WAGES OF DARKNESS 

BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT

Wages of Darkness was made in a month for the April 2012 MAGS competition (the Monthly AGS competition).  The theme that all submissions had to follow was "Distorted Senses".  Wages of Darkness therefore attempts to distort the player's sense of reality through limiting his/her sense of sight.  The game is short (about 10 minutes) and the gameplay simple (my mom beat it), but the story is compelling.  This game is freeware.  If you have any issues please post them in the relevant forum at www.bigbluecup.com/yabb.

STORY SET UP

Marina is a military pilot stationed at an undisclosed experimental facility when things go terribly, terribly wrong.  She awakes injured and disoriented in absolute darkness.  Now Marina must navigate the bowels of the base by feel to make it to the Shelter before it is too late.  Along her way she uncovers clues about the fate of the facility as she grapples with her own evanescing sense of self.

GAME PLAY

There is a dynamic label that shows you what each surface feels like.  You can right-click on these surfaces to feel out more detail, or left-click to interact with them.  Sometimes this will result in you picking things up: these items are available in your inventory at the bottom of the screen.  Simply left-click to activate an inventory item and then left-click again to use it on something.  Finally, there is an in-game options menu accessible via a disk icon on the main interface which allows you to save, load, quit, or dynamically change the difficulty levels.

DIFFICULTY

It is impossible to die during the game in easy mode.  In hard mode you can die at several points.  Via the in-game options menu you can even crank the difficulty up further, but all this does is shorten the amount of time you have to do certain critical tasks, thus making death very likely (if you're in to that kind of thing....).

POST-MAGS ADDITIONS

Since winning MAGS 2012 we have polished the game graphically and streamlined some of the gameplay.  The core of the game remains basically unchanged, though.

CREDITS

Wages of Darkness was conceived, written and programmed by Baron.  Graphics are by Kastchey, and music is by Doc-Savage.  Beta-Testing Services were kindly provided by Arjon, Tabata, Selmiak and Cleanic.  
