Psychological Thriller IF: One Night - demo release

Playing Project Announcements
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Hi everyone,

I’ve just released a demo for my interactive fiction game, One Night.

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It’s a choice-focused, text-heavy game centred on atmosphere, tension, and uncertainty.

You can play the demo here: OneNight by francismoy

If you take a look, I’d be glad to hear any impressions — especially whether the opening works, whether the premise makes you want to continue, and anything that feels weak, unclear, or undercooked at this stage.

Thanks for reading and happy to read you back!

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Firstly, the timed text is a bit annoying. I know you can click to skip, but doing that also gets annoying. There ought to be an option. The format appears fixed size. If you resize the browser, it will clip the picture and text rather than re-flow.

I like the artwork. But not the forced delays.

The fuse blew, but i could still somehow examine things. Later i get a picture of the room and the table, but not earlier.

Atmospheric sounds are good.

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Too scary for my tastes, but I do like that the text is given in even batches. The B&W allows for great use of occasional color. Sounds and music can be quite creepy. The drawn aspect of the pictures makes it easier to role play as the main character as it leaves some details for me to fill in. Really nice. Draws you in.

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Thanks a lot for taking the time to play it!

So let me try to repeat/rephrase what you’re saying so that I can check I understood:

  • You would like to have the option (maybe in settings) to present the text directly, without having to see animations or mouse-click.
  • As for the format, I know it’s a lot to ask and don’t feel you have to reply, but if possible, I’d love to see a screenshot of what you mean, because in principle, the UI should adapt dynamically to different aspect ratios.
  • With the forced delays: do you mean again the texts animations, or do you mean for example the “bad ending” when the text fades out slowly and some time later a creepy image shows up?
  • As for the coherence of the lights out and being able to see the room, you’re totally right. This is the kind of inconsistency that happens after last minute changes in some of the narrative. I’ve already uploaded a new version that corrects this, so again, thanks for pointing it out!
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Thanks for playing it even if it’s to creepy for your taste.

I admit the horror element is especially pronounced in the demo, because I wanted to concentrate the tension into a short span of time; my idea for the full version would be to build more of a restrained, slow-burning tension that gradually accumulates as the game unfolds, although the atmosphere would be very similar.

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No problem, here is what i mean.

Delays: there are the delays you’ve mentioned, when you see the creepy image of someone facing away. And also at the start;

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Right at the start, you have to wait for some time before the language options appear. Presumbly this is loading something, because it doesn’t happen when you run a second time. But for the first time, the player does not know. Initially, i thought the game had hung up.

Resize:

If i take the right border and make the browser narrower. i get this:

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The whole window is clipped, including the text and picture. So basically, i cannot read the text. It remains like this when new text appears. So it is unplayable unless the window is resized sufficiently.

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Great, thanks!

I’ve changed the splash (the image of the house shown during the first load) so that at least it shows a Loading text and players don’t get that hung up impression.

As for the clipping, I understand now what you mean. I first thought you meant that the UI didn’t adapt properly if you moved from the default size to fullscreen or something similar. I’ll check it out, thanks!