Years later one of the miners’ teenage son lives with his widowed mother. One evening, while they’re watching news on TV, there’s a sudden power outage. The mom sends her son to the basement to check the circuit breakers. Using only matches as a source of light, he ventures down to do so. On his way, he finds a strange door leading further underground, but opts not to enter. Finding the basement creepy he wants to get out as quickly as possible. But when he turns the electricity back on and tries to return, he discovers that his mother has locked him down there. His plea to open the door fall on deaf ears. Having no other choice, he reluctantly ventures beyond the strange door in hopes of finding another way out.
The Basement is an indie horror game by Valentin "ibroketheworld" Birner and can be downloaded from his itch.io page
. The game makes extensive use of the light/darkness mechanic to repel enemies and solve puzzles.
Tropes:
- Blackout Basement: There's a sudden power outage right at the beginning of the proper gameplay. It starts off the plot.
- Creepy Basement: The protagonist himself remarks, that he finds the basement of his home incredibly unsettling. He turns out to be right for a good reason.
- Darkness Equals Death: The whole game revolves around this. First the miners in the intro fall victim to unidentified creatures after they're suddenly engulfed in impermeable darkness. Most threats to the player prefer to reside in dark and are repelled by the light. The primary antagonist is somehow capable of radiating darkness. Even after reaching the surface, it is revealed that even a mild shade is enough to conceal unfathomable horrors.
- False Reassurance: At the beginning the mother tells her son not to be afraid, because there’s no danger in the dark. It turns out to be false very quickly.
- Gainax Ending: The final scene of the game is the primary antagonist asking to become a part of the protagonist’s family just as they’re about to leave the infested town. Cut to black screen and then to the main menu. The end.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: The antagionist’s motivation for keeping people undeground is that he’s lonely and wants some friends. The problem is, he doesn’t actually understand the concept of friendship.
- Living Shadow: Everybody is depicted only like a black figure with glowing eyes. It's uncertain whether this is an art style or they're actually not human.
- No Name Given: The protagonist's sister Cathrin is the only named ingame character. No one else in the game is given a name.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The main antagonist feels lonely. In order to make friends, he traps people underground. He doesn’t understand the concept of friendship, which is why he keeps hurting them.
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: Lighting matches (or anything in fact) in abandoned, poorly ventilated mines is a recipe for fiery methane inferno. You’re required to do that to even have a chance to survive.