AestheticGamer1
Experimental games are interesting in that they allow players to try things that often wouldn’t be considered “games.” Possibly you’ve heard of the SCP (To Secure, Contain, and Protect) series of horror ‘stories’. They’re detailed like a scientific report of unnatural phenomenons in the world that analyse the cause and affects of such unnatural occurrences, code-naming the stories and characters with numbers and letters and giving out detailed information about encounters with these phenomenons. There are literally thousands of these stories detailed by a wiki that takes user-submitted ‘reports’, and gives them a number that fits into their ‘catalog’. Possibly best associated to creepypasta though with some stories being more grounded in reality than others, you can check out the series of stories here.
These stories, locations, and beings are all an excellent fountain of ideas and now thanks to a small indie game development team, they have created an ‘experience’ based off of one of these stories, known as SCP-087. The story is about a secret staircase at a school campus that is disguised as a janitorial closet. If there is a bottom to these stairs is unknown, and those who try to delve it’s depths end up in a strange geographically impossible endless flight of staircases that gets increasingly more and more creepy as sounds and other unnatural things begin to occur. The developers have developed this project based off of that story, but label it not as a game but a, ‘Atmospheric Horror Staircase Experience™.’ It features a seemingly endless amount of staircases that, as the player transgresses downward, uses sound and strange effects to get more and more unsettling. There is an end to the game, but it’s randomized so you could reach the ending in less than ten minutes or it could take over two hours. That uncertainty, matched with the atmosphere, creates a mood that many full horror games fail to conjure up for the player.
This ‘experience’ is free to play and was developed in a couple of days by the team as an ‘atmosphere test.’ If this sounds interesting to you, you can download the works below. If you’d be interested in us covering small indie horror projects like this in the future, be sure to let us know in the comments or on one of our social pages.
You can download the Windows version here.
You can download the Mac version here.
