DEAD STILL is a Victorian spirit-photography game in three sittings. Ghosts can’t be seen. Only photographed. You are J. Ashworth, “Photographer of the Departed”. Frame your clients, turn the brass focus ring, and hold a long exposure while the plate drinks the light. Then rock the plate in a red-lit darkroom and watch who was really standing beside them: - The widow: her husband, in his empty armchair. The first sitting teaches you, step by step. - The twins: a dead girl who will not keep still. Frost on the glass betrays her, and only a magnesium flash can freeze her. - Mr. Hale: an investigator who asks for a portrait “with whoever is here”. Then the print looks back at you.

Rive features used: 1) Rive CLI: the whole project is RML, Luau and WGSL, checked with --verify, inspect, --screenshot and --test (20 unit tests that guard the rules), and shipped with --publish=web.

2) GPU Canvas: the shaders are the mechanics:

3) Scripting (Luau): the sittings, the scoring and the story; it scrubs Ashworth's Wake timeline to open his eyes.

4) Data Binding: one view model drives the whole HUD.

5) State machines on every artboard; the HUD's hints run on one.

6) Skinned image meshes with bones for every character, each with an idle timeline.

7) Layout, vector feathering, trim paths, dash paths and Rive audio (gapless loops for the clock, the candles and the darkroom). The video shows the game itself (every gameplay frame rendered by the game), the CLI run that shipped it, its RML, Luau and WGSL, the GPU Canvas passes, the file opened in the Rive Editor, and the same signed .riv running in a local build of my own portfolio site.

Amazing....

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