Short Creepy Stories is a game (or “experience”) developed by user kharbor_ykt utilizing the platform and engines by the publisher: Roblox. The game is targeted towards teenagers to young adults given the platform and mild suggestion of gore (but not as included) and horror genre classification. The game has several short stories which you play through as a group or alone.
The plot of the story I played, Deadly Content, revolves around you and a group of friends (or a singular friend in my case) exploring an abandoned hospital. You have a history of exploring abandoned buildings and recording your adventures for content, but this one in particular was offsetting from the very beginning before you enter the hospital. The first hint of narrative regarding this is in the preparation lobby, where you find case files with details on your entire group, which comes with surprise. To those more critical of narratives, this sets the tone to be worse than those who gloss over such details as the file already seems like a bad omen. How and why is there a case file when you’re alive and have yet to explore the hospital? It’s a small detail that cements you in the space further narratively.
The architecture of the setting controls the story and how it unfolds by contributing directly to the mechanics and how the mystery of what happens unravels. The simple environment of perceived emptiness in a building with dim lighting adds an eerie feel to exploration. Without any mechanics directly in place, silence yet small unsettling traces and hints of you not being alone as well as bits of logic not adding up (seen below) contributes to this mystery of a story to see what is going on in the hospital.
Most interestingly, in a blend of setting and mechanics, is the mundane yet powerful door.
In this story and many other eerie stories, doors block knowledge from the player. We do not know what is behind them and this fact is scary enough when the environment is done correctly. Anything can be behind a door and this drives both excitement or fear depending on the player’s mindset. These all weave together to add individualized, pocket mysteries. What is behind each door? Will there be more information to help us uncover what’s going on? There’s only one way to find out, and it’s one door at a time.
However, the mechanics don’t stop there. There is another main mechanic which weaves narrative and mystery together: the camera. The premise of the story being that you’re a content creation team with different roles, it’s only natural to bring a camera with you! Pushing ‘C’ allows you to see the world from the lens of your camera, adding a staticky filter over your vision. However, with this mechanic comes a quick and sudden realization that the setting is more disturbing than realized. In the right picture above in the bathroom, X marks the spot or so they say. The camera reveals this quote to be true as the camera reveals hints and horrors about the true nature of the environment you’re in, and clues you in narratively on what happened and is perhaps still happening at the hospital. (See below)
Each instance of mismatch between real and camera view answers a question about the narrative but only serves to raise more–making mechanics based on cameras and interactions deeply embedded with progression of the player and narrative alike.
The most notable point, though, is that the simple mechanics provided by this game tend to create a gameplay loop (at least initially). Much of the initial gameplay is rooted in exploration and finding what is behind doors and taking note of interactable objects (like the safe below).
However, there are still arcs to be found in the story. We chickened out, but you can classify the beginning exploration phase as an introduction arc of sorts where we ground ourselves in the narrative and setting at hand. Despite fears, most of this does happen in isolation with no real danger to the player. However, unlocking enough of the map and puzzles, this isolation (much to the dread of the player) is removed. Without spoiling any further plot points (this game is free on Roblox and honestly really well made), there are two more identifiable arcs for players to experience: even containing different endings depending on what decisions players make. The player just needs to remember to keep their camera on to truly watch it all unfold…
