Horror
The Dwindling
Status: In developmentA first-person horror game about holding the torch on him for as long as you can bear it.
The Dwindling puts you alone in a single, fully modelled house with something two and a half metres tall. Being’s behaviour is entirely rule-based, driven by whether your torch beam holds his face, never by chance, while a silence-first ambient score carries the tension between encounters.
The Dwindling
Horror
The house
One house, learned in real time
Nothing here is a fixed level. The whole house, rooms, walls, doorways, props, and lights, is authored as a single map document that the game’s own renderer draws and derives collision and stairs from directly, so an edit in the map editor is exactly what a player walks through.
- One continuous, walkable house, not loading-screen segments
- Studio-editable: what you edit is what loads, no rebuild step
- Stair, door, and ceiling geometry under active polish
- Every room is real geometry
- Rooms, stairs, doorways
- Editable in the map editor
- No loading-screen segments
The antagonist
Being follows rules, not chance
Being’s entire state machine, standing, believing, folding, turned, taking, gone, is driven by fixed timers, line-of-sight checks, and whether your torch beam holds his face. Sustained light locks his recognition of you; losing it breaks it into a scripted fold. Once turned, he pursues by sight with a timed give-up.
- No random behaviour: detection is entirely torch-cone and line-of-sight driven
- Doors slow him rather than stop him once he is pursuing
- Being caught costs your carried object and the run, never a death screen
- Standing, believing, folding
- Turned, taking, gone
- Torch-cone detection
- Fixed timers, line of sight
The torch
Light is the one resource
The torch is the game’s one resource and its one point of agency: it doubles as the mechanic that keeps Being calm and the meter you are always managing. Battery drains under normal use and recovers when the torch is off, draining sharply faster while the beam holds Being’s attention. A silence-first ambient score carries the tension between encounters, with no jump-scare stinger.
- A battery-limited torch that drains on use and recovers in the dark
- Draining accelerates sharply while the beam holds Being’s attention
- Ambient, silence-first horror audio, no jump-scare stinger
- Drains while lit
- Recovers while off
- Drains faster on Being
- Silence-first horror audio
The tie-in book
The Book of Being, already complete
Told in-universe as something the game’s own player character once wrote to explain Being to a young child, the Book of Being is a complete eighteen-plate illustrated book: a cover, a dedication, and sixteen spreads. It is finished ahead of the game itself, and will be hosted for reading through Soulstack Books.
- Eighteen plates: a cover, a dedication, and sixteen spreads, all complete
- Written and illustrated as an in-universe artefact, not a companion guide
- Will be hosted through Soulstack Books, the platform’s dedicated reading site
- A cover and dedication
- Sixteen illustrated spreads
- Told as an in-universe artefact
- Complete, ahead of the game
What’s inside
A house that plays by its own rules
- 01
Fully authored house
A complete, single-house map with real collision, stairs, and lighting.
- 02
State-driven antagonist
Being’s behaviour is entirely rule-based: torch detection, line of sight, and fixed timers.
- 03
Torch as resource
A battery-limited torch that drains on use and recovers in the dark.
- 04
No-death chase and consequence
Being caught ends the run and costs your carried object, with no death screen.
- 05
In-house objective loop
A set of household tasks to finish before you may take an object and leave.
- 06
Silence-first horror audio
An ambient tension score built around held breath and quiet, not jump-scare stingers.
Built on SSTK Studio
The Dwindling is in active development, with no public build yet. Preview the platform it runs on at sstk.studio.