After the Darkness, A point-crawl Horror game where you play as a family struggling to survive the Apocalypsis

[sesantaru]

Hello everyone. I'm going to start this thread in a different way than in other forums and social media. My name is Sesan Taru, I'm a teacher, artist and writer from Chile, and I have been developing a game named Hypostasis for more than one year. It's a game that uses mainly Openquest, but with a lot of my own mechanics and subsystems too. The game became so ambitious and big that I decided to make a little Zine to prepare myself for the marketing and fullfiling side of being a creator, testing its mechanics with more than my own people, and also making my work known before taking that big step. That's how After the Darkness was created, as a prequel of Hypostasis that is mechanically simplified. If you want to learn more about Hypostasis visit my site www.sesantaru.com

After the Darkness is an apocalyptic game of horror, family and selfishness. The sun has disappeared and a dense fog has covered the Earth, killing millions of people in just a few months and collapsing all its institutions, structures and creations. Although that does not seem to be the biggest problem, the sky fervently screams and it seems heavier than before, there are violent animal roars coming from the darkest shadows, and not everybody is dying of hypothermia...

You play as a nuclar family trying to protect their loved ones and looking for a warm safe place to wait the end of the cataclysm. Because of this you are forced to explore the Apocalyptic lands outside your old home, evading its monstrosities, socializing with unstable people, and struggling to eat, drink and sleep in the eternal nights of that new cold hell. Your final objective is to survive one entire year, starting in the final days of autumn, and ending in the first days of a bleak second winter, where no human could have survived on their own.

The main mechanics aspects are:

• Specific mechanics for playing as a Family instead of a solitary Character. Each player will have a family of four, impersonating them all most of the time (except in Combat and other dramatic scenes).
• A creative but simple Stress System with different effects to apply after traumatic moments, and forcing you to settle down once in a while to restore your own stability.
• Rules to survive the end of the world and their chaos.
• An innovative system to explore a point-to-point map, with different areas, zones and tokens to represent random events to confront or avoid. Most of the game is played in the Map.
• Rules and guides to simulate the passage of time.

 

There are no Characteristics, only Skills and Attributes. Experience or any Skill progression is nearly non-existent. The game is played in 4 or 5 seasons, and the final objective is only to survive and get to the see the sun again. Players can always impersonate any of their Characters except in Combat, where they have to choose one of them. The rest are used as NPCs by the GM.

There is also a second Zine that and is about the lore and has some optional mechanics for difficulty. And there is also a short introductory Comic that will be published free in www.sesantaru.com in a few days.

 

I hope you guys like it, I will be watching this thread in the next days. The Kickstarter will be available in one week, and I hope you subscribe to my mailing list too! www.sesantaru.com/subscribe

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sesantaru/after-the-darkness

Edited January 31, 2022 by sesantaru

[ThornPlutonius]

I wish success to you!

[sesantaru]

8 hours ago, ThornPlutonius said:

I wish success to you!

Thank you very much, Thorn!

[Newt]

Hi Sesan

Your game sounds terrific. Not one I would have done myself, since being a Dad with two children the whole Family Horror subgenre scares too much for me to find it entertaining. I won't even watch the current crop of films! 🙂

I've given it a quick shout out on both my twitter accounts (@newtus and @d101games), a blog post on openquestrpg.com (link below) and a mention on the 3rd Party publisher page of openquesrpg.com, as a game coming soon. When the Kickstarter is up and going I'll give it more shout outs 🙂

https://openquestrpg.com/2022/01/31/after-the-darkness/

https://openquestrpg.com/3rd-party-support/

All the best

Edited January 31, 2022 by Newt

[sesantaru]

13 hours ago, Newt said:

Hi Sesan

Your game sounds terrific. Not one I would have done myself, since being a Dad with two children the whole Family Horror subgenre scares too much for me to find it entertaining. I won't even watch the current crop of films! 🙂

I've given it a quick shout out on both my twitter accounts (@newtus and @d101games), a blog post on openquestrpg.com (link below) and a mention on the 3rd Party publisher page of openquesrpg.com, as a game coming soon. When the Kickstarter is up and going I'll give it more shout outs 🙂

https://openquestrpg.com/2022/01/31/after-the-darkness/

https://openquestrpg.com/3rd-party-support/

All the best

Thank you Newt, yeah is not a game for everybody! But that's part of its charm. Again, thank you for effort 🙂

[sesantaru]

I'm so happy to announce that I just launched the campaign for After the Darkness. This is my first fundraising ever, so any help will be sincerely appreciated ♥

 

This map is just an sketch of something more detailed and pretty I'm trying to make

Edited February 4, 2022 by sesantaru

[Newt]

Just over a third funded, with just under three weeks to go. I'm a backer and I want to see this happen, so go check it out! 🙂

[sesantaru]

23 hours ago, Newt said:

Just over a third funded, with just under three weeks to go. I'm a backer and I want to see this happen, so go check it out! 🙂

Now we're halfway to reach our goal! Thanks for the support Newt ♥ Any help is appreciated

[sesantaru]

First week and we're just 250 bucks to get to our goal. Our map is nearly finished, and Rapture too. We need more testing that'll be soon be done!

 

More art

 

[sesantaru]

I've been working hard in this map, balance seems OK in most places, the north is incomplete, and I need to finish the north and add more toponymia. But it's looking good now.

[Newt]

For those of you who have not being following the campaign., its now funded and has five days to go 🙂 

[sesantaru]

Yes! We reached our funding goal and now just less than two days to go. We have a new reward tier, and updated some stretch goals. I hope we can reach at least 2k to have the possibility to add more stuff to this zine.

Thanks to everyone for the help, and spread the word if you can!

[sesantaru]

Last 30 minutes to back After the Darkness!!!