How to Play
Goddard Withings is a choose-your-own-adventure text game. You read short scenes, then click the choice you want to take. It runs in your browser. There's nothing to download and no account to make. A first playthrough takes about thirty minutes; an obsessive multi-ending run takes a couple of hours.
The basics
- 1. Read the passage.
- Each screen is a chunk of story — usually a paragraph or three. Some passages animate text in over several seconds; if you're a fast reader, just enjoy the rhythm or wait it out.
- 2. Click a choice.
- At the bottom of each passage you'll see one or more labeled options like "Try a faster way" or "Punch him." Clicking takes you down that path. Choices are usually labeled with a tone hint (Bombastic, Diplomatic, Wacky, etc.) so you can pick what feels Goddard-shaped to you.
- 3. Pay attention to who's speaking.
- Dialogue is color-coded by character. Each speaker has their own tint — Brindles in rusty brown, BoB in cyan, Karl in green-visor green, Skink in dusty red, and others as you meet them. Once you've met someone, you'll know who's talking at a glance.
- 4. Use the audio controls.
- The "<< Audio Controls" link at the top of most passages opens a small panel where you can mute, change tracks, and adjust volume. The soundtrack is part of the vibe but the game plays fine in silence.
- 5. Don't worry about saving.
- The game runs in your browser. If you close the tab, you'll start over. There is no permadeath; reaching an ending just loops you back to the opening. (Saving via your browser's Back button does not work — you'll lose state.)
Tips for your first run
- Pick what feels stupid. Goddard is at his best when he is at his worst. The funniest passages are usually on the wrongest paths.
- Don't optimize. There's no score, no XP, no winning ending. Different choices unlock different scenes; many of them are unrelated to the ending you get.
- Some choices set hidden state. Who you sleep with, who you trust, what ship you take — these persist and change later scenes (and what some characters say to you).
- Save your judgment for the final choice. The last decision is the one that matters. Each of the six possibilities tells a complete short story — pick the one that feels right to you, then come back later for the others.
We're not going to tell you what they are. Half the fun is the wait. What we will tell you: none of them is the "right" one. Some end warm. Some end disastrous. One you will think about for a couple of days. Play the choice that feels most Goddard-shaped to you, see what you get, then come back and try again.
Content advisory
Goddard Withings is a comedy game with adult-adjacent humor. To play it through, expect:
- Cartoon violence (one gunshot moment with Karl, a knockout scene, alien bar brawls).
- One mildly explicit gag scene with two flavors — a PG-rated "short funny version" and an R-rated "weird stuff I'm into" version. Both are tagged before you enter and offer an off-ramp.
- Mild swearing, references to a generally morally questionable adult macguffin, and several jokes about bureaucracy.
- Quote: "Sex with a payphone." (You'll know it when you see it.)
There's no gore, no real-world political content, no slurs. Roughly equivalent to a PG-13 sci-fi comedy film.
Compatibility & troubleshooting
The game runs in any modern browser: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, mobile or desktop. It uses the Harlowe story format, which is well-supported but does occasionally warn about unsupported features in very old browsers.
- If the page looks broken, refresh once — sometimes audio assets hang briefly.
- If audio doesn't play, click anywhere on the page first (browsers block autoplay without interaction).
- If you hit a literal error message in pink text, please let me know — I'll fix it.