VESSELS

About VESSELS

VESSELS is a horror micro-game by CatTrigger, the maker of Morris and Date Time, made in Unity for the O2A2 jam. Its rules allowed one character in one pose, one environment, one soundtrack, one sound effect and 1,000 words in ten days; the game uses 999. SamGrace voices your colleague. It plays free in the browser on itch.io, with pay-what-you-want downloads for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, and the maker notes that the downloads have better graphic effects than the browser version.

A worker has not reported in for 72 hours, in the middle of an inexplicable and prolonged power outage in the company tunnels. Your department sends you and a senior officer to rescue, or recover, them. You stay at a control desk of old monitors and keypads while your red-haired colleague, flashlight in hand, appears on the screen; between you, you have to get the missing person, or yourselves, out of the tunnels in time, and the page warns that you may not be the only ones down there.

You read a tunnel map marked with a blast door and a warning not to turn the heat on near the gas lines, find codes on the console and enter them on a keypad, and your choices decide how it ends. Players describe several endings, from a death to burning the thing out with the gas lines and the heater, and one compares it to the black oil in The X-Files.

Players on itch.io rate it 4.7 out of 5 from 119 ratings and praise its voice acting and style, and several ask for a sequel. It suits players who like very short horror played from a control room, where the threat is on the other side of a screen.

How to play VESSELS

1. Open VESSELS on itch.io and press Run game to play in the browser, or download it for Windows, Mac, Linux or Android.
2. Press New Game and click to follow your colleague's voice and the text.
3. Study the tunnel map and the console for codes.
4. Enter codes on the keypad and choose what to do when asked.
5. Replay to find the other endings.

Tips

• The downloads have better graphic effects than the browser build, so download it if you can.
• Read the map's warnings carefully; the gas lines and the heater matter.
• Note the numbers on the console before you type anything on the keypad.
• On a Mac, if the app will not open, use the itch.io app or allow apps from unknown developers, as the maker advises.

Questions