Scratch to remember. Black out to protect.
Vesk, 1961. An occupied city, ten days under a state of siege. Your brother’s papers are covered in ink you don’t remember adding.
Chapter 1 · Early Access · PC (Windows) · Coming soon on Steam
On the first night of the state of siege, someone slips a note under Ilse’s door.
Scratch off the ink.
With the keyboard: Enter or Space scratches off a line.
Vesk, February 1961. Third year of the Northern War. After an act of sabotage at the docks, the Occupation Administration declares a ten-day state of siege: curfew, blackouts and raids, house by house.
Ilse Maar, a language teacher the Occupation fired from School Six, is locked in her apartment with the papers of her younger brother, Teo, missing for fifteen months. Songbooks, letters, photographs. Almost everything is blacked out, and Ilse doesn’t remember doing it.
Scratch or black out
Scratch off the ink and the words come back, and with them, Ilse’s memories. But every name left legible is one more name the raids can find. Black a word out and you protect someone, but Ilse forgets it too. For good.
One candle
At night there’s only one candle, and reading burns it down. Its light can also be seen from the street.
Every choice stays
What you say, who you say it to and what you leave legible carry over into the next chapters.
Vesk is a northern port that never existed: gray stone, slate roofs and the wind off the strait. The war is far away. The Occupation is on the stairs.
- 1958The Northern War breaks out between two blocs. No one in Vesk quite understands why; the radio calls it “the defense of civilization.”
- Spring 1959Vesk, a small neutral port, is occupied in four days. The fleet never makes it out of the dock.
- 1959–1961The Occupation Administration takes over. Here, the war is the blackout siren, the ration card and fear.
- Late 1959Teo Maar disappears. “Transferred,” the papers say.
Nobody says where. - February 13, 1961An act of sabotage at the docks sinks an Occupation barge.
- February 14, 1961A ten-day state of siege begins. So does the game.
The strait
A cold arm of the sea. Across it lies the other shore, a neutral country. Crossing at night in a fishing boat is the only way out, and searchlights sweep the strait looking for boats.
“To go to the other shore”: to flee or, sometimes, to die.
The Mothers of the Candles
Women searching for their “transferred” children. Every Wednesday at nine at night, each of them lights a candle in her window. “So they know we’re waiting for them. Wherever they are.”
The Office
The Occupation Administration runs the city. Its police force is the Office: men in gray coats, “the men in gray.” Its seal, a red circle crossed by a black bar, is the only red in Vesk. Whatever they don’t like in a letter, they cover with black bars: everyone in Vesk knows how to read around a blacked-out line: the names are still underneath.
| The Office says | It means |
|---|---|
| Transferred | Disappeared |
| The Archive | Interrogation center |
| Search | Raid |
| Cooperate | Inform on someone |
| Elements from the other shore | Anyone who thinks differently |
| Safe-conduct | A reward for those who cooperate |
The notice pasted on every street corner on February 14. The Administration’s motto, on every official wall. On some of them, someone has scraped “Silence” off with a fingernail. One of the letters Mira signed as “a mother.” It came back like this. Ilse’s ration card: what’s left of February. For moving about during the curfew. The name doesn’t matter. The wanted list the radio reads out between marches. The mail still arrives. It just arrives already read. Ten occupation crowns. Nobody trusts them.
Radio Vesk
…Radio Vesk. Communiqué number forty-seven of the Occupation Administration. In the wake of the cowardly sabotage perpetrated last night at the docks… a state of siege is hereby declared in the city of Vesk for a period of ten days. Blackout and curfew from twenty hundred hours. The Office will search all residences, house by house. The population is requested to give its full cooperation. Order. Work. Silence.
Blacked Out is a work of fiction. Vesk and the Northern War are invented; no real country, army or symbol appears. It is inspired by the occupied cities of the twentieth century.
What is Blacked Out?
A psychological horror visual novel. During ten days under a state of siege, Ilse has to decide what to remember and what to black out in her brother’s papers.
How long is it?
Chapter 1 takes about an hour and a half. The full game will have five chapters.
Are there jump scares?
No. The fear lies in what you hear on the stairs, what you see from the window and what you choose to forget.
What does it deal with?
Military occupation, disappearances, interrogations and censorship. Violence is never shown, only implied.