PREMISE
You go down into the
Odyssa catacombs — dark tourism in a world that is almost ours, to a place people don't come back
from. The horror isn't the war; it's the hysteria that never lifted
after it, the rot it left behind in the dark, and everyone still down here who can't stop fighting it.
DESIGN PILLARS
1 · Hysteria
over gore. Fear outlives the threat.
2 · Ambiguity
is content. The player theorizes; the game never confirms.
3 · Point-and-click, modern horror twist.
4 · The dead
don't leave. Your failures become the world.
00 · THE RULES OF THE PLACE
NO ABSOLUTE DATES
There are no years here — not on a save, not on a terminal, not in a headline. "When" is something you assemble from rumor, and a world this close to
ours with its dates filed off never sits quite right.
HYSTERIA, NOT SANITY
The meter that matters doesn't drain — it fills. The
nearer you come to breaking, the more the world turns red. Here, fear
is a thing that rises.
THE WORLD MOVES WHEN YOU DO
No clock ticks against you; the catacombs can wait forever. But every step you take and
every thing you touch, the dark takes its own turn in answer.
PALETTE LOCK
1-bit + one accent. Accent is reserved — threat, blood, hysteria-failure. Themes swap the
trio; accent meaning never changes.
01 · THE SHAPE OF A DESCENT
THE SHAPE OF A RUN
HUB
›
DESCEND
›
GALLERY 1
›
GALLERY 2
›
GALLERY 3
›
FORK
↑ ASCEND — "escape"
You climb out — the cold version of a happy ending. You leave
with a camera full of other people's deaths to sell. Anyone you carried out comes up with you.
↓ DESCEND — "deeper"
You keep going down. You stop being a visitor and become part
of the place. Nobody who chooses this is heard from again.
Every gallery is sealed. You breach it to get in, and it closes behind you —
no way back, nothing taken back. Each is its own buried pocket; you never quite know how far down the next
one waits, and a fall can take you much further than you meant to go.
HOW FAR DOWN YOU ARE
−142m
There are no floor numbers — only how far you have fallen, a single figure that climbs as the city closes over your
head.
you only ever go down. the way out is never the way back.
02 · THE FIELD OFFICE — WHERE YOU COME BACK TO
THE PINBOARD
7 / 24 PINNED
who sealed the gallery?
photos · relics · entities · lore — pinned & linked
lay one of your dead to rest — return a photograph, put down what
they became — and they are pinned here at last as resolved.
TODAY'S DESCENT
The
Journalist
DESCEND
SAVES — A CONTACT SHEET
＋ new
LOST · −88m
LOST · −60m
the last frame of every run · no dates, only how
deep it ended.
One room is your lobby, your archive, and the only place that feels safe. What you carry up
out of the dark is never power — it is knowledge. Faces. Names. What really happened down there, and the
weight of holding it.
03 · HYSTERIA — THE FEAR THAT OUTLIVES THE THREAT
THRESHOLDS
STEADY
Narration reliable. Map draws true. Baseline.
RATTLED
The voice turns unreliable — narration swaps to
the "rotted" alternate text. Sometimes the mad version reads truer. You can't tell which.
BREAKING
The map breaks — your page degrades into random
strokes, stray lines and symbols, and it takes a working locator down with it.
THE END
When it fills, you have one breath left. Find something
to bring it down, or you become a permanent part of the
catacombs. There is rarely anything to hand. That is the point.
RAISES / RELIEVES
▲
RAISES
darkness / a dead flashlight · something standing too close
· photographing the dead · being lost · a survivor who panics · the worst kinds of place
▼
RELIEVES
light · a place to rest · the shrine · a steady hand beside
you · a sedative, a saint's candle · laying one of the dead to rest
04 · EVERY GALLERY IS MADE OF SOMETHING
WHAT A PLACE IS MADE OF
Every gallery is built from a handful of kinds of place — flooded, ritual, military,
worse. What lives there, what you find, what you read on the walls: all of it follows from what the place
is. No two descents are made of the same things.
military
radiated
flooded
ritual
soviet
and worse
WHO YOU BRING CHANGES WHAT YOU FIND
The people you bring down with you aren't extra hands. They're
lenses — each one sees the same room differently and opens doors the
others can't. And each one can die in it.
05 · THE DEAD DON'T LEAVE
A LOST RECORD — WRITTEN ON ANY DEATH
Yours or someone you brought down with you. From the very first descent the dark already
holds a handful of lost souls who went before you — and you can never
quite tell their dead from your own.
HOW THEY COME BACK — RARELY, AND NEVER THE SAME WAY
BODY
found slumped in the dark — what they were carrying, their last
photograph, a torn corner of their map.
TERMINAL
an old terminal lists them missing — no date, just a name and a
silence.
REVENANT
they have become a thing, still
wearing what they died in; the way it moves echoes how they went. put it down once and it stays down.
WHISPER
only their last words, carried on the dark. the cheapest haunting, and
the worst.
Return their
photograph, or put what they became to rest, and they are marked resolved at
last. Closure is the only reward. It is enough.
06 · DOWN IN THE DARK — THE ENCOUNTER
A dark, flashlight-lit scene, framed like a case file someone is
quietly building against you — a typewriter slug, a taped exhibit photo, a stamp, a note in the margin. Your
fear sits first in the row of gauges, filling toward red as you go.
› LOOK AT pale
shape_
The dripping is too
regular. Like counting. The pale thing at the fork is
closer than it was — though you never saw it move. (RATTLED — the voice may be lying)
>[PER] Look closer at the
pale shape
>[AGI] Squeeze down the
right passage
>Move on without
looking
WALKLOOKTAKETALK✎
MAP⚷ BELT
NO TAKEBACKS — IT REMEMBERS WHAT YOU DID
Every detail is a piece of evidence — and the scene never lifts out of the dark, so the only
thing you trust is a flashlight that is steadily running down.
07 · HOW IT PLAYS — FOUR WAYS TO MEET A MOMENT
Four ways a moment can go — each one works whether you are fighting
for your life or only trying to look closer. A single turn of a card tells you how it ended.
HOTSPOTS
click targets on the scene. combat: strike a limb. check: examine spatial detail.
TIMING
hit the window. combat: strike on the swing. check: time a jump / grab.
THE DECK
play a card. combat: attack/dodge/pray. check: a perception draw. shares the tarot language.
NERVE
hold ground. combat: out-stare a watcher. check: endure / brace.
08 · FINDING YOUR WAY, OR LOSING IT
THE WAY THROUGH
Every gallery is a tangle of passages that truly connect — corridors that loop back,
junctions that meet. You read the way ahead from where you stand, and commit to it one passage at a time.
The ways out are drawn into the scene itself; lean in and you might guess where one leads.
The ones you haven't scouted read only «???».
THE MAP, IF YOU CAN TRUST IT
A WORKING LOCATOR
working locator draws the schematic for you.
NO LOCATOR
a blank page and your own count of paces. you draw it
yourself, and live with what you got wrong.
TOO FAR GONE
the page turns to scrawl,
and no locator can fix a broken mind.
09 · WHAT YOU CARRY
THE PACK
S
SEDATIVE×1 · vent · selected
SEDATIVE — quiets the fear for a little
while. your second wind.
THE BELT — WHAT'S IN REACH
Only what's on the belt is ever in reach when something is
already on top of you. You set it in the quiet — and you live with that choice in the dark.
10 · WHO GOES DOWN
THE JOURNALIST
starts with the camera. turns the worst thing she
has ever seen into a photograph worth selling.
THE GHOST HUNTER
no camera — but he feels the things in the next room before they feel him. fragile.
THE RAVER
no camera — just a second light and no instinct at all for staying small.
Every one of them came down here on purpose, for their own reasons,
and each sees the catacombs differently. The rest of the cast is still below — you unlock them by carrying
them out alive.
11 · THE ONES YOU FIND DOWN THERE
THE RECRUIT LOOP
Find someone still alive down there and you can choose to take them with you. They open
doors you couldn't alone — and they panic, they slow you, they can die on the way out. Carry one to the
surface and they are yours. Leaving them behind costs you something.
THE GAS-MASK SOLDIER
The war never ended for him. He meets you as one of three things — and you rarely
choose which:
· a guide, if you answer in his reality — he will
tell you things, open things long sealed.
· a death, if you break him. standing near him is
its own slow poison.
· and, almost never, under the hardest road of all — someone you might just save.
12 · WHAT WAITS BELOW
PALE COUNTER
won't move while watched · weak to sudden light
stare
THE DROWNED
rises in the flooded dark · cold where it touches you
flooded
THE CRAWLER
ceiling-bound · it waits for you to look down
rush
THE WATCHER
does nothing but look · looking back is the mistake
dread
THE WELL-MOUTH
boss · a hole with teeth · wants an offering
boss
REVENANT
a lost run, come back wrong · still carrying what it died
with · put it down once and it stays down
13 · RELICS & FATE
RELICS — BOONS, BARGAINS, CURSES
BONE CHARM
sharpens the eye
SAINT'S CANDLE
holds the dark back — burns down
FERRYMAN'S COIN
buys back one death
MASHA'S DRESS
map withheld · can't drop
TAROT — DRAWN BEFORE EACH DESCENT
XVII
The
Star
the odds tilt your way
BOON
XVIII
The
Moon
map clues lie this level
ILL
XVI
The
Tower
the dark comes faster — but it pays better
ILL
One language of cards runs through everything — the test in the moment, the turn of an
event, the rule over a whole descent. Sometimes you choose. Sometimes it chooses you.
14 · BETWEEN GALLERIES · DEATH · WHAT'S WRITTEN DOWN
BETWEEN GALLERIES
you rope down through the dark, the depth climbing past you, until a wax seal closes over the way you came. there is no climbing back up it.
DEATH — YOU READ ABOUT YOURSELF
THE ODYSSA COURIER — LATE EDITION
Another tourist missing below
Locals say they went down chasing a story. Search parties report only a dropped camera and water,
dripping. "They never listen," one guide said.
No score, no summary. Just a column inch about another tourist who didn't come back — only
what the paper could plausibly know: a guide's shrug, a recovered camera, water still dripping somewhere
below.
WHAT'S WRITTEN DOWN
old computer →
>
LOG 042
gallery sealed. reason: ████.
_
torn paper →
they
told us it was flooded.
it
was not flooded.
An old screen reads one way; a torn page reads another. Some of what you find is true.
Some of it is only what someone needed to believe.
15 · THE LOOK
TYPE SYSTEM
Odyssa Catacombs
WOVEN — wordmark / titles / death cards
LABELS & CHROME
the chrome — labels, tags, the small print
Body prose & narration.
VT323 — narration, choices
found documents
Handjet — pixel-typewriter lore docs · VT323 green for terminals
THEMES
The look can change — a few palettes to find, one earned only by collecting all the
others. The dark and the light may swap. The red never does; it always means
the same thing.