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August 13, 2011 1:30 PM

It’s extremely lo-fi and tricky to find your way about, but it’s startlingly atmospheric for a game of so little content. It’s a clunky, grainy first-person game set at night in a snowy wood, under distant searchlights and sirens. The object of the game is find five locations, and read the five plaques, before the thing that is searching for you – some kind of disturbing mobile searchlight thing light – manages to find you. Sprint and you’ll get out of breath and need to stop to recover. It’s extremely lo-fi and tricky to find your way about, but it’s startlingly atmospheric for a game of so little content. Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
posted by GallonOfAlan (16 comments total)

please note that this requires clicking a couple of links to eventually find the zip file that needs to be downloaded and extracted. This is not an online game.
posted by tomswift at 1:41 PM on August 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

the zip file that needs to be downloaded and extracted

As such, it's probably Windows only.
posted by hippybear at 1:43 PM on August 13, 2011

Oh, and I'm wrong. Here is the page with download links, for Mac and PC.

Good for them for making it somewhat cross-platform.
posted by hippybear at 1:44 PM on August 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is good - overall nicely creepy and affecting. It is very lo-fi, but the sound design is great.
posted by phong3d at 1:56 PM on August 13, 2011

I'd been creeping around for a good while and there were some searchers around, so I sprinted and hid my way to a building that I thought might have a plaque... it was of the plaques I'd already found, but I'd have thought I was on the other side of the woods. I had a real moment of, "Oh fuck I'm lost and going in circles," and had to stop playing.
posted by cmoj at 3:23 PM on August 13, 2011

Agree completely about the sound design - very simple, but very clever and affecting. Without that, it wouldn't be anything special. Atmospheric indeed.
posted by brianlavelle at 3:42 PM on August 13, 2011

Yeah that's some spooky blocks!
posted by chronkite at 5:21 PM on August 13, 2011

Buildings? Plaques?

I couldn't seem to make it do anything interesting, so I stopped.
posted by migurski at 5:51 PM on August 13, 2011

Lucky for me there is erudite commentary on the site indicating that this game just may suck balls.
posted by the noob at 6:08 PM on August 13, 2011

That was fun. Adequately creepy and intense.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:50 PM on August 13, 2011

Stunning.
posted by monospace at 10:36 PM on August 13, 2011

Very nice. The nightmarish feeling of hobbling weakly away from unknown danger in the dark was palpable. It was like a first-person version of "The Ruum."
posted by Rhaomi at 12:33 AM on August 14, 2011

Searchlight? Hmmm, almost sounds like a riff on The Sentinel. Cool, will have to try this tomorrow.
posted by egypturnash at 2:46 AM on August 14, 2011

Here's some video of the game.
posted by tomcooke at 3:15 AM on August 14, 2011

Played this earlier. Quite evocative but I could have done without the plaques. And it needs shift-run.
posted by tumid dahlia at 6:46 AM on August 14, 2011

Losing in that game is actually disturbing.
posted by TheKM at 5:38 PM on August 15, 2011