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[ArcFireStudios]

The year is 1833. You have just been released from prison for a crime that you did not commit. Haggard and starving, you stumble home eager to see your family. The house is empty. No sign of your wife, your son, or your dog. Where are they? The ticking of the clock is the only sound you hear. Your eyelids grow heavy and you pass out exhausted as you await their return. Something awakens you from a foggy nightmare. Night has fallen and you are enveloped in heavy darkness. There is a chill in the air. You call out for your wife, but there's no reply, just a sense of doom. You can see nothing, but you can feel a presence. You feel around for the candle beside your bed. A sense of dread is chilling you to the core as you strike a match with shaking hands. The candle reveals nothing as you walk with unsteady footsteps towards the door. As you explore your home, the disappearance of your family becomes perfectly clear.

The Candlemaker is not your typical horror game, where you search for items and complete objectives. It is more of a strategy based game. Your house contains four rooms, each with one or two candles. You’ve used your last match. The candle you have lit can be used to light the other candles, and illuminate your home. Occasionally, these candles will go out, as well as the candle you hold in your hand. If you fail to keep the candles lit, the darkness will attract the ominous presence you sense around you. Although lighting candles is part of the gameplay, it is mainly based on how you how you interact with objects and the environment around you. The goal of the game is to make it through the eight hours of the night, which can be tracked on the grandfather clock in the bedroom. As the clock strikes each hour, the monster will become increasingly more active. Throughout the night, you will face more and more obstacles that hinder your progression, making the game gradually more challenging. The only way to stay alive, is to survive until the morning.

•Readable journal with full, immersive backstory
•Fast-paced gameplay
•Creepy atmosphere and environment
•Complex strategy system
•Will be available for PC
•Will have Virtual Reality and Mac support if we meet our Kickstarter goal

Check out our other pages :

IndieDB : http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-candlemaker

Twitter : https://twitter.com/ArcfireStudios

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/ArcFire-Studios-747425582036182/timeline/

Youtube Channel ( contains gameplay trailer ) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChOeOqn6bdSc3lxfP2UumxA

Please vote for us on steam greenlight and support our kickstarter

[Cranktrain]

The trailer's looking pretty good for a game that's 50% complete, even from that short video it's clear there's a sense of atmosphere. I've seen plenty of first-person horror games hit Steam that involve searching for objectives, is there any other mechanics that set it apart from those? Obviously, lighting the candles. Will the player have to also construct candles too?

[ArcFireStudios]

Thanks for the supportive comment DizzyDoo! Our game isn't your typical search drawers and get items horror game and I will try to explain it to you without giving to much away. Basically our game is more of a strategy based horror game in which you are in a house that contains five rooms and in each of these rooms are 1-2 candles. Your goal of the game is to make it through the eight hours of the night, which can be tracked on the grandfather clock in the main room. As each hour progresses, the monster will come increasingly more active and make it much harder to continue lighting the candles, which keep him away. Also, to answer your question, later in the night, you will have to construct candles to keep your light source going, but that is not why the game is called The Candlemaker. The Candlemaker is the main characters son, and one of the family members who disappeared. To find out more about the backstory, you will have to play the game when it comes out in late December or early 2016. I hope that cleared some stuff up for you!

[ArcFireStudios]

Also I was just notified that our pictures were not uploaded correctly, but I believe I have fixed them. If anyone cannot view our photos please let me know!

[s0]

Hi I've deleted all of your threads except this one. Please stop spamming your game everywhere.

Best regards,
Silbereisen

[ArcFireStudios]

My apologies. I am new to this forum and didn't know which section to post on , so I just posted it on three of them.

[s0]

no big deal  

[monsterfinger]

Youve done well creating atmosphere as i was on edge watching it.

[ArcFireStudios]

Thanks monsterfinger! I appreciate the comment!

[ArcFireStudios]

We are now on Steam Greenlight!

[Cobralad]

good, hope you get played by jim sterling

[Cranktrain]

good, hope you get played by jim sterling

A barely veiled insult, given that Jim Sterling has made many videos about awful first-person Greenlight horror games which involve picking objects up. I haven't played The Candlemaker, and my main question for the developers is still how they're going to differentiate themselves from all the dozens of horror games that look very similar, but you're essentially saying "I hope this particular popular YouTube personality mocks your game on his channel."

Now, I'm not saying that the targets Jim Sterling and others pick for their criticism are necessarily unfair, oh, boy,

, but are we going to be okay with wishing this on fellow developers here on TigSource? I don't believe that ArcFireStudios are nearly as cynical or as money-grabbing as whoever was behind 'Grass Simulator', so I'd much rather use this thread to point out possible improvements that might be made, as I can see this particular project is receiving a lot of flak in the Greenlight comments already.

I'd be interested, though, in hearing ArcFireStudio's response to the criticism that this game looks like every other key-picking-up first person spooky scary game, which I still personally think it does. There may be some 'candle-lighting strategy' behind not-getting-jump-scared that we can't see, but I don't think that's going to be enough.

[ArcFireStudios]

Well DizzyDoo we are not trying to follow in the footsteps of other generic horror games, there are no keys involved in the game whatsoever, every room in the house is accessible from the very beginning, it's not about searching for items to progress to the next room. At the moment we only have the TEASER TRAILER, it is only used to showcase the atmosphere, we are still building the core gameplay, we are making good progress, but this takes time. We do know exactly what it's going to be like, and how we're going to accomplish this, and we will release a gameplay trailer as soon as possible. Our game is geared towards being a strategy game but with elements of horror to keep the game interesting and keep players on edge. Gameplay is not based on jump scares. The main objective is to survive the night. Death is involved, and wrong decisions will kill you. Gameplay is fast paced, and everything you do can have consequences, each hour of the night is a checkpoint, and if you die you can start over from that hour.

The gameplay is mainly centered around events that will be triggered, depending on how you play the game. For instance leaving a door open, will attract the monster to the room, as well as unlit candles. When entering new rooms or rooms you have already been in, you should check your surroundings for signs that indicate the monster might be in the room waiting for you. Check behind the door, check for extinguished candles etc.. If you do not pay attention to signs, after a certain period of time the monster will eventually catch up to you and kill you. After playing the game, you will learn these different signs and you will be able to apply them to your how you play the game in order to survive.

Difficulty increases by the hour, events happen more often and you will have to recognize "signs" faster, and pay attention to the monster's attack patterns to avoid him.