A write-up on this game would be incomplete without mentioning the developer. ThatGuyLodos has built a reputation for consistent communication and a clear vision. Updates are often substantial, and the version numbering (reaching 0.68.8) indicates a project that has been ongoing for a significant time, undergoing rigorous testing and iteration. The developer’s willingness to refine older content while adding new chapters ensures that long-time supporters feel valued.
Given that the prologue requires multiple playthroughs to see all content (roughly 4 hours of reading per run), ThatGuyLodos added a "Hard Skip" button (Hold Ctrl + Shift) that bypasses previously viewed text, stopping only at new choices.
MudBlood Prologue by ThatGuyLodos is a title that sits firmly in the niche category of adult-oriented fantasy RPGs, typically found on platforms like Patreon or itch.io. It is an ambitious project that attempts to blend a dark, atmospheric narrative with the classic mechanics of a role-playing game, all while pushing the boundaries of what fans expect from the "renpy" or "RPG Maker" adult game sphere.
Here is a breakdown of the game as it stands in version 0.68.8.
By ThatGuyLodos
The rain over the Fenmire Marches never fell. It seeped.
That was the first lesson Tern learned as a child, and the one he recited now, knuckles white around the splintered shaft of his half-pike. Rain elsewhere pattered, drummed, or lashed. Here, it oozed from a sky the color of a week-old bruise, clinging to cloak and skin like a second, colder membrane.
He was fifteen, which in the Marches meant he had survived fifteen turns of the black floods, fifteen harvests of sour-grass and bog-nuts. It also meant his blood had finally thickened, his father said, to the proper muddy consistency. Thick enough to stand the Night Watch.
“Eyes on the mire, boy,” Varle grunted from the next post over. The older man didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. His one good eye, the other a puckered pit of scar tissue, had long ago learned to smell movement before it came. “It’ll whisper to you if you let it. Make you see a face you know. A hand reaching up. Don’t look.”
Tern looked.
He always looked. That was the problem.
The mire stretched before them—a quilt of black water, trembling reeds, and the half-submerged skeletons of trees that had died a century ago but refused to fall. The bog exhaled. A low, wet sound, like something turning over in its sleep. Tern’s pike trembled.
“What’s down there?” he whispered.
Varle laughed, a dry rustle. “Everything we’ve lost. And some things we never had.” MudBlood Prologue -v0.68.8- By ThatGuyLodos
That was not a proper answer. But in the Marches, proper answers were a luxury for drylanders. Here, you got riddles wrapped in mud and called it wisdom.
The trouble began not with a scream, but with a hush.
At first, Tern thought the rain had stopped. Then he realized the sound wasn’t absent—it was being absorbed. The bog’s usual chorus of croaks, drips, and the distant chime of marsh-lights had been swallowed whole.
Varle went rigid. His hand moved to the rusted bell at his belt, the one they were supposed to ring only for the Deep Tide. “Boy,” he said, voice flat. “Run to the stake-path. Don’t look back.”
“What is it?”
“MudBlood.”
The word hit Tern like a bucket of cold slurry. He had heard the old tales—how the first settlers of Fenmire had not been refugees, but fools who tried to drain the bog. How they had dug too deep, past peat and clay, past the old bones, into something that bled. Not red blood. Thicker. Darker. The kind that did not wash off.
And how the bog had answered.
A ripple spread across the black water. Not from wind—there was no wind. It moved against the current, slow and deliberate, like a serpent turning over in its sleep. Then a shape rose.
At first, it looked like a drowned man. Pale, swollen, trailing clots of weed and muck. But drowned men did not have fingers that kept growing, elongating into root-like tendrils that sank back into the water with wet, sucking sounds. Drowned men did not open their mouths to reveal not a throat, but a hollow, whistling darkness.
Varle rang the bell. Once. Twice. The iron clapper shattered on the third ring, eaten through by rust and something worse. “Go!” he roared, shoving Tern toward the stake-path—a treacherous line of sharpened poles driven into the bog, the only safe route back to the village.
Tern’s legs moved. One step. Two. The pole beneath his left boot groaned. He did not look back.
He heard Varle’s pike thud into something wet. Heard Varle curse—a long, rolling string of fen-words that turned into a gargle. Then a sound like a sack of offal hitting a stone floor. A write-up on this game would be incomplete
He looked back.
Varle was gone. But his cloak floated on the black water, spreading outward in a perfect circle, as if something had pulled him straight down through the mud without disturbing the surface.
And then the MudBlood turned its head.
It had Varle’s face now. Not perfectly—the features were stretched, softened, like a mask of skin pulled over a different skull. But the scar over the eye was there. The crooked nose. It smiled with Tern’s father’s mouth.
“Thick blood,” it whispered. Not with Varle’s voice. With something older. A voice that spoke in the creak of bog-wood and the hiss of marsh-gas. “But still thin enough to run. Run, little fenling.”
Tern ran.
He did not stop when the stake-path ended and the village palisade began. He did not stop when his mother grabbed him by the shoulders, her calloused hands reeking of peat-smoke and sour ale. He did not stop until he was inside the longhouse, kneeling before the Hearth-Stone, where the old fire—the one they said had been lit from the first flame brought across the Dry Divide—flickered green and low.
“It wore him,” Tern finally choked out. “It wore Varle’s face.”
His mother went pale. The other watchmen exchanged glances—quick, furtive, the kind of glances that said they had known this day would come. The Elder, a woman so ancient her eyes had the milky film of a deep-water fish, leaned forward on her stool of woven bones.
“The MudBlood don’t wear faces, boy,” she said. “It remembers them. There’s a difference. And if it’s remembering now, after sixty turns of sleep…” She paused, looking at the green flame. “The patch is failing.”
“What patch?” Tern asked.
No one answered. Because no one in the village, save the Elder, knew the truth: that the Marches were not a cursed wasteland. They were a lid. And something beneath had been scratching for a very, very long time.
The Elder reached into her cloak and pulled out a small leather pouch. She tossed it to Tern. Inside, wrapped in a scrap of oilcloth, was a shard of black glass, warm to the touch, with a single word carved into its surface in a script no living fenlander could read: The trouble began not with a scream, but with a hush
UNSTABLE
“Version 0.68.8,” the Elder whispered, as the rain began to seep through the roof. “Let’s hope the next one loads before the bog does.”
Tern looked at the shard. Looked at the green flame. And for the first time, he wondered if the stories about the first settlers were wrong.
Maybe they hadn’t tried to drain the bog.
Maybe they had tried to build something on top of it. And the MudBlood was not a monster.
It was an error message.
End of Prologue
MudBlood Prologue – v0.68.8
by ThatGuyLodos
In v0.68.8, the visual identity of the game has matured. ThatGuyLodos has cultivated a specific style that distinguishes the game from the flood of DAZ3D-rendered titles. The character models—particularly the female cast—are rendered with a focus on distinct silhouettes and varied body types that cater to specific niches within the community (often leaning towards more naturalistic or "thick" proportions rather than the hyper-stylized norms).
The environments serve their purpose well, utilizing lighting and color palettes to enhance the mood. Whether exploring a dimly lit dungeon or a bustling medieval street, the visual direction supports the narrative's weight. The user interface (UI) in this version is functional, though it retains the indie charm typical of solo developer projects.
This build includes:
Not recommended for younger players or those sensitive to survival horror themes.