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Many are the horror games that involve you going down. Down is where much of the Badness in the world is traditionally located, after all, whether you’re talking about geology or psychology or theology. White Knuckle reverses the flow. You are already Down; by extrapolation, you must now go Up.
Possibly, you are Down because you are a manifestation of the aforementioned Badness. Possibly, the monstrous things trying to thwart your ascent are merely trying to stop you contaminating the surface world. Possibly, they are the Real Heroes. It doesn’t really matter, because you don’t have a choice. There is a wall of unspeakable flesh coming up the tunnel behind you. To avoid becoming part of it, you must climb.
“White Knuckle is a first person speed climbing game,” explains the Steam page. “Ascend through the guts of SUB-STRUCTURE 17 using precision movement mechanics. Sharp reflexes and resource management will take you to the highest peaks under ten thousand meters of concrete and decay.”
The game’s industrial catacomb environment features several distinct areas, including “the deep dry storage of the Silos”, “the putrid sewers of the Pipeworks”, and “the haunted piers of Habitation”. All seem to mostly consist of giddy climbing puzzles, with each of your character’s hands mapped to its own button or trigger, but there’s also the opportunity to pit rusty drills and makeshift spears against creatures that probably shouldn’t be examined closely.
If you find this appealing, there’s a demo on Steam. Developers Dark Machine games have been thrilled by the response to the demo. “We didn’t expect this,” reads a post from earlier in the month. “I didn’t expect this. It was a game that the three of us were working on in our evenings and weekends in our free time after work for fun, and thought that maybe a few people would enjoy for thirty minutes before moving on, but that is not what has happened and I’m still processing it all. It’s been a whirlwind, in the best possible way.”
D’aww, that’s downright wholesome for a game about crawling out of giant metal intestine. The full game doesn’t have a release date yet.