Dancing with Ghosts

Dancing with Ghosts is a fully voiced interactive story about Mai, a former dancer who now keeps to herself in a riverside village. Her routine of running errands and drawing changes when Pim, a cheerful little ghost with most of her memories missing, arrives. Helping Pim discover who she was and how she died gradually leads Mai back to the Thai dance her mother taught her. The story takes 6–8 hours and includes original minigames.

The village and its spirits

The village is modeled on Bang Pa-In in Ayutthaya Province, the real-life hometown of the creator’s Thai family, and is illustrated and animated by Thai artists. You meet dozens of villagers, each with a home and a job, and some have gossip to share. The story draws on the Thai spiritual belief of utit suan boon kusohn: dedicating boon, or good karma, to ease the way for those who have passed.

Help Pim remember

As Pim, you can slip into villagers to sense their hidden wishes, then return to Mai and help grant them. Minigames include preparing papaya salad, kneading dough, serving roti to neighbors and weaving a scooter through traffic, chickens and the occasional neighborhood dog. Completing minigames earns karma, which recovers Pim’s memories and advances the story.

Dance and express yourself

You learn the dance steps Mai’s mother taught her, with songs that offer multiple speed and difficulty levels. When responding as Mai, you choose between two ways to express herself; there are no wrong picks. Her journal gives her a place to say what she cannot say out loud as she gradually finds her way back to joy and learns to be kind to herself by being kind to others.