by Damir Debanic

Graphic designer Zdravko Lovrichas a knack for coversContinuing with games that sneak up on me!

Fear of the Dark started with an idea: You are alone in the dark and have a limited source of light.

The name "Fear of the Dark" came later by accident, and it was a lucky accident since the initial names were not that great: "Matches", "Matches in Your Pocket", "Just Matches" and so on...

Luckily the Iron Maiden song "Fear of the Dark" came on my playlist and the decision was made.

In case you were wandering, yes, the game The Night Cage by Christopher Ryan Chan, Chris McMahon, Rosswell Saunders, and Smirk & Laughter Games was an subconscious inspiration...even though I have not played it yet. (Shame on me — it is on my to-do list.)

Fear of the Dark combines tile placement with press-your-luck mechanisms. The design is meant to be hard, so I have included a difficulty setting tool that is quite simple: the number of matches you have in your pocket at the start of the game.

The game sequence is simple:

• Light a match
• Plan your actions
• Execute those actions
• Repeat

Illustrations by Endi Oblak
How does Fear of the Dark differ from The Night Cage? The game has no turns. Fear of the Dark flows as you use actions and light matches, with alternating light and dark periods.

You win when you exit a door on the last tile and escape the maze! You lose when you have no more cards to play. (You have lost both your mind and your self in the maze!)

The Lost figurine designed by Davor Kajtar
What Is the Challenge in Fear of the Dark?

Will you play completely safe, never taking chances? You have no chance to escape before your light runs out.

Will you rush headlong through the darkness? You will in all likelihood lose more time (and matches) than you would otherwise, leaving you stranded in the dark.


The game evolved quickly, going from idea to crowdfunding campaign in nine months, with the campaign going great and giving me a lot of feedback to further improve the game.

Looking back, the major changes from initial design to campaign include:

• The addition of traps (dangers)
• Tiles changing from a single space to a 3x3 grid to increase the decision-making options
• Discarding a card as a wild card (initially this gave a stronger effect)

Changes after the campaign was completed include:

• Instant death, which has only a small chance of happening and which is based on a player's conscious decision to take risks.
• Unknown tile deck size, a mechanism that makes the deck size unknown...even though it is visible to the player.

One thing that I did not manage to make was a two-player mode. The setting is simply great for a solo game, and at this time it remains a solo game. In the future, who knows?

In Fear of the Dark, I wanted to create an atmosphere of the unknown and of fear, an atmosphere in which your decisions are the most important thing. The game uses no dice, and all of your actions are deterministic...until you reveal the next room.

Planning is important, but sticking to the plan will not get you anywhere!

•••
Backers of the Gamefound campaign will receive their copies in August/September, and InterHuman will have a booth at SPIEL Essen 25, so come and visit us. We will have our best game to date (Propuh) at the show, along with Fear of the Dark and our next game, Badgers. Perhaps we will have our first creature-feature — Jure Grando: The First Vampire — for preview as well.

As you can probably guess, this has been a busy year...

Cheers,
Damir Debanic

The initial draft of the cover, using a photo taken in my basement