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Don't Look Away: a candle-lit horror game where the GPU shader is the game.
Something is in the house. It only moves in the dark. Your cursor is a candle. While your light is on the Visitor, it stands still; look at the window, the portrait or the door, and it takes a step closer, in a new pose, somewhere new. In the dark you only see two pale points. When it reaches you, the candle goes out.
Features used: Rive CLI and GPU Canvas, plus Scripting, Data Binding and State Machines.
- GPU Canvas (WGSL): the darkness is a fragment shader: a breathing pool of candlelight around the pointer, smoke in the light, a vignette that closes in with dread, and a tear across the picture every time it steps.
- Rive CLI + RML: the room, the words, the view model and the state machine are plain markup, built and checked with rive --verify, inspect and headless screenshots; the demo video was rendered by replaying a scripted pointer frame by frame.
- Luau scripting: one rule, it only moves while the light misses its head and body; it also draws the Visitor and the candle in your hand.
- Data Binding: its distance drives the step counter and the portrait on the wall, which slowly becomes her. State machine: title, ending, and the flash of the scare.
- Rive Editor: the file was opened in the editor, and the claw marks beside the door were drawn there with the pen tool and pulled back with rive pull.
Play it (lights off): https://dont-look-away-nkdh1b.rive.to
Video with the agent workflow and code: https://youtu.be/Pt_J1wdtQxI
Update (v2, same link): now there is a way to win. Light the three candles in the room before it reaches you, but while you hold your flame to a wick, your light is not on it. Each lit candle becomes a light of its own that freezes it too; light all three and it is gone at dawn....
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