Which

About Which

Which was released in February 2010 by Mike Inel, a Filipino animator and developer who later made the short games How, Where and Why. He built it alone in 24 days in DarkBASIC Professional, modelling in 3ds Max and recording its sounds himself, and posted it on the GameCreators forum and Game Jolt, where it was featured on the front page. It is still a free Windows download there.

The maker's own description is one line: a short game where you look for a way to open the door out of the small house. You walk its rooms in first person, crouch, pick things up and try the doors. The front door is chained, and the house is drawn almost entirely in soft grey light and shadow and blurred and grainy like old film.

The house is quiet, and that quiet is the point. Something in it starts to follow you as you explore, there is a body to stumble on in the dark, and the maker warns of violence, blood and slight gore. Players on the GameCreators forum called it extremely creepy, and one said the first collision with a body scared the socks off them.

The title points to a choice. Mike Inel confirmed that the game has two endings, depending on which of two things you find and what you do with them, so it is worth a second run. The zip offers a low graphics version, a normal one and a red and cyan stereoscopic 3D version for anaglyph glasses. It suits players who like very short, strange old freeware horror, and can be played start to finish in a few minutes.

How to play Which

1. Download Which.zip from its Game Jolt page and extract it.
2. Run Which-Lo.exe for low graphics, Which-Hi.exe for normal graphics, or Which-3D.exe if you have red and cyan glasses.
3. If Windows says d3dx9_35.dll is missing, run dxwebsetup.exe with an internet connection and start the game again.
4. Walk the house with WASD and the mouse, crouch with the right mouse button and interact with the left.
5. Search the rooms for a way to open the door out, and choose carefully when the game asks you to.

Tips

• Use Which-Lo.exe if the game runs slowly; the maker warns the normal version may be considerably slow.
• It needs a graphics card with Pixel Shader 2.0, so very old or basic chips may not run it.
• There are two endings; play it again and look for what you did not find the first time.
• Turn the lights down: most of the effect is in the grey dark and the silence.

Questions