the relief of impact

About the relief of impact

the relief of impact is the first game by Priscilla, a sound designer who works as ghoulnoise and on games such as The Domovoi and Beneath Floes. She made it in Twine in September 2017, leading up to Halloween, to start learning game design, and drew all of its art with her laptop's trackpad. It is free to play in the browser on itch.io, on computers and phones.

Much of it is based on her own experience of sleep paralysis. You click through a few short scenes of a student's room at night: a project about balance and scale left up on the screen, a teddy bear, a ceiling fan turning slowly. Text describes the jolt of your head hitting the mattress and the pain down your neck, and the computer is still flashing. Then static fills the screen, a figure falls through it, words cross themselves out, and it does not end when you think it will.

The maker asks you to play it in full screen, with headphones, in a dark room, and sound carries much of it. Players who have had sleep paralysis say it captures the endless, dizzy night of it, and a college class studied its sound design. It contains descriptions of violence and flashing images and patterns.

It takes a few minutes. It suits players who like short, personal horror pieces such as The Body Monstrous or Childhood Homes, and anyone curious what sleep paralysis feels like.

How to play the relief of impact

1. Open the relief of impact on itch.io; it plays in the browser, and full screen is best.
2. Put on headphones and turn the lights down, as the maker suggests.
3. Click to begin.
4. Read each scene and click the highlighted words to go on until the night ends.

Tips

• Use headphones; the maker is a sound designer and much of the fear is in the sound.
• Read the warning first if flashing images trouble you.
• Keep clicking even when it seems to be over.

Questions