many players does this support?
i truly don't know how to answer that question. it depends on what you do with it.
Full audiobook for your listening pleasure!
I read the warning and it did not soften the blow.
While I am still mystified by the notion of "lyric game", I have thoroughly enjoyed reading through this and even performing some spells with my girlfriend, who read with me. The prose is great and the story has a lot of staying power. Been thinking about it for days.
Also, FUCK YEAH SCARY FAIRIES!!! More fairy horror, please.
Spencer did a great video called "Lilancholy in 5 Minutes!"
Watch the trailer for lilancholy here!
This is beautiful and creepy, especially the story about the cracked heart.
This reminds me of Zilphia Keatley Snyder’s book “The Changeling”, about a timid girl with a feral-girl best friend who claims she’s a changeling; and Arthur Machen’s “The White People”, a classic horror story about a little girl who travels into lands of dark magic. I recommend them both highly.
I'll have to check those out. Thanks for the recs.
this is gorgeous <3
Pretty.
The moire effect that last page is strong! The bike and the cement are my favorites so far,
Did you ever read Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century? The energy in this and that is harmonic.
Your day, be this.
Hey! Thanks. Feel like I haven't see you around as often haha But no, I haven't read Lesser Known Monsters. I'm gonna have to check it out.