u/Revolutionary-Ad6079

I think the concept of midday horror is extremely overlooked in games. I only found one game featuring it, does anybody know some more?

The midday horror is an irrational fear or deep anxiety felt during the brightest time of day, often accompanied by a sense of isolation or a world that has "frozen".

Liminal spaces were a similar discovery for gamedevs, but are now too overused. But this one could be so interesting to experience through a game and create a fresh new sub-genre.

Story: Year 1972. You're a scientist sent on a mission under the ice shelf in Antarctica to reach and explore the bottom. You are sealed in a tiny submarine on your own, with your assistant on the line. There are no portholes, so you have to navigate using your terminal.

Level generation, music, sfx - everything in this game is procedural and written in typescript without any game engine. Only built-in browser APIs are used for audio and graphics. There are no textures, meshes, sprites, samples, the only assets are voice-over audios. Without them the game weighs only 188KB. I'm honestly surprised that it was possible with code only and with ASCII rendering.

The game is a part of vibejam and I have to say this wouldn't have been possible in such a short time without AI. I've been making games without AI for 7 years, and such speeds are insane to me, it's finally just a pure creative process, with practically nothing between me and implementing my ideas. A year ago something like this would have been a huge pain, now there were no substantial problems during the process.

It's only 10–15 minutes of playtime and is meant to be a one-time experience. There are three different endings.

If you want to play, it's free (I highly recommend playing it on PC with headphones):
haldane4.denisbondare.com

P.S. I've recently made some quality-of-life updates to make it easier to understand and control. Would love to have some feedback! :)

Story: Year 1972. You're a scientist sent on a mission under the ice shelf in Antarctica to reach and explore the bottom. You are sealed in a tiny submarine on your own, with your assistant on the line. There are no portholes, so you have to navigate using your terminal.

The game is only 10–15 minutes of playtime and is meant to be a one-time experience. There are three different endings.

Playable both on mobile and PC, but I highly recommend playing it on PC with headphones

The game's is built around the idea of the player controlling the submersible without actually seeing anything, relying only on the radar screen that shows the 3D surroundings rendered as ASCII characters. What looks like a regular scientific mission turns into very weird mess pretty quickly, both visually and audibly. I'm not showing any of that in the video to avoid spoiling the experience for anyone who might want to play it.

The game has just 10–15 minutes of playtime and is meant to be a one-time experience. There are three different endings. I'd love to get some feedback from actual fans of creepy stuff on whether it hits the right notes [p_p]

It's free to play in the browser (I highly recommend playing it on PC with headphones):
haldane4.denisbondare.com