The end of the world comes not with a bang, but with a whimper and a shadow in Placeable's eerie horror adventure Snowdrift. Sam is an old man who has managed to hold out against a sinister living darkness that has overwhelmed the rest of the world, eeking out a lonely existence day to day in a cabin in the snow-carpeted woods. Survival depends not only on finding food and water in the barren landscape, represented by the bars in the top corner of the screen, but also keeping enough wood stocked to stoke his fireplace and keep the darkness at bay at night. If you venture out after nightfall, you have a better chance of encountering animals to hunt, which becomes a necessity as you slowly strip the more easily found berries from bushes, but your lantern has limited fuel to keep things lighted and safe. Use the [arrow] keys to move, [Z] to interact/confirm, and [X] to open the inventory. There are three possible endings to discover, centering around Sam's actions and whether he answers the door whenever it's knocked at. A knock at the door in the middle of a sentient, evil night? Sure, answer it. What could go wrong.
Snowdrift has, hands down, some of the best atmosphere you may ever find in a horror game, especially one with this sort of visual style. Unfortunately, an overall lack of polish from a few persistent bugs and lack of a pause feature, to say nothing of a much needed proof-reader, makes this feel more like a concept than anything approaching a full game. It's unfortunate, since the surreal supernatural premise is so eerie it actually is genuinely scary, and makes Snowdrift the sort of thing you'd love to see expanded on in the future with a larger scope and more attention to detail. Which might happen, since the developer intends to create a sequel rather than updating this incarnation. With more to do and a cleaner design, Snowdrift could have been a serious contender, but as it stands this little Twilight Zone-esque concept of a game is still worth checking out if you love atmosphere and otherworldly creeps.
I can't fill up the water bottle at the pools. So I died of thirst. The noise sounds like the one from SCP:Containment Breach when you blink and 173 is in front of you.
This was an interesting concept, but is apparently glitching. 3/5
I agree with Dora. This game is proving very interesting, but the sheer amount of glitches make the game more of a concept than something enjoyable.
Unable to drink from the pound, going off the screen without triggering the mechanism to enter a new zone, unable to leave the house, unable to check my inventory (!)... the list goes on.
Sigh. It really looks like a nice game!
Sorry, guys, I didn't actually encounter any bug with drinking from the pond! Are you sure it's the small pond you're trying to drink from and not the big water sources to the far left top and bottom of the maps?
The only bug I actually personally encountered was at one point attempting to use the fireplace and having the dialogue for a knock at the door pop up BEHIND that context menu. It made it so I was "stuck" with no time advancing and no motives decaying, so I had to reload the game to the start of that day.
No doubt, the most atmospheric free online flash game I have ever encountered. Story was captivating and I did not suffer any glitches at all except for a one whereby i pressed the inventory button during area transition and became unable to move. This was easily fixed by opening the inventory, moving the character into a new area and pressing X during the transition.
Dora, I tried the small pond and the large water source.
I think there needs to be a map, so I don't get lost.
Well I've been playing for what has to be 20 minutes and I'm not really getting anywhere with the plot.
I've been visited by the mysterious and scary hooded cloaked guy two times. The last time he told me not to open my door, and not to trust him, so when I heard another knock a third time, I did as he said and did not open the door. The days have gotten a bit shorter, darkness now coming at 4 as opposed to six or seven, but other than that nothing really seems to be happening.
At this point the game play is not compelling enough for me to continue on, not to mention I encountered the same glitch nat0202 and am unable to fix it so I think I'm calling it quits with this one. Pretty scary though, I agree. Very atmospheric and unsettling. If anyone has managed to get an ending that isn't just dying I'd be interested to hear what it is.
GAHH THESE GLITCHES! I managed to reach "Neutral Ending" by
ignoring the first knock and answering the second. Here's what happened:
The spooky guy said he was angry at me for not answering him the first time. He added that I might have a chance to make up for it, but I don't think I did. After rattling off a few more doom and gloom sentiments and asking me if I was different from the others, he left. I finished sleeping and went about my day as usual, but in the middle of the day (which was Day 7) the lights went out. I was out of lamp fluid, so the creepiness took over. Suddenly I was in the flower field and my daughter was talking to me. Something about "should have listened" or "follow me." Sam agreed and wandered off screen, then the game says "Neutral Ending, you did something wrong."
I tried for a different ending by answering the door the first and second times, then ignoring the third, then answering the fourth. The game froze.
need a dialogue editor? i'm down
No problems with the ponds, but ooooh did the controls start ignoring me. It was like each keystroke had a 50/50 chance of registering, making not only interactions but movement incredibly difficult, to the point where I died because I couldn't move around to where I needed to be quick enough. The plot was great, but not enough to warrant further attempts from me.
Glitchy but a good atmospheric game nonetheless. I managed to get the good ending; I liked the game but it could've been longer.
Hope to see a sequel soon.
Please give a heads up for jump scares in future posts?
Sorry, Astrea, I didn't encounter anything I would have called a jump scare in this game. :)
I really liked this game, it is deceptively harder than it appears as it takes longer than you would expect to travel back to the house before your energy, etc. is depleted. The only serious problem I am having, and I don't know if it's a glitch or I am doing something wrong, is I can NOT make it past the 2nd night. Even when the fire is stoked and my food and water are more than half full I am killed in the middle of the night, even in my bed sleeping...why?
uh.... yeah. there are jump scares.
There are definitely jump scares in this game. I think you have to play for a while (e.g., many "days" to see them).
The atmospheric sounds and graphics were well done and occasionally made me jump (jump scare), so there's definitely some promise. However, the lack of clear plot and not quite seeing beyond days getting shorter and experiencing jump scares has made me move on and not continue with the game.
I tried playing again and quickly ran out of stamina. I got bored and think I'll just wait for someone to post a video walkthrough.
So there's around 45 pages/paragraphs of text you have to laboriously read and click through before you start and they couldn't be bothered proofreading it.
Next.
I got the good ending, I think it was about day 6. The key points were
I had to go out at least one night to kill bunnies. Otherwise there wasn't enough food.
Let the creepy guy in each night to talk to you.
Once Creepy helps you, make for the ocean on the lower left right away.
I encountered a few bugs. The game froze when I hit "continue" once. A page reload fixed that. And a couple of times I got stick just off the edge of a screen. The bugs were a bit irritating, but not debilitating.
I encountered flashes of images on the screen which I consider as jump scares (maybe my scare level is lower than yours)- they occurred when I died and also once when I went to sleep.
Because I don't take well to jump scares, I can't keep playing :P
I love this game, but I think I'm stuck or something. I'm at day 8. 2 am something knocks at the door. i haven't been answering but this time i think, what the heck. not sure if this is a spoiler, so -
so i click yes. nothing happens. the clock is frozen at 2. i can put wood on the fire, chop more wood, drink water from the pond. can't open the inventory. if i go into the darkness, it makes creepy noises but it doesn't get me. none of my status bars go down. i can go to sleep, but time doesn't pass.
weird. guess i'll start over?
If you hear the door slam and wake up, it's just a distraction. Also, for the people having trouble surviving the second night, get 2-3 pieces of wood, put wood on the fire, then when the fire dies down, push X to get up and add some more. If you run out, the area just outside the house has plenty of light for you to chop some more.
will someone please tell me
a, how many jump scares and/or gore there is
and b, how long it takes to finish the game.
Thank you very much.
:)
Played to the day9 and time stopped at 16:00,the bars do not decrease any more.Walk into the dark doesn't cause deaht ,sleep don't cause game over by evil dreams any more.But there's no sence to be a ending or something else,just forever time stop.is this a bad ending?Or the game just stucked?Waiting for a answer:??
Hi sam69658! Unfortunately, it sounds like you've encountered a bug. :( I contacted the developer about a similar problem myself before writing the review and he said he planned to make and polish a sequel rather than take care of any bug fixes with this one. However, if you reload your browser window and play the game, you SHOULD start over at your last autosave, which would be at the start of the last day. I'm sorry you had the problem!
So, this was one I missed and was hoping to play during Best of...however, I can't even get the game to open. There's no cursor on the loading page, Return doesn't work, Space doesn't work, using the arrows just moves me between New Game and Continue....no logical point of entry that I can find. Is this a glitch or am I missing something? I've reopened the game in two different browsers (Chrome and Camino) and have tried three times.
You have to use "Z" or "X", in this game Enter, Space or any other key doesn't work
This game was very effectively creepy. Dragged out a bit, but that almost added to the suspense. I could not look at the screen when Sam was sleeping on account of the flashes, but that was a detail and didn't hinder game play. The atmosphere was amazingly done, and I would have to say that this is a horror classic. Overall the only complaint is the small glitches that happen here and there, but they're still not enough to keep me away. 4.5/5
And a question for all of the JIG users, Any ideas on what the darkness is literally or figuratively?
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