I’ll admit, I’ve never had much interest in streaming. But then again, I’ve never had a haunted doll to show off on stream. In darkwebSTREAMER, players get to trawl a procedurally generated version of the dark web to find creepy content to share with their AI fans. This weekend at NYC’s Tribeca Games Gallery, I went hands on with the psychological-horror game. It did not go well.
Or rather, it went well for me, in that I got to try an upcoming indie horror game that I had heard much about. It did not go well for PizzaRat, my streaming persona, who got killed by a haunted doll. More on that later.
When you start up, the game places you into a sort of simulacrum of the dark web. Like an RPG, you make your avatar and select answers to questions to determine who you are. You even get to write a bio like you’re joining a real-life streaming platform before starting your stream.
The prompts for personality types randomly generate each time. They’re also delightfully weird and whimsical. In my playthrough, I decided that PizzaRat loved art museums, hated the moon, and would frequently start a sentence and then forget what they were-
Yep, that’s how that option presented itself. With so many spooky titles taking their scares seriously (as they should), it’s refreshing to see one add a splash of humor to the horror, akin to a Jordan Peele film. That said, darkwebSTREAMER otherwise feels in the vein of recent internet horror films like Host or We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.
Say Cheese and Die
With the profile information inputted, the stream begins and populates with NPCs (creator Chantal Ryan prefers the term “non-player persons” or NPPs) who comment on your personal preferences and choices. They may donate, subscribe, or worst of all “laugh at you, not with you.”
When the stream ends, you surf the web as events happen in your home. In one session, a cat showed up at the front door, prompting an online search for a vet. In my session, a freaky ghost girl showed up at the front door, slightly more demanding than the cat. But mostly you’re there to find new weird things to show off on your new weird stream. Maybe then they won’t laugh at you.
And if they don’t and you do well, you can rank up. You can then choose a perk ranging from more cash to more streamers. Then you choose a trait to amplify in your streams. The hashtags you receive add to the origin tags you get once you start. Every single one does something, they have implications for how well you do like taking away your rest or letting you heal quicker.
Seems simple, no? Well, as many content creators know, the web can be a demanding place. It can also be quite strange.
A Journey Through Digital Time and Space
In a way, darkwebSTREAMER seems the natural yet eerie response to an anachronistic question; what if live-streaming peaked during the early “Wild West” days of the internet? The game boots up with the unofficial theme song of the 90s: the dial-up tone. But then the pressure to find content ratchets up. And in your quest for weirder and wilder paranormal paraphernalia, things may go awry. And you’re bound to find something unexpected, as the game randomly generates haunted objects and spooky webpages.
“I think I created the worlds first procedurally generated crafting system,” Ryan mused after my haunted doll killed me (more on that later). Truly, there are things in the game that Ryan—developer and co-founder of studio We Have Always Lived in the Forest—doesn’t know exist. For the procedurally generated webpages in particular, darkwebSTREAMER has “billions of combinations.” As such, Ryan had to edit the parameters slightly so that you wouldn’t stumble upon, say, a five year old child’s blog about cooking meth. But otherwise, the dark, cosmic unknown of the void exists and this game has bottled it.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, every playthrough is entirely new. However, Ryan wants to add a graveyard “memorializing” the player’s streamers who perished in their quest to be best. Like one killed by a haunted doll, for example (stay tuned). Ryan is also toying with adding roguelike endings. When you win, these would reference and build upon events that occurred throughout your playthrough.
darkwebSTREAMER and its Weird Wide Web
Ambitious? Maybe. But darkwebSTREAMER has already come a long way. Ryan initially conceived of the title as a tabletop role-playing game with a friend. But then, taking inspiration from lo-fi horror games like World of Horror, she designed it in GameMaker. Wanting it to do even more, Ryan remade it in Unity with a programmer who studied linguistics, since “there’s a high level of linguistics” in the current iteration.
And without even a release date yet, darkwebSTREAMER already has—brace for the pun—a cult following. At PAX Australia, an hour-long line built up, prompting enforcers to have to tape down more queue-markers. Ryan relates that upon commending one player for weathering the wait, they remarked “Oh, as soon as I finished I went and rejoined the queue.”
Ryan was also surprised by the amount of people who simply enjoyed watching the retro-styled roguelike text adventure. During my own session, someone asked if it was weird that they just wanted to watch me play. It was not weird, I told them, as I had my streamer open a box filled with wriggling critters that buried in their flesh.
Emphasis on darkwebSTREAMER
Despite its retro look and black and white aesthetics, darkwebSTREAMER has potential for actual live-streaming. Ryan explained that players can even integrate a Twitch stream into the diegetic world of the game. As such, your chat can have a mix of NPPs and actual viewers. “I didn’t expect how much people would enjoy watching the game.”
There’s a certain joy when a game references player input in surprising ways—the faux emails I got from PizzaRat’s friends, for example. Ryan shares this sentiment and calls this phenomenon “enchantment,” which she defines as “putting wonder where there was no opportunity for wonder before.”
Entertaining my viewers as PizzaRat, the NPPs responded to my choices accordingly. Some typed misgivings and others encouragement when I ordered my spooky doll with an elaborate backstory. When it arrived, I started my stream. And then the doll killed me… when it fell on my head after I tossed it directly in the air. Well, at least I gave them a spectacle.
