Burly Town Games

Synopsis: What could be a worse thing than finding yourself cast off, alone, and feeling each second tick by like the stab of a thorn as death approaches. With nowhere to run, there is no choice but to walk towards your own death and experience the stages of grief in a mournful examination of what the end of life means to someone who hasn’t yet started to live it. Death By a Rose is a story of heartbreak, seclusion, and the curse of impending doom. After a close call on an old country road late one night, Thomas follows a strange woman in a wedding dress through some woods to a nearby cliff. Before he can stop her, she plummets over the edge leaving only a rose behind and the eerie sound of her crying out to him lingering in the cold night air. Now Thomas finds himself tangled in the thorn riddled Curse of the Rose. The clock spins as he desperately tries to find a way to save himself. With nowhere left to turn he heads directly into the path of a series of tortured souls. He finds there a host of other ghosts still lingering in their own pain and agonies. His quest will see him visiting local areas and investigating the tales of four other distinct ghosts in hopes of finding the woman again. Each with their own tragic back story based in Burlington myth and legend. These encounters are each riddled with danger in their own right and could prove just as deadly as the menacing rose, a gradually revealed monstrosity which attempts to trip him up and sabotage him at every turn. Players are given ample opportunity to carve their own path through the game’s story with loads of heavy choices and the direct consequences that come with them. Reckless choices can lead to fatal results. Will Thomas find the strange woman who left him with a curse? Or will he become just another ghostly tale in the history of Burlington, Iowa? Death By a Rose is a horror visual novel game based on real ghost stories from around the Burlington, Iowa area.