Terror: Endless Night cover
Terror: Endless Night screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Simulator, Strategy, Indie

Terror: Endless Night

Devlog#7 - Threats of the Pole of Cold

Ahoy, seadogs!



The hard work that is the service at sea inspires us every day to work even more diligently on the sails of code and to travel on the chosen course through the stormy waters of development. We know that as captains, you are already waiting to give orders and try to survive with your crew until the sun rises. Therefore, we have some information for you about the dangers that lie ahead. This might help you prepare better, for the night is dark and full of… well, terrors.

Deep Freeze




In the cold embrace of the night, warmth becomes the most important good. If the ship’s furnace isn't heating, temperatures reaching -40 degrees Celsius can turn every living creature into an icicle in the blink of an eye. Taking care of this is a matter of life and death. You set out on the journey with a coal supply for several months… which will soon run out. How will you manage your resources to avoid freezing to death?

Hunger




Resources are not just coal but, most importantly, food. Without food, the crew will perish faster than anyone can think of any plan to return. When leaving England, you took more supplies than necessary, but if you don’t find a way to properly manage the food, it will quickly run out. Unless you organize a way to obtain meat in this icy land where God has forgotten about morality...

Succumb to the madness




...in a land that is a threat itself. The surrounding darkness, emptiness, and the blowing wind that seems to start whispering after the third night. Maybe it is giving you warnings of impending danger? Perhaps the next dawn it will turn out that while you slept, something emerged from the darkness and abducted your comrades? Maybe the watch disappeared, leaving behind only frozen traces of blood?

Break the ice




Even if no one was attacked by the lurking evil at the moment, you are ravaged every minute by the cold, which penetrates not only living beings but also affects all ship devices and the ship itself. The pressing ice fights with the hull day after day, trying to break inside. If you don’t take proper care of the equipment, you might survive to see the thaw, but you will have no means to return, and the icy crevices will become your tomb.

Insubordination




The vision of eternally remaining at the pole may seem like sufficient motivation for the crew to break out of this hell, but don’t forget that your decisions affect the morale of the sailors. Is it better to rule with an iron fist, or try to win people over? Should the good of the many be more important than the good of the individual? How will you react if opposing factions form among the people? Loyalty might turn out to be worth its weight in gold.

Sanity check




However, what good is having the most loyal crew when each member is out of their mind? Frost, resource shortages, and eternal darkness are a direct path to losing one's senses. You must know today that every person has a limit beyond which their sanity breaks like a matchstick. And then, you can see firsthand that demons do not exist; they were only created by humans in their own hidden likeness...

If you are not afraid and still want to plunge into the abyss of a cold nightmare, make sure you add Terror: Endless Night to your wishlist. We are also waiting for you in the comments section, where we will answer all your pressing questions and suggestions.

See you soon in the next port.
Fair winds,
Unseen Silence

Devlog#6 - The art of survival

Ahoy, seadogs!



Today marks a special date in our calendars. On the 19th of May, 1845, the last voyage of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus began. Imagine being there, 179 years ago, in Greenhithe harbor, some 20 miles east of London. Two magnificent, sturdy ships, equipped with the most advanced technologies of the time—powerful steam engines and internal steam heating systems—rock gently in the morning breeze. Are you imagining it? Is the picture you see white like fresh sails, blue like the ocean, and bright like hope? Great. Because today we will talk about its exact opposite—the depiction of darkness and desperation. The art of Terror: Endless Night.



Paint me like one of your Victorian paintings



The first step to developing the unique art style of Terror: Endless Night was research, and tons of it! We wanted to make our style as close to the art from the époque as possible, like each picture was painted by a talented officer who had seen it with his own eyes. It was not unheard of for the high-ranking and well-versed crew members to write diaries or sketch, even with fingers numb from the cold.
We took a lot of inspiration from the Realist works from the latter part of the century to portray the life of a ship stuck in arctic ice—stripped of idealism, faithfully capturing moments of both everyday mundanity and the great horrors of the expedition’s many possible fates. All immortalized with a brush, and you can see those very brushstrokes!


The second part of the homework our artists did revolved around historical accuracy. Uniforms and personal accessories of the sailors, furnishings and construction of the ship, situations our crew might have found themselves in—it all had to match what we’ve seen in historical sources. Dozens of paintings, illustrations, daguerreotypes, preserved items and artifacts, or even photographs of the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror gave us all the details we needed. Did you know museum collections hold such treasures as the silver table fork with Captain Franklin’s crest?



Palette of Perils


In Terror: Endless Night, the colors tell a story of their own. It is a grim tale of the faint light of hope trapped in a dark, frozen hell. Omnipresent darkness and creeping cold slowly, but unstoppably, like icebergs pressing against the ship’s hull, intend to crush all sources of warmth and life.


That’s the impression we are aiming at, using a palette of dark blues and greys that surround the scene at all times like a trap with no exit. Regardless of whether inside or outside the ship, we want them to seem like they are always creeping toward the center of the screen.


Luckily, there are safe harbors amid the dark—sparse, often singular spheres of oranges and yellows, flickering sparkles of hope that it could all still end well. This contrast of warmth against the cold is a prevailing motif in our art. One intensifies the other: the warm palette makes the cold seem even colder, and vice versa. You can almost feel the warmth beaming from the center of the picture here, but you can also sense the creeping cold on its edges. It’s a never-ending struggle.


While the merciless cold held the title of the archenemy of the 19th-century polar expeditions, fire was both the savior and the tormentor. Wooden ships, even frigid, if set ablaze, could turn the frozen hell into a raging inferno in mere seconds. Keeping an open flame was therefore considered a mortal sin among sailors and severely punished. What a predicament to find yourself in, isn't it? No wonder that it causes the heat of another kind to rise—a fever.


Somewhere there, between the fire and ice, are people. Prone to the inflammation of spirit and coldness of heart. But also capable of cooling down their primal, selfish instincts and sharing with others the little warmth they have left. This is the art of survival in Terror: Endless Night.
That’s all we’ve had for this devlog. All that’s left to say now is that we really want to connect with our fans, so make sure to leave a comment and say hi! If you have any questions, you can also go ahead and drop them in the comment section, and as always, we encourage you to tap that Wishlist button, because it lets us know that even if you’re a lurker, you’re here and you’re interested in what we have to show. Also, we want to post these regularly, so stay on the lookout for more devlogs, seadogs!

Fair winds,
Unseen Silence

Our publisher just released a demo for Ultra Mega CAts

We are going off course for a moment, as we are very excited for a milestone of our friends at Fallen Leaf!



We would like to invite you to check out the fresh demo of Ultra Mega Cats that was just released for Steam Endless Replayability Festival. If you enjoy roguelike shooter gameplay, this might be the game for you :)

You can play it solo or in an online co-op. Download it for free here:



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1882130/Ultra_Mega_Cats/

Devlog#5 - Back on course

Ahoy, brave Seafarers!



We have been stuck in the ice for a while, but we managed to break through, and we are coming back to all of you with another development update!

On this very day in 1848, the crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror abandoned their ships, but we are certainly not abandoning ours ;)
Take a look at the progress we made since the last development update here:



We would also like to thank our community for the patience and support that was shown towards us.
Our team is working hard to develop the game and bring you the ultimate survival experience on the icy banks of Arctic.

Devlog #4, The People of Terror


Ahoy, seadogs!



We haven’t visited the port in a while, but we’re back again with yet another Terror: Endless Night devlog! While at sea, we’ve been reading the letters you left us during the last visit, and especially the ones with feedback about the demo. We’re hard at work to make Terror the best it can be so we appreciate that you let us know what you did and didn’t like about it (gotta work on your cursive though, some of those were nigh unreadable…)!

For this devlog, since you’ve already met the crew behind the game, it’s time for you to meet the other crew, the one manning your ship. After all, you’re the captain, and as captain, you take responsibility for the lives of your people, so it seems prudent to get acquainted with all of them both on a personal level and with their roles in the grand scheme of things.



Each of your crew members has their own strengths, a function they excel at serving. There’s specialized personnel, that’s your mariners, soldiers of different military ranks, engineers, and regular crew, the smokers, icebreakers, and cooks. The main way you can divide your crew is their rank, whether they’re an officer of The Royal Navy or a regular seaman. Of course, the conditions you’ll face are extreme, and they ask for equally extreme measures. You won’t have the luxury of stacking every post with a perfect sailor who excels at it, and that’s why we let you give any task you want to whoever you want, even if it’s not optimal. Flexibility is key, and no one is safe from menial chores.

…that does not mean that they’ll take those orders lying down though. The officers, especially, may get a little peeved when you order them to do something below their station. Navigating these situations can get tricky, and you may have to get creative with the rules you implement.



Aside from the crew, your ship also has 4 main characters. Obviously, you, The Captain, are the most important person on the ship, but right beneath you, there are the Chaplain, Researcher, Doctor, and Colonel. Each of them represents a strong and opposite approach to life and service and therefore their loyalty is not easy to gain or maintain but it is vital to the success of your mission. For example, the Chaplain, who’s very strict and convinced that the path of God is the path to success, may seem hardly connected to the military character of your expedition, but when it comes to soothing people’s minds and hearts with faith, can become a very important person on your quest to survive.



A mutiny on the ship is hardly the scariest part of Terror though. What’s really scary is how attached to your crew you grow as you familiarize yourself with your shipmates’ lives and history, as every sailor on the ship has their own biography available in their character card. Once you read about their childhood, family, problems, or even how they react in a stressful situation, losing them becomes very personal and can feel truly soul-crushing. What will you do, to make them survive, captain?



That’s all we’ve had for this devlog. All that’s left to say now is that we really want to connect with our fans, so make sure to leave a comment and say hi! If you have any questions, you can also go ahead and drop them in the comment section, and as always, we encourage you to tap that Wishlist button, because it lets us know that even if you’re a lurker, you’re here and you’re interested in what we have to show. Also, we want to post these regularly so stay on the lookout for more devlogs, seadogs!

Fair winds,
Unseen Silence

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1878730/Terror_Endless_Night/

Devlog #3, Meet The Crew


Ahoy, seadogs!



We’ve been thinking and we realized that we’ve been talking to you for a while now, you read our devlogs, you comment, you check out the Terror: Endless Night demo available until the end of the week, you add our game to your wishlists (thank you so much, by the way!) and you don’t even know who WE are. Of course, you know we’re the people running this ship and delivering Terror to you, pardon the pun, but you don’t really know us. So, the time has come for you to meet the crew.

Unseen Silence started off as a project of three friends, brought together by a genuine passion for games cultivated for years. Well, that, and the fact that two of them are brothers. Our tireless trio, Piotr Kurkowski, Krzysztof Szymański, and Ignacy Kurkowski, have spent countless hours discussing other people’s games to death, taking them apart, and looking at each part under a metaphorical microscope.

Us and Krzysztof go way back, we have known him since high school. You could definitely say that we’re consumers of pop-culture, but aside from absorbing it like sponges, we were also able to, and enjoyed to, analyze it, look at it with a critical eye.
- Ignacy Kurkowski, CEO of Unseen Silence





Another one of our boys’ passions is live music, and it’s actually after one of the shows they went to in 2019 (though at this point it’s hard to tell whether it was Muse or Alice in Chains) that the idea of making their own game has first come up. Initially, the plan was to make a fighting game, something like “Mortal Kombat” or “Street Fighter” that would conquer the market with an original artstyle but the idea did not survive a confrontation with our soon-acquired industry knowledge.

We did not want to make every young game dev’s mistake and take on an impossible task and then bounce off game-making when it doesn’t work out. We’re realists and there was simply no way we would’ve been able to create a fighting game at that moment in time.
- Piotr Kurkowski, the lead game designer, who had a different idea for their first project



Piotr had just finished reading “The Terror” by Dan Simmons and it left quite an impression on him. So much so, that it got him thinking, and he soon realized how much potential there is in setting a story on a ship trapped in arctic ice. He floated the idea during one of the meetings with Ignacy and Krzysztof and, unlike its inspiration, it was not put on ice, because they loved it. Soon after, during another meetup, the boys figured out the basics - the game was to be a turn-based strategy game, have difficult moral choices, an ever present sense of danger and limited resources. They also made their minds up in regards to the main enemy - the monster that lurks in every human’s soul. Now they had all the ingredients that would soon make up the essence of “Terror: Endless Night”.

The main challenge was wrapping it all in a compelling horror narrative. We decided on a story driven game, where the plot takes the center stage so the script needed to have a lot of “meat” to hold the player’s attention. Today, I can confidently say that we have succeeded in that goal.
- Krzysztof Szymański, story director at Unseen Silence





The following months were filled with intense design work, and tons of “playtesting” the not-yet-existing game in Excel sheets. The crew also temporarily grew one mate bigger when the boys enlisted the help of a visual artist Sewer Hrehorowicz to create concept art for the game. After writing down all the fundamentals of the game and many revisions to make sure the final version is absolutely bulletproof, our crew put together a presentation and were ready to show it to publishers. The response was outstanding.

Thanks to all the hard work in this early preparation stage we had no problems with getting people interested in our project and securing the funding. All that was left was to put together a team and get the full-scale production started.
- Ignacy Kurkowski, who took charge of the newly-launched company Unseen Silence in July 2020



Naturally, the first new addition was Sewer Hrehorowicz along with his studio, “CVLT”. With his impressive artistic skills and familiarity with the project he was a perfect fit and was soon put in charge of all things graphic design. The programming side of things was entrusted to Artur Dębowski, who was to lead a team of two other code experts - Piotr Spychała and Emil Dębkowski. Finally, on board came Aleksandra Godek to tie everything together as a producer, and this ship was ready to sail.

That’s it for this devlog. All that’s left to say now is that we really want to connect with our fans, so make sure to leave a comment and say hi! If you have any questions, you can also drop them in the comment section, and of course, we encourage you to tap the Wishlist button, because it lets us know that even if you’re a lurker, you’re here and you’re interested in what we have to show. Also, we want to post these regularly so stay on the lookout for more devlogs, and check out the Terror: Endless Night demo, seadogs!

Fair winds,
Unseen Silence

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1878730/Terror_Endless_Night/

Enter the endless night in the first demo!
Ahoy, you wry seadogs! Your eyes do not deceive you. We’ve decided to make this Steam Festival extra-festive, and we’re dropping our first demo AND a new trailer. We know you’ve been waiting for a taste of the icy waters of the Arctic Sea, and we’re here to give it to you. While in the full game you’ll take control of a rescue vessel, coming to find HMS „Terror” and HMS „Erebus”, in the demo, you’ll have a chance to witness the last days of Erebus and see the crew we’ve all come to love.

Our crew has worked very hard to get this out because we really wanted our fans to see what Terror’s all about, so we hope you’ll check it out, and enjoy it. …and while you’re on our Steam page, consider adding the game to your wishlist, every bit counts and it lets us know that we’re on the right track with what we’re building. We’ve also created a new trailer just for this occasion, and hopefully, those two things will hold you over until Terror’s full release… when it’s ready. 😉


We’re also running a contest on Feardemic’s Discord!
The goal? Write a short sea shanty that would keep the crew’s morale up while the ship is stuck on ice.
The reward? A Steam key for Terror: Endless Night that you’ll receive on launch day! Plus additional, smaller rewards like special emotes on Feardemic’s Discord server.



Lastly, we really like to connect with our fans, so make sure to leave a comment and say hi, and please let us know what you think of our demo, we appreciate every bit of feedback! If you have any questions, you can also drop them in the comment section, and of course, we encourage you to tap the Wishlist button, because it lets us know that even if you’re a lurker, you’re here and you’re interested in what we have to show.

Fair winds,
Unseen Silence


MARK YOUR CALENDAR: SEPTEMBER 6 WE’RE PAINTING THE SUMMER BLACK


Hello, Fearfolks!



We’ve opened a portal to hell, and released all the horrors contained within into the world. …well, ok, into our vault. We will however unleash them upon all of humanity on September 6 during our horror extravaganza, Fear Fest 2022: Black Summer. Mark the calendar or the mark of the beast will mark you, we’re coming to your screens, and we have big guns on our side.

Joining the show will, of course, be our premiere titles, Dark Fracture and Terror: Endless Night, but we’ve also recruited an army of influencers and big-name horror games publishers and developers.



The broadcast is going to feature trailers for upcoming top-shelf horror titles, developer interviews, gameplay recorded by popular influencers, and even story segments in the style of a found-footage horror film, to tie everything together.

What are you waiting for? Head to fearfest.online, set a reminder, and join the army of fear! Together, we will paint the summer black.

See you in hell!

Devlog #2, Definition of Insanity


Ahoy, seadogs!



We're back at the port with another devlog, and this one, quite frankly, is a little mad... Well, that's not entirely true, but it does concern the insanity mechanic, which is one of the main challenges you'll face as the captain in Terror: Endless Night. Let's dive right into it, but first, let us thank you for all your comments and wishlists since the last devlog, we read every message so keep it up!

"(...) it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."
- Philip K. Dick, Valis




A good captain takes good care of their crew. In Terror: Endless Night that means managing your rapidly dwindling resources to ensure everyone's survival while rationing out the bare minimum and keeping your mariners loyal to prevent a bloody mutiny, but if those two seem hard to balance, wait till you hear about the third part to this equation - sanity. After all, the last thing you want while stranded in ice for weeks is one of your friends going berserk, which considering the circumstances, is not that unlikely.

A Method to Madness



So, how does it work? The level of insanity is impacted by the duties of the crewman, random events, and your decisions. Insanity may affect the entire crew, the specific section of the crew, or a specific individual. You will be aware of how each choice will affect the insanity levels and managing them will have to be part of your strategic decision making. You will find each crew member's current level of insanity out of 4 on their respective card, displayed as a word and as a number. Take note of it, you don’t want things to get out of hand, do you?



The Worst of Times



Going insane has strictly negative consequences for the crewman and can interact with their perks and impact some of the plot events. The mechanics were inspired by the true story of the crew of the Terror and Erebus and the desire to provide a typical horror vibe, where it’s not external factors, but people - the transformation they undergo, the impact of difficult conditions that awakes the worst demons in them. Mechanically, we aimed to give the player a differential approach to the game: choose to actively try to prevent the crew's mental deteriorating or forego that to focus on other factors and let your crew go mad. We wanted different approaches to change the gameplay and result in a different player experience. What will you choose, captain?



That’s it for this devlog. All that’s left to say now is that we really want to connect with our fans, so make sure to leave a comment and say hi! If you have any questions, you can also drop them in the comment section, and of course, we encourage you to tap the Wishlist button, because it lets us know that even if you’re a lurker, you’re here and you’re interested in what we have to show. Also, we want to post these regularly so stay on the lookout for more devlogs, seadogs!

Fair winds,
Unseen Silence

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1878730/Terror_Endless_Night/

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