As many of you might have noticed, I have begun to follow the kickstarter game scene pretty closely. I don’t follow the really popular ones like Mighty No.9 or Broken Age. Rather I tend to look out for games which fly under the radar for most part, and yet are some of the better games you would be playing. One of them is Through The Woods.
Through the Woods, a third-person psychological horror experience, will be coming to Windows, Mac and Linux in Q1 2016. Developed by Antagonist, the game is currently on kickstarter and awaiting backers. You might want to look deeper into it.
Through the Woods tells a personal and serious story in a setting inspired by Norwegian folk tales and Norse mythology. A woman is being interrogated by a man and is asked a straightforward yet difficult question: “Where is your son?” The mother begins to tell her story, and the game begins.
Playing as Karen, you must find your way through the woods, and to your son. The only thing you have to help you is a flashlight, which you must decide carefully when to use. The forest is dark, and a little light helps with navigating, but it also makes you more visible to the unknown things that lurk in the woods. Switching off the flashlight may be safer, as it lets the protagonist focus her other senses on avoiding danger, but it makes navigation difficult.
The game’s narrative is delivered through the dialogue in the interrogation room, describing the player’s actions in the past tense, slowly unfolding the mystery of why your son has been taken. Instead of focusing on ‘jumpscares’, the game is meant to instill a lasting sense of dread in the player. This brooding menace is delivered in a slow drip as part of a narrative, interactive experience, with fear and melancholia as the two opposing points of the emotional spectrum.
You can check out the teaser trailer for the game above, and the screenshots below.
Let us know in the comments, what you think of the game. Would you like to back the game. Would you buy it, if it comes out. Are you even interested? Everything in the comments.