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PREMISE
PREMISE
We've been expecting you.
THE MEAT AND POTATOES
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It could happen at any time. Maybe you were in bed, finally beginning to nod off after a long day of work or adventuring. Maybe you had taken a moment to catch your breath in the heat of battle, or maybe you finally fell after taking a mortal blow. Whatever the case may be, sooner or later, you close your eyes.
And somewhere, in that vast darkness between sleep and wake, dream and reality, life and death, you hear a small and quiet voice whisper, "Help me. Please, help me..." Then, the world blacks out. When you open your eyes again, it's morning. You're lying in bed, safe and sound. The alarm clock on your nightstand is blaring, and this is perhaps the point where you realize something is wrong because you don't own an alarm clock, or the nice pair of comfortable pajamas you're now wearing, or just about everything in this unfamiliar yet utterly charming bedroom straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Looking around, the world has completely changed — and maybe you have, too. The clothes in your closet look like they're from a different time period, as do the people you see going about their business outside your window. Framed pictures of you with strange people you've never met line the walls. Maybe one of them is in the same room with you, sleeping in the bed across from yours. You have no idea what's going on. The golden light streaming through the windows, the jingle of an ice cream truck outside, and the faint smell of freshly baked pie hanging in the air like an afterimage all say one thing, though: It's going to be a wonderful day. |
THE BLOOD AND GUTS
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This is how characters arrive in We're Still Here, a horror/psychological horror game set in a town called Santa Rosita in what is ostensibly 1961. Characters awaken in an unfamiliar house with their memories and identities intact, but lose everything else that ties them to their worlds, including clothing, powers, personal belongings and whatever else they had on them prior to their abduction. These changes even go so far as affecting dead and inhuman characters who will find themselves returned to life or granted a human body. Everyone is human and, at the moment of arrival, completely and utterly powerless.
Characters are assigned homes in groups of four that are meant to mimic the structure of a traditional nuclear family: a mother and a father and two children. According to the people of Santa Rosita, they've just moved to town with their family, and everything characters find in their houses from family pictures to mail, to marriage and birth certificates validates these claims. Everyone will treat characters as if they really are from the early 1960s and all of their wild stories of different worlds and magic are just products of an overactive imagination. Worse, the town's leaders are very committed to maintaining the illusion that Santa Rosita is every bit the little slice of heaven it appears to be, and they really don't like it when you challenge them. Primarily a Suburban Gothic setting, We're Still Here draws inspiration from the media and culture that shaped America in the late 1950s and early 1960s and throughout the mid to late 20th century, including the Cold War, post-apocalyptic fiction and, of course, horror. The town of Santa Rosita is a frightening place to be trapped in, but an even worse place to die in. As the game is intended to be plot-focused, characters will be pushed to discover what's really going on in Santa Rosita and where they factor into its complicated history. They might even have the chance to save not only themselves, but someone else too. If they survive long enough. |
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