Kuro [Demo]

[West Mains]

黒​

(Kuro)​

 ​

Welcome.  For a little while, during my work on my main project, Addenda, I have often found little gaps in creative thought: writer's block, essentially. To combat this, I take a break from one story and work on another, that other story is Kuro, a horror game. This game is mostly the product of my want to explore sound and the effects they can have on a player's perception of scenarios within a game. Sound can change a simple piece of dialogue from comical to maniacal. Sound design is, in my opinion, the lynchpin of horror games. It is this I want to fully explore and, more importantly, exploit with Kuro. It is for this reason that I encourage anyone playing the demo to wear headphones at all times during play. Even if your headphones are low quality I must stress that you wear them rather than use speakers. In-ear headphones may work, but may prove to have a lesser effect and may entirely negate some effects for example Binaural Effects. I also advise you to be wary of your volume, as some sounds in this game will be louder than you would expect. In short: for the best experience, it is highly recommended you play this game with headphones and at night or in a dimly lit room.

 

Plot:



Dean Rosen has made a career writing Romantic Fiction but one day, he began to struggle creatively. An idea came to him: change genres. He wanted to do something totally different from his usual work, so Dean decided he would try his hand at writing horror. To find inspiration, Dean travels to a remote hotel which sits on the edge of a vast forest. There he hopes to find a story. However Dean will learn that a writer doesn't always find a story, sometimes a story finds them.



 

 

Screenshots:



I include these only out of necessity. I don't think any screenshot of any portion of the game would properly convery it. The game is about atmosphere, music and the player's exploration of the plot. Sadly, these thing's can't be shown via pictures, just experienced.

[IMG]http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/9467/s5dc.jpg[/IMG]

 

Demo:

Spoiler

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ax2cegl2kjkwqv/Kuro.exe

 

[Archeia]

I will approve this but you have 48 hours to read the Tagging Guide and modify your topic. Please follow the keywords exactly, especially the first BOLDED part about the first tag as prefix. Thank you.

 

[West Mains]

Demo has been updated.

 

[Delayed_Chimera]

This sounds like it it would be pretty nice! I couldn't download the demo though sadly.

 

[West Mains]

download link should actually work now

 

[mlogan]

Downloading now. Normally, horror doesn't appeal to me at all, but something about this does. (Maybe it appeals to the writer in me?)

 

[mlogan]

So I tried playing it, but seemed to get stuck in a loop, though I'm not sure if that was a part of the horror aspect (confusion) or an error.

Spoiler

So these are the first few things I noticed: When I spoke to the piano girl, after I finished talking to her, the piano music started back up, but she stayed facing down and was walking in place.
I went off in search of the key to the basement. I got into the servants' quarters and read the diary. Then I proceeded down the hall, down and to the left. While in the hall there was something that looked like a black shadow run by and then it started snowing.

I made it to a weird dungeon type place (maybe supposed to be the basement) with what seemed to be a giant heart and my character was standing on the opposite side of the room. I approached (again, not sure if this was part of the horror or a mistake). When I tried to interact, he disappeared. I tried going down the stairs on the left and was given the choice of 1 or 0. 1 did nothing and 0 transported me back to my room with a screen shaking. I wasn't sure what to do from here, so I left my room and after walking a few paces was transported back to the heart room. Again, the option of 0 took me back to my room. And then back to the heart room. All the whle the screen is shaking sometimes at a higher frequency than others. Also, at some point time some blue butterflies started swarming me.

At this point, I was stuck in what seemed to be an endless cycle and I had no idea what to do. The screen shaking was giving me a headache and I had to exit the program a roundabout way as I could not access the menu to quit the game.

I have no idea if these things were supposed to be happening or if there were some serious errors.

 

[West Mains]

no they were supposed to happen.

 

[mlogan]

I will give it another go then, but I don't know how much I can handle the screen shaking. It hurts.

edit: Oh and I just realized I double posted above. Ooops! Sorry any mods who may see this, it wasn't intentional.