The hour before anything happens
Most horror games skip to the monster. This one lives in the seventy minutes before: the cone of a headlamp, breath in the beam, gravel underfoot, and a maintenance guy at the trailhead who says one thing about bears and goes back to cleaning the bathroom.
Mostly, nothing happens. A rock comes down the slope behind you. An elk bugles in the drainage. A second headlamp on the ridge is gone when you look again. You are not a fighter. You have legs and a light.
How a hike goes
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Gear up
Pick your headlamp setting and watch the battery. High throws far and dies early. Low lasts all night and shows you almost nothing. What you can see decides what you worry about.
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Pick a trailhead
Trails with real numbers: distance, gain, sunrise time, who signed the register and who signed out. Each one is a different hour in the dark.
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Walk
No map marker, no objective. The clock and the sky are the only progress bar. Walk until it's light.
Sunrise is the reward
Past the halfway mark the sky starts to lift behind the ridge. The fog thins. The headlamp matters less and less, until it doesn't matter at all.
What we're not building
- No combat. Nothing to shoot. Bear spray is for bears, and bears are the boring version.
- No glowing objective marker. You have a trail, cairns, and a sunrise time. That is the map.
- No jump scare every ninety seconds. When something does happen, it should be the thing you talk about on the drive home.
- No engine we have to learn for a year. It runs in a browser tab. One trail, one moment, two minutes.
Sign the register
We are not building the bigger version unless enough people want it. Play the prototype and answer one question at the end, or leave an email and we'll send the first real build when it exists. One email. No newsletter.