After two months of searching for a sponsor for his newest game, I Wish I Were the Moon creator Daniel Benmergui posted Today I Die online and ad-free thanks to "an unusual individual". Like his previous releases, the title is short, simple, and somber. It's a puzzle game without any instruction, providing you with text and sprites that you can move around to change the poem's narrative and eventually save the girl.

Today I Die is reportedly inspired by USBEmily (Unstable Synthetic Brain Emily), Will Wright's entry to GDC 2005's Emily Dickinson Game Design Challenge, which challenged designers to create a game based on the 18th century author's poetry.

[UPDATE: Daniel himself responds in comments to say that "I never heard of USBEmily until I saw that article.... in fact, the poem interaction was born out of a poem creation prototype by Tembac (http://tembac.com)."]

You can download Today I Die's soundtrack, composed by Hernán Rozenwasser, from Benmergui's blog. The developer also has a new download section including standalone versions of the game and some fun tiered donation rewards.

While the lower donations include mentions in the credits of Benmergui's next game, you can even get him to customize the game (as well as I Wish I Were the Moon) with new characters that you specify, provided you make a considerable donation of $497. For double that, you can even get a version of the games with a new ending!