That Lingering Pit
That Lingering Pit
Programmer / Game Designer / Narrative Designer
That Lingering Pit is a horror text adventure about a cavernous pit that appears in the player's living room that they can choose to explore or ignore, both leading to very different story paths.
My goal was to have the two main story paths (exploring the pit and ignoring the pit) to feature two distinct text adventure gameplay styles. I wanted the pit exploration path to focus more on using the links in the text to explore different sections of an area, looking for key items and/or solving puzzles. I felt that would best exemplify the surreal environments and set pieces contained within the pit. I wanted the pit-ignoring path to focus more on life-sim-esque gameplay, using the links to simulate going through a daily routine that can change based on the player's choices and becomes progressively more surreal as the days progress. I feel like this approach to text adventure gameplay emphasizes the gradual distortion of reality as the pit's influence over the house grows.
I'm really proud of how this game came together. I feel like the combination of cosmic horror and surreal, introspective horror worked really well together and explored the game's concept and themes in a really cool way. The gameplay styles I went with for each of the main paths definitely complimented all of these narrative elements in a way that I'm really satisfied with. This game also ended up having a lot more reach than I expected, ending up being reviewed on a podcast that covers indie horror games and gaining a decent amount of traction on itch. That was a surreal experience all on its own for me.