This week, I’d like to take a look at some games that most people probably aren’t aware of. This isn’t to say that they were especially good, or particularly innovative-- I’d just like to take a moment to share my experiences with a series of short games I found around three years ago. I don’t have access to them anymore, and I haven’t been able to find them online, so some of my memories may be a bit off. However, I believe that the impact the games left on me will be powerful enough to deliver a fair amount of accuracy in my recollection, and let me describe them effectively enough, so that those who never got the chance to play them have an idea of what they were like, and understand why my memories of playing them are so vivid.
I can’t remember which website I got the game from, but considering when I played it, my best guess would be Gamejolt, since it was around the time it started to become the defacto indie game website. Again, all of my best efforts to find the game there, or anywhere, have shown that the creator has likely scrubbed his/her existence from the internet. I do remember the creator’s username however, “DarknessDawns,” since it was a line that appeared during the beginning of all four games. The games were all plays on the title of the original game, “Dance into the Void.” This game isn’t the one I’ll talk about first however, since it wasn’t actually the first one I played, an anomaly that I’ll explain further on.
The first game by DarknessDawns I played was called “Rendered into the Void.” This game, like all the others, was a fairly basic RPG-maker, story-focused horror game. I remember that it was during a time when I was really into weird, dark, or horror themed RPGs, and many of the free ones were RPG-maker games. Games like Space Funeral and Ao Oni were some of my favorites, so I was always looking for more games that hit that non-traditional, narrative-focused vibe. The screenshots for the game were the first indication that it was what I was looking for. The whole game had original sprite work and backgrounds, which was usually your easiest way to find games that weren’t either slapdash attempts to make YouTuber-bait, a ripoff of another game, or worse-- a creepypasta inspired game. The sprites weren’t the traditional retro-inspired either, instead opting for using hand-sketched sprites instead. The art style wasn’t particular high-end, and the whole game seemed to be a muted greyscale, but the amount of effort this must have taken was significant at the very least-- and that was my greenlight to download the game.
When I started the game, it was immediately clear that this was not a stand-alone game, as I was met by the opening text of “Chapter 2: Rendered from the Void.” It was my own fault for not really reading the description in-depth, but, in my defense, they weren’t titled on the website in a way that made it more obvious that it was part of a series. Then again, maybe if I had noticed I would have been turned off by the idea of getting into a series as opposed to a single game. I figured if the game managed to keep my interest, then I would consider playing through the rest.
After the opening title, the scene faded into a shot of a bedroom, with a character lying awake in bed. The attempt at a top-down perspective with a hand-drawn style was slightly off, making it a bit disorienting, but I felt that played in the favor of the atmosphere, giving an immediate sense of unease and discomfort. The only light in the room was a flickering lamp in the corner of the room, a garish shade fading between orange and green, giving a surreal, sickly feeling to the scene. The character’s name was Sadie according to the text box, and it appeared she was having trouble sleeping. I don’t remember word for word what she said, but I can give the important details.
Sadie was a struggling digital artist, and was expressing frustration about her graphic design job. She had hoped that when she got the position it would allow some degree of artistic expression, but this hadn’t turned out to be the case. She details multiple clients and jobs where she had to not only do boring by-the-books designs and logos, but often had to go against her own artistic judgement in order to please the client. This often resulted in logos they were happy with, but that she felt ashamed to be associated with. One example was a children’s clothing website, who requested that the text on the logo be in “Comic Sans.” She had pleaded with them that it was a terrible font that no respectable online organization would want to brand themselves with, but only ended up having a complaint filed against her by the client. Her boss had lectured her multiple times about how it wasn’t for her to determine what the client wanted on their logo, website banner, or even as an actual sign in front of their business. Sadie claimed that every fiber of her being, as not only as an artist, but even as a decent person, made her want to just have the chance to show them the logo she would want to create for them, just so they could see how awful, bland, or gaudy the design they would’ve ended up with truly was.
After finishing her occupational lament, she turns off the light, and eventually falls asleep. The screen faded to black, and the text: “DARKNESS DAWNS” appears on the screen in hastily scrawled scratchings. This is where it became clear where actual bulk of the game would take place.
Sadie woke up, but the scene was blurry. After a few moments of her stirring awake, it grew into focus. The monotony of dull greys gave way to a sudden burst of color. An assault of bright, clashing colors came into view as it finally transitioned from the cutscene back into the game. It was fairly obvious that this was a dream. Even Sadie commented something along the lines of, “Well, this is certainly... off.”
The trees had neon yellow bark and electric blue leaves, the sky was a shifting kaleidoscope of pink and purple, and the ground was a plaid pattern of vomitus green and glaring reds. I’m glad that the creator didn’t show the dream world in the screenshots, since the shocking transition into it certainly would have been diminished if you knew about it before playing. This image is one of the first that really stuck with me, as it was certainly an audacious undertaking to have the dream world reflect the struggles of the main character. In this chapter, that being Sadie struggling with her artistic integrity at her job. The world you explore in the dream conveys her feeling of being trapped in a place that reflects the opposite of her artistic values.
The bulk of the game after point isn’t terribly important to our discussion, but it was fairly well done. The puzzles were fairly straight-forward “get key A to open door A,” along with fairly typical push-box maze puzzles that are fairly common in RPG-maker games. The story itself in the dream world wasn’t too complex, Sadie meets characters that either represent co-workers or clients, and the antagonist is of course her boss, and his strict complacency. The character designs however, were notable, since they too were rended either poorly, or in various degrees of distortion, in order to fit the aesthetics of the environment. I don’t remember much of the events that happen in the dream, beyond Sadie simply trying to escape the dream, and each character giving vague hints as to the next object she would need to progress.
The game concludes with the final area being a caricature of her boss’ office. Her boss lectures her on not being “a better asset,” and threatens to fire her if she doesn’t “fall into line.” (one note here was “fire” quickly flashed to a bright red “KILL” as the text scrolled past.) The last action you take as the player in the game is a choice box, either choosing “OBEY” or “REVOLT.” Choosing “obey” (obviously the “bad end” of the game) results in Sadie transforming into a neon colored and disfigured version of herself, followed by a woman’s scream sound effect (painfully loud, as is the standard in free horror games for some reason) and the “Game Over” screen.
Choosing “revolt” however, results in Sadie taking a pencil from the desk and stabbing it into her boss's eye-- a bright green fluid leaking out onto the desk. The color slowly fades out of the scene, and the environment of the office slowly takes on a more realistic and normal appearance. And... that’s it. That’s how her story ends. The credits roll, and you’re returned to the title screen. This is the part of the game that blew me away. Was it a dream? Or was the dream simply a means of showing her inner-demons and struggle with the dredge of her career? Suffice to say, I was impressed enough to want to play the other games in the series.
However, before I could even get to the first game in the series, I noticed something in the game’s folder that wasn’t there before: a text file (similar to the mechanic that some may know from the game Imscared: a Pixelated Nightmare.) The text file was called “Lesson 2.” Inside it had a link to this page. Under the link was what I figured to the the “lesson” in question:
“We are remembered for who we were
--not who we wanted to be.”
If the link is still live at the time of publishing this, you’ll see that it’s a graphic design portfolio for “Katie Wilkins.” I tried to follow the link to her website, but it was down. So, I searched online for her name, and the first result was this article. Katie Wilkins was found dead in her parent’s garage at the age of 25. This is what made me remember these game from all the others. Was the character of “Sophie” actually Katie? Was the game an attempt to give some hypothetical context to Katie’s death? Or, was it trying to hint as something else? The “lesson” was also significant, however I wasn’t sure what it meant at the time. After finding this first “lesson,” I immediately downloaded the other three games.
The next game I played was “Chapter 1: Cast into the Void,” since I felt that from that point forward, I should play the games sequentially, in case there were any elements that connected them narratively or otherwise.
Chapter 1 began with another shot of a bedroom, in the same dreary monochrome style of the second chapter. This time the text box showed the name of the character was “Jack.” The starting scene was very similar to the other game I played, since Jack was lying in bed and lamenting his current career. Again, I don't remember his plight word for word, but I can recall the gist of it. Jack had recently become a lead dancer at a ballet company (I think he said his fiancee/girlfriend was an instructor there as well but I don’t think she was actually featured in the game,) and was struggling with what to do with the success he was achieving. On one hand he was incredibly successful in this position, and knew that it was the more defined path he had for building the rest of his life on. On the other hand, he still had other artistic passions that he wanted to pursue, but found little free time to do so. Not to mention that he had dedicated over a decade going to ballet schools, and slowly ascending to this position. He was distraught that he was having these regrets and thoughts now, after he felt there was no way to step back and assess what he really wanted to do with the rest of his life.
Clearly, a pattern was starting to emerge in the games. We had two artists who were in positions that they weren’t happy with, trying to process how to escape the situation. Jack falls asleep, and the screen fades to black. The text “DARKNESS DAWNS” appears on the screen, then fades away. I was very curious what the dream world would look like in the first chapter, and was pleasantly surprised (and a little motion sick,) as the world came into focus.
I had hoped that each game would have a dream world with a different art style, and thankfully that turned out to be the case. The art style was essentially a more colorful version of the “real world,” but everything was constantly moving in various patterns or shifting in size or shape. The trees in the background shifted and switched places, the clouds swirled into and out of each other, and the path constantly pulsed forward. Once again, I was impressed at the time and effort that must have been required to put the art assets together.
The game starts with Jack equally confused as Sadie, and after a moment realizes that he must be having some kind of stress-induced lucid dream. I was disappointed that the gameplay was very similar to the second game, and I had to complete more fetch quests and push-block puzzles to progress. I remember this game more clearly, since I was more interested in what the series as a whole was trying to do. All the NPCs were still people from Jack’s life, but they all had the same name and face in the dialogue boxes. Jack reacted and talked to them differently, and you could usually figured out who he was talking to, but the name spaces all read “‘FRIEND,’” and all their faces were distorted into abstract flesh-colored shapes. The models were also always facing north, so you couldn’t see their faces from that view. At the time it was quite unsettling, but looking back it actually probably just saved DarknessDawns from creating more than one overworld sprite. These led to one element I remember from Chapter One especially, which was the interactions with the NPCs.
Every conversation with the NPCs involves them asking him about his ballet career, and him trying to say that he’s having trouble being happy about it-- since it puts a massive amount of pressure on him, along with starting to force him down a single artistic pathway. However, they always just ignore him, and shower him with admiration and praise about his success. I felt that it really captured that feeling you have in dreams where no matter how hard you try to do something it just won’t work for reasons outside your control. Jack becomes more and more frustrated as the game continues, and by the end he doesn’t even respond to what the NPCs say, knowing that they aren’t really affected by what he’s saying. The tone of this game seemed even darker than the second one, and the environment slowly grew to reflect that.
As opposed to the second game, where the color and style returned to normal within a few moments at the end of the game. “Dance into the Void,” took a much slower and deliberate approach. I noticed as I progressed that the environment’s movements were slowing down from the fevered pace of when it started, and continued to slow as I progressed, until they eventually stopped completely. The colors also started to fade out, until it was back to the original dreary look of the bedroom scene, but then kept progressing until it was an even darker monochrome. Eventually, Jack’s movements started to slow, until he was barely moving. Then he stopped, and seemed to collapse onto the ground. Then... the game ended. No decision or possible “Game Over” scenario, it just closed when you reached the point where Jack collapsed.
I looked in the folder, and saw that “Lesson 1” had appeared in the folder. Like before, the text file contained a link and these lines:
We are remembered for how we acted
--not how we felt.
This time the link led to this page. This led to a page for a photography website for Juan Carlos Amy-Cordero. It was a calendar for clients and appointments, but all the entries in the calendar were blank. Looking at the bottom of the page, it seemed that it hadn’t been active since 2011. I was slightly confused at the connection, but remembered that at one point Jack mentioned his interest in photography. A quick search showed the grim connection.
As it had been with my search on Katie Wilkins, the first result for Juan Carlos Amy-Cordero, was this. If the link is still live, it’s an article on the suicide of Juan Carlos Amy-Cordero. Reading through the article, it was clear that Jack was a parallel of Juan. Juan was a principal dancer at the Eugene Ballet Company, and the suicide was seen as unexpected by his friends and colleagues.
This time the theme the games had was made very clear, since it really seemed like “Dance into the Void,” was a kind of attempt to explain what might have been going through Juan’s head when he died. I thought it was a bit morbid and strange to use real people as a basis for your characters in a game, but then again I probably wouldn’t have ever heard of Juan Carlos Amy-Cordero, if I hadn’t played the game. Perhaps that was another of the author’s intentions? I was also still trying to figure out how the lessons connected, if they did, since they were very similar in structure. Regardless, I decided the “point,” of the whole project would be clearer once I played the other two games.
The next game was “Chapter 3: Cast into the Void.” I hadn’t noticed any connection between chapters 1 and 2 beyond their similarity in theming and style, so I was eager to see what the penultimate chapter had to offer. I had expected the game to start in the bedroom like the previous two games, but was met with something else. The third game started with a cold open, with me having immediate control of my character. No title screen, no introduction-- just putting me right into the game.
