The halcyon days of full-motion video may be long behind us, but the mantle of live-action adventures is still being carried by the indies, from Areo’s Casebook series to Parallax Studio’s epic DARKSTAR: The Interactive Movie. The latest to join the filming fray is Relics: Dark Hours, a joint production of Subdued Games and Bryan Wiegele, creator of Inherent Evil and Delaware St. John. Like all of Wiegele’s games, Relics is a supernatural thriller using a first-person slideshow-style format, but this time around, filmed sets and characters set the stage for this haunted high school mystery. I recently had the chance to play a short preview version of the game, offering an early glimpse of the ghostly adventure awaiting this fall.

Matthew Hunter is the protagonist in Relics, and he quickly proves true to his name. A year after his father’s death, Matt discovered that his grandfather had once stolen a collection of cursed artifacts that initially bring wealth and prosperity, then sickness and death to those who possess them. The curse has already claimed Matt’s entire family except him, but what’s worse is that his father sold the items, scattering them to parts unknown. Knowing the damage these relics can cause, he’s now determined to hunt them down and destroy them all. It’s a bit like Harry Potter and the Horcruxes, only without the magical abilities.



Matt does have some paranormal gifts, however: he can see ghosts. It’s not yet clear why or how he has this skill, but early in his adventure he’ll see the terrified ghost of Rachel Curtis, a deceased high school teacher at Ridgecrest High, a middle-of-nowhere secondary school that’s recently been beset by other disappearances as well. He doesn’t seem able to communicate with her, but he can freely speak to his father, who is also a translucent spirit. He appears and disappears at will, but this relationship isn’t welcomed by Matt. Estranged in life, it’s an uncomfortable reconciliation in death, and given the father’s smug look and smarmy attitude, it’s not hard to see why. Then again, Matt’s father does seem to have some otherworldly knowledge that may just come in handy.

Not everyone in Relics is dead, though the only other characters I met were Eddie, the amiable old school custodian with a disturbing migraine, and Nate Reynolds, the math teacher disgruntled by romance problems and “ungrateful bastards” for students. Matt never personally appears, as all the action is viewed directly through his eyes, but he is fully voiced. All early dialogues are non-interactive, with live characters appearing in front of you and holding conversations without any player input. Subtitles are available, but you can’t fast-track the conversation line by line, as right-clicking bypasses the whole exchange entirely. The acting – always a potential landmine for FMV adventures – seems solid so far, though bordering on hammy whenever it branches beyond casual conversation. Since both exploration and conversation take place in real locations, there’s a fairly seamless switch between the photographed images and the live-action sequences, though the few scenes that display a character posed in the environment are entirely static, which looks a bit unnatural.

The rest of the presentation is strictly no frills, displaying still images of each node with the ability to rotate fully around you in 90-degree increments. On the plus side, this makes it easy to keep track of where you are; on the downside, it means quite a few screens offer nothing more than close-ups of barren walls. I’d have gladly foregone the two middle angles whenever they aren’t relevant to the action. Movement is easily handled by clicking directional arrows that appear when you mouse over hotspots, though sometimes they can be a bit too obscure to find easily. I was practically nose-to-wood with one door and assumed it was a dead end, not realizing it had a randomly chosen small-ish interactive area that opened it. I even got stuck on the game’s very first task because I failed to notice a back room exit that isn’t visible to the naked eye. If you’re ever feeling disoriented, however, a map displays a layout of the school with your current location, though it doesn’t allow for quick travel access.

I really only encountered one actual “puzzle” during my brief demo of Relics. Taking a page out of the Samantha Everett school of job poaching, Matt poses as the incoming janitor trainee, giving him free access to the school. Or not entirely free – at least not at first. Many rooms are closed to you at the start, and entire passages are locked or blocked off, limiting your early progress. After finding a uniform, I did explore the mail room, math class, and “food lab”, but in order to advance any further, a coded sequence of three keys was needed to open a gate. The keys were stored in a four-item scrolling inventory at the bottom of the screen, making it easy to select them once I found the necessary sequence clue elsewhere in the building. There aren’t a lot of interactive items per screen, though it’s too early to say whether the complexity ramps up farther into the game. Even if it does, a “notes” icon records key information you’ve discovered, and a “think” button elicits a comment from Matt about his current objective.

On its own, Ridgecrest High isn’t a visually compelling place to explore. Apart from a few Halloween decorations for the seasonal dance, it looks like any other rural school. It’s also rather dimly lit, though the action does take place entirely at night, and the darker ambience is better suited to the supernatural mystery than a brighter, cheerier locale. The tension comes more from subtle effects like lights flickering and off-screen screams that remind you the building houses a dark presence. The time I spent with Relics wasn’t particularly scary, however, as the ghost of Rachel seems far more haunted than haunting, as she too is bound by the curse of the artifact you seek. In the background, the music provides a sufficiently ominous backdrop, gently playing between lengthy periods of silence that befits a mostly empty high school after hours.

I’d love to tell you more about the first adventure of Matthew Hunter (and since more than one relic is missing, it’s certainly plausible that we’ll see more of him in future), but the preview version ended before I was able to delve very deeply into his story. We could just wait for the game’s projected September release to learn more, but why not go straight to the source for a little insider information instead? Along with playing the demo, I caught up with Bryan Wiegele to discuss Relics in more detail, so read on as the game’s writer and designer offers some behind-the-scenes insights about this upcoming supernatural mystery.