Here is the 4th and final installment of my Don’t Play This Game demo playthrough. If you have not yet read Parts 1-3 for this playthrough, please start here.

Event 7: An Exchange

Darkness within darkness. It doesn’t make sense but then nothing about this makes sense. How can something be darker than the complete and total absence of light?
I didn’t know but there it was. A great gaping open maw in the wall before me. I clung to the stairwell banister and stared. My throat is raw from screaming. I had no idea how long I’d been in the dark before the change occurred.

Now that you are quiet, I have a deal to make with you.

The voice sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it. All I knew is that it was coming from the deeper darkness that my eyes could barely land on but even with my eyes closed I could feel it looming before me.
“Who are you?”

You know me, Bright Eyes. You’ve known me for a long time.

The use of Luke’s nickname for me made my stomach churn.
“You’re not the thing thats been following me. The Tall one in my dreams?”

Kindred. Kin. I do not know your dreams but I can taste you, feel  you, and know your desperate heart.

“What do you want?”

To make a deal. You give me something. I give you something.

“What do you want from me? What do you want to trade?”

You have something emotional. Something you have poured your thoughts, memories, tears into. Images of the past. Of others that have walked my halls. Caressed me with their hands just as you have.

This place is beautiful! I could hear Jakob’s voice echo and it was like a sharp blade against my heart and memory of him.
Luke’s voice followed. Look here, bright eyes!
I felt the weight of the photo album in my bag. All those images of us. All our adventures. Then again, memories aren’t anything if I can’t make it out of here alive.
“If I give you this, will you help me find my way out?”

Yessss the black hole hissed.

“Can…can you help me find my way out of this situation with the Tall One?”

That is outside of me. You can remain here, out of his reach but that is all I can do. You can crawl in. Sleep. Be mine instead.

Hardly a deal. I reached for the album. “This…for a way out. I’ll deal with the Tall One later.”

Deal.

I caressed the album, wishing I could take one last look at the images within but the darkness stole that from me. Strange. Just days ago I couldn’t bear to look at it and now…it was like a physical wound being opened to toss it into that blackness.
The maw took its time. The stairwell, or dark expanse that I stood in that was once a stairwell, was filled with the sounds of disgusting digestion.
The room began to get a little brighter. The maw disappeared and I found the stairwell illuminated from below by a red exit sign. There’s no way it could be working…there’s now power here. But there it was, all the same.
I followed the stairs down shakily.

Event 8: The Tunnel

The corridors and pathways all began to merge into one as I delved deeper into the old hospital, contorting together to form a tunnel. Perhaps the tunnel was always there – a way to move dead patients out without alarming the ones still suffering above.
It’s colder here and my sweater is doing nothing to help. Even my toes in my socks and boots are frozen. My nose feels like a block of ice.
The cold is nothing compared to the feeling in the pit of my stomach though.
Something terrible is close…the Tall One is waiting. It’s here.

It’s been here. It’s why I was drawn here…using my emotional connection to the old hospital. Toying with me like it has been this whole time.
I pulled out my camera, needing to see or at least try. The flash is working again. I caught images on the walls. Graffiti scrawl of the Tall One’s epithets along with begs and please for help, mercy, escape. Drawings of the Entity loomed on every surface including the door ahead.

I don’t know how longs I stood before the door. The knowledge, the gut instinct, that the enemy was on the other side, waiting for me to step into its clutches held me frozen. But…didn’t it already have me? What choice do I have? Even if there was another way out, even if the old hospital and whatever hungry thing haunted it guided me another way…the Tall One would still be there…still kill.
I reached for the door.

Event 9: Facing the Nightmare

I stepped into…town? I was standing in front of Video Wizard as if I had just stepped out of its stacks and rows of movies. No one was on the streets. No cars, not even parked. Just the pavement and the buildings.
Things then began to warp. Like the dreams I’d had. Photography melted under slow heat, film dissolving on a reel, and still I felt so cold.
Is this the dream again? Am I sleeping? Sleep walking out of the video store. Will old Larry run me over if I step into the street just like Freddy?

I turned to touch the door of Video Wizard, contemplating trying to turn this dream myself. Guide my sleeping body back to bed. Steer myself into safety.
That was when the Entity attacked.

It no longer focused solely on warping the landscape. My own flesh joined the melting plastic reality as clothing and flesh fell away, stretched, twisted, became something new and different and wholly inhuman. Was this what had happened to the Entity? Was it something else – angel, demon, other and warped by the mind?
There was no pain. Only my own mind screaming against the intrusion of unreality.
It’s not real, I pleaded with myself. It isn’t real. Fuck the Tall One. HE ISN’T REAL!

Event 10: Fighting Back

To try and survive I must go through a series of die rolls. Every fail costs me a life point. Starting out, I have 7.

I squirmed, my body warped into something more akin to taffy than anything animal. My mind strained. The Entity latched on but I twisted again, determined. (D4 – 1 fail, 1 success)

I am able to rejoin my hands, my arms still elongated but my hands are whole and claw-like as I swipe, trying to get more of myself free. (1 success)

The Entity, laughing and sneering, enraged and amused by this turn of events in its game, lashes back. I reel as the landscape shifts into dark spaces. Gathering my thoughts I turn again. I am able to turn. My body is whole enough to turn. (1 fail, 1 success)

The darkness consumes. Terrible nothingness. I might be able to turn, even to stand, but there is nothing to stand on. It is nothing and the Entity is everything. I scream and reel as reason falls away. Reaching, I can’t find anything to hold onto. Instead I turn my hands to myself…finding my camera around my neck, I click the flash, pushing back against the dark. The Entity, perceived and unperceivable twists away from the light. It gives me time. I just need time (2 fails, use 1 resource – the camera – and 1 success)

Gaining some sort of ground where there is no ground to be had is probably idiocy and insanity and worthless but still I pushed. My face is wet with tears or blood or my own body’s contents from the rending shapes it was in. The Entity shrieks and closes in, done with its game. I reach for the last thing I can find, wrapping my hand around the key. The key I killed Carl Simkins with. It opened a body…can it open this?
I stab into the dark going on nothing but madness. Startling reality clicks into place. (2 fails and spending an artifact, 1 success)

Epilogue

Luke sat with Mr. and Mrs. Chase in the waiting room of the Haven Home, the premiere mental health facility in the state. It felt weird to be here. Two years ago, he’d tried to talk Jakob into coming here voluntarily just before…well…before.
“Mr. Chase,” the doctor greeted Harlow’s dad then her mother. She then turned to Luke and gave a sympathetic smile. “Mr. Mills.”
They walked and talked.
“How’s she doing, doc?”
“The same, I’m afraid. But no further complications and her wounds are healing well.”

Luke listened in silence. Mrs. Chase had called him when it happened. It was hard to make sense of it all at first.
Harlow had been taken down by a sheriff’s deputy outside of Video Wizard. She’d been screaming and the passersby as well as the neighboring business owners had called the police when no one was able to communicate with her.

The group stopped outside of Harlow’s room. It was well lit with a view of the trees outside. Mrs. Chase went to her daughter’s side while Mr. Chase and the doctor continued to discuss Harlow’s treatment in hushed tones.
The parallels between Harlow’s case and Jakob’s were why Luke was there. The only difference, Harlow had been stopped in the act of killing herself.

The police and the doctor both murmured about the amount of brute force one would have to have to open their veins with an old skeleton key would have to have been phenomenal. Luke had seen Jakob after his twin brother had done the same only with an antique fountain pen.
Worse still, the police said the wounds on Harlow matched the ones in a murder case they were investigating. Luke couldn’t believe they were suggesting Harlow had something to do with another man’s death. He’d become hostile when they tried to question him during his first hospital visit and thankfully they hadn’t had a reason to approach him since.

The visit went smoothly. Harlow, staring blankly at the window while her mother brushed her hair and talked to her about mundane things. Mr. Chase mostly lingered in the doorway, crying.
Luke wasn’t sure why he was there. The only thing he could come up with is that he wished he’d had moments like this with Jakob. Perhaps there was hope that Harlow could snap out of it and tell them what happened. To her. To Jakob.

The visit ended and the three left the building. Mrs. Chase stopped him and asked him to join her at the car. “I have something for you.”
“We cleaned out Harlow’s apartment. Had some movers come put her things in storage. This was on her table though. It’s addressed to you. She must have been about to send it to you before…well, before.”
Luke looked at the mailer. It was thick. Mrs. Chase was watching him expectantly so he went ahead and opened it. A journal came out into his hand. On the cover was scrawled Don’t Play This Game.

Play This Game

I hope you enjoyed my playthrough of the Don’t Play This Game demo. At the time of this writing, the actual game has been fully funded (in 3 hours!) and is smashing its way through stretch goals. The game will be released at the end of next year and I am very much looking forward to it. Go check out the kickstarter and make sure you secure your copy and all the extra goodies there.

If you enjoyed this playthrough, be sure to check out others I have like Little Town and Carved by the Garden.