Zaneiac—or just Zane to his friends—was a king in his own particular kingdom. With over nine hundred thousand subscribers on StreamVerse, he had built an empire by gleefully tearing down terrible video games. His style was a potent mix of witty deconstruction and hilarious, rage-fueled commentary that his audience devoured.
Right now, however, the king was in exile. He was suffering from the worst affliction a content creator can face: a content drought.
It had been almost two weeks since his last upload. His inbox was a rising tide of private messages from fans, ranging from concerned to demanding. But Zane was melancholic. He had no material. He'd spent the entire afternoon scouring every digital storefront, a digital archaeologist searching for the perfect specimen of interactive garbage, and had found nothing. The hunt had left him with a pounding headache and a profound sense of exhaustion.
Giving up, he let his body go limp, collapsing into the forgiving embrace of the massive beanbag sofa that dominated his living room. The fabric groaned in protest as he settled in, the tiny beads within shifting to swallow him whole. He fished his phone from his pocket, the cool glass a familiar comfort, and opened the StreamVerse app, intending to lose himself in mindless scrolling.
That's when the algorithm, in its infinite and mysterious wisdom, served him something. A video, pushed right to the top of his feed, with a title so audacious it made him snort.
[Indie Dev Project! Real Gameplay Demo of new horror game "Dark Forest" - Playable Prologue Inside!]
"A new horror game?" he muttered to the empty room, a cynical smile already forming. "Heh. Ten bucks says it's another boring walking simulator. Anyone trying to make a horror game these days is just begging to go bankrupt."
Without a moment's hesitation, he tapped the thumbnail. His finger hovered over the play button, his mind already cataloging the video's future demise. In the current gaming climate, as far as Zane was concerned, some truths were self-evident.
Solo indie development was a suicide mission. Horror as a genre was a commercial dead end. Combining the two? That wasn't just a death sentence; it was a public execution.
Good lord, he thought, is this developer just that stubborn? He vaguely remembered the last small studio that tried to make an indie horror game. Their company's grave was probably overgrown by now, their failed project a cautionary tale whispered among industry veterans.
He finally pressed play, leaning back into the beanbag, ready for a laugh.
"Huh? A top-down view?"
On the screen, a character armed with a pitchfork scurried through a dark, oppressive forest. The bird's-eye perspective gave a clear, almost tactical view of the surroundings.
"Well… for a solo project, the asset quality is actually… pretty good."
His professional curiosity was piqued. The first impression wasn't the train wreck he'd been hoping for. It was clean. Atmospheric. He kept watching, genuinely wanting to see where the "horror" was supposed to come in.
Four minutes and twenty-two seconds later, the video ended.
Zane sat up, pulling himself out of the beanbag's clutches with a newfound seriousness. He tossed his phone onto the cushion, strode over to his gaming rig, and woke the computer from its slumber. He quickly found the video in his watch history, clicked through to the creator's profile, and copied the cloud drive link.
The download began.
While the progress bar filled, Zane re-watched the demo on his widescreen monitor, and the more he saw, the more a knot of surprise tightened in his gut. The lighting, the sound design, the fluidity of the animation… This is really a one-man job? That's… damn impressive.
The quality in the video was undeniable. The only question was whether it would hold up under his own hands.
"Don't let me down, buddy," he whispered to the screen. "Give me something, anything, to talk about."
A sharp ding from his speakers announced the download was complete. The demo was small, and his fiber-optic connection had made short work of it. He eagerly unzipped the file, found the executable, and double-clicked.
His monitors went black.
A moment of silence, and then a low, mournful cello note began to play, a simple, gloomy melody that seemed to seep into the room. A menu interface materialized. It depicted a dark forest of skeletal, dead trees, the background shrouded in a mysterious, hazy fog. In the center, carved into a gnarled tree trunk, were three stark options: 'Start', 'Settings', 'Exit'.
Zane felt a familiar pang of disappointment. He'd been inundated with countless games, domestic and international, with flashy, mind-blowing menus. This was so spartan, so bare-bones, that he couldn't help but shake his head.
"Okay, okay, calm down," he told himself. "It's a solo dev's trial version. What did you expect? Just hope the gameplay is as solid as the video."
He clicked into the settings, cranked every graphical option to its maximum, and returned to the main screen, his mouse hovering over 'Start'. He clicked.
The interface faded as a loading bar appeared. At the top of the screen, a series of warnings cycled through.
'This game is challenging and brutal.''No one will lend you a helping hand.''Revere the forest. Be patient and focused.'
Zane let out a derisive scoff. "Tch. Who are you trying to scare? Every so-called horror game these days is a joke. The demo looked good, but this is probably where the facade crumbles."
He had good reason to be cynical. His entire channel was a graveyard of games that had promised to scare players to death, only to end up as fodder for his next video.
The loading bar filled, and the game surprised him again. A title animation began to play.
An opening cutscene? Ambitious, my friend. Very ambitious.
It was… weird. A giant, unblinking pupil filled two-thirds of the screen, staring out at him. A dissonant, eerie melody plucked at his nerves. The intensity of the gaze was so direct, so unnerving, that he felt a genuine chill crawl up his spine.
A line of stark white text appeared beneath it. 'I saw hatred and fear in their eyes.'
The pupil began to switch between other bizarre, flashing images: the wrinkled face of an old man, a strange runic symbol, the naked, emaciated body of a person with unnaturally long limbs. It felt like a cryptic preview of the horrors to come.
Zane leaned forward, his brow furrowed. "What is this mess? Trying a little too hard to be artsy."
The text on the screen changed. 'As if I caused this plague to happen.''As if I were the source of this misery.'
The scene shifted to a close-up of a pair of bare feet, with disgusting, writhing worms crawling over the insteps. 'I have nowhere to hide, no way to escape. The forest cuts us off from the outside world.'
The giant pupil returned, staring directly at him. In its reflection, he could just make out two faint human figures. 'We're all screwed.'
The pupil suddenly dilated, rushing forward to consume the entire screen in blackness, before a flash of white light revealed two simple words.
Prologue
The game began.
"What kind of riddle-of-the-week nonsense was that?" Zane muttered, shaking his head as if to clear the strange images. He was completely bewildered by the intro, but it didn't matter. If he couldn't understand it, he'd ignore it. Time to play.
"Alright," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Let's see if you're a show horse or just a mule."
The game world materialized on his screen. His character, a man with a receding hairline, was waking up, lifting his head from a cluttered desk. Zane's critical eye immediately caught the resolution. "Seriously? A stretched, retro aspect ratio in this day and age?" He sighed, then caught himself. "Then again… solo dev. Could be a stylistic choice. We'll see if it's fun."
He took in his surroundings. The room was small and filthy. An empty office, maybe? Or a lab? The carpet was rumpled, empty bottles and loose papers were scattered across the floor, and industrial equipment was piled in a corner.
He nudged the mouse, and the character walked. Zane immediately noticed a distinct sense of weight to the movement; it wasn't the floaty, frictionless sliding of a typical first-person shooter. "Okay, that's not bad," he commented, nodding in approval. "It feels… grounded. Acceptable."
His cursor drifted over the desk, and the word 'Search' popped up. He reflexively clicked, and a simple inventory interface appeared, showing two items inside: a bottle of pills and an old notebook. Medicine was self-explanatory. He clicked on the notebook. A close-up of a completely blank journal filled the screen.
"What's this for?" he grumbled, clicking on it a few times to no effect. "Just a random collectible, I guess?"
He closed the interface and guided his character around the room. He hovered the mouse over the papers on the floor. The prompt identified them as medical notes. He clicked.
A line of text appeared at the bottom of the screen. 'I've already taken this to heart. There's no need to read it now.'
He arched an eyebrow. So, not just a walking simulator. There were puzzle elements, a narrative being drip-fed. Interesting.
He moved to the window. It was boarded up. A prompt appeared: Reinforced Window (Detachable). In a horror game, reinforcing windows was standard practice. But the option to detach them? Curiosity, the gamer's oldest instinct, took over. He clicked to disassemble it.
'It would be suicidal to tear it down now.'
The game wouldn't let him. But the implication—that some danger was waiting right outside—sent a little thrill of anticipation through him. He finished his sweep of the small room and walked through the door. The map instantly expanded, revealing the full layout of a small, dilapidated house. As he stepped into what looked like a living room, a new objective appeared.
'I need to add some oil to the generator. There is a scrapped tractor in the eastern forest. There should be some oil in it.'
"Okay! A quest!" Zane grinned. A clear goal was always a good sign. "Eastern forest, huh? Well, any seasoned gamer knows you loot the starting area before you head out."
He began a thorough search of the house. From various notes and item descriptions, a picture of the protagonist began to form. He was a doctor. And from the tone of the writings, he was not well-liked by the other inhabitants of the forest. One prompt, over a set of grimy medical tools, was particularly telling.
'My medical tools. They haven't been sterilized in years. But then, the patients here have no cure.'
"So I'm a doctor trying to escape, maybe find an antidote?" Zane mused, piecing it together. "Collect herbs, craft a cure, get out of Dodge. Classic survival stuff." He shook his head, pushing the speculation aside to focus on looting.
The house didn't offer much, but it held secrets. He found a locked door, and when he got close, a new thought from the protagonist appeared. 'Better not to open that door. It took me a long time to lock him in.'
Zane's eyes widened. Lock who in? A monster? A person?
He found a container that required a lockpick he didn't have, and a heavy iron door that prompted: 'It is best not to enter now.'
The signs were all there. The protagonist he was controlling was hiding something big. There was something, or someone, dangerous locked away in this very house. He understood these were all breadcrumbs for later in the game. For now, his objective was clear.
Go to the eastern forest. Find oil.
Zane didn't hesitate. He guided the doctor to the front door of the cabin, pushed it open, and stepped out into the oppressive gloom of the dark forest.
PLS SUPPORT ME AND THROW POWERSTONES .