Meet Actinic

actinic devlog horror indie

A figure in a lit doorway at the end of a black room, under the title ACTINIC.

For a while now I've been working on a new game. It's called Actinic, and it's a four-player horror shooter played almost entirely in the dark.

Fair warning before you read on: it has blood, violence and horror in it, and it's meant for adults (18+).

The idea

Four players. Four keys. One strongbox with four padlocks on it.

"We found it under a house, and swore it would never be opened by one of us alone. So each of us took a key to one padlock."

Tonight one of them broke that promise, and the others have come. Everyone starts with the key to one padlock, and you need all four to open the box. Whoever opens it wins.

The catch is that you can barely see anything. The house is close to pitch black, and the only way to find someone is through what they give away. The flashlight they're holding. The shadow they throw across a doorway. A footstep on the stairs. The keys jingling in their pocket.

Every shot is a flash

This is the thing the whole game is built around, and where the name comes from.

When you fire, the room lights up for a single frame, and so do you. Shooting always gives away where you are, so you have to think about every shot you take.

A muzzle flash lights a dark hallway white for a single frame.

The same hallway a frame later, the flash fading as an afterimage.

Bullets leave holes in walls and doors, and light from the next room comes through them. Walk between that light and a hole and someone on the other side sees you.

A pitch-black room. Bullet holes cross the wall and the door, each one lit from the hallway behind.

A few other things I really like about how it plays:

  • Keys jingle. Carry your key and you make noise. Hide it somewhere and it goes quiet, but metal glints when a light passes over it.
  • One life. No respawns. Your body stays where you fell, and so does your key, for whoever dares to come and get it.
  • The loud way. You can shoot or chop a padlock off instead, but it takes a lot of hits, at the one spot everyone knows about, and every hit is a flash.

A headlamp beam picks out a stretch of a dark hallway.

A headlamp keeps your hands free and shows you the hallway. It also shows everyone else exactly where you are.

What's done so far

It's early, pre-alpha, and everything you see here is work in progress. But a lot of the systems are already in:

  • Walls, floors and stairs that take real bullet holes
  • Lamps and light switches you can shoot out
  • Flashlights and headlamps, and the light they give away
  • Sound that carries through rooms and doorways, with real echoes
  • Holding your breath, and your own noise covering quiet sounds
  • Night, fog, rain and thunder over the house

What I'm working on now

The first level: 31 Widows Lane. It's a two-story house on a quiet street, with a basement underneath. Right now I'm finishing and furnishing it, putting the strongbox in, and getting a full match working, from the first step through the door to the last padlock.

Once that works, the plan is closed playtests, and after that a Steam page you can wishlist. Playtests will be announced on Discord first.

Follow along

If this sounds like your kind of game, come hang out:

  • Discord: devlogs, screenshots before anywhere else, and the first playtests. The Actinic channels are 18+, so pick Actinic when you join.
  • actinic.kcederlund.dev: the game's own site
  • IndieDB: follow the game there for news and media
  • YouTube and X: @kcederlunddev

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