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Eidolon

Created: 2025-10-25 (08:03:30) — Modified: 2025-10-31 (07:18:03)
Status: completed

Play on Itch or play here

Set out into a heavily contaminated landscape to retrieve specimens, then file them in an outdated database. Try not to disappear while you are out there.

This game was my submission for SCREAM JAM 2025, an annual jam in which you have seven days to make a horror game!

I took a lot of inspiration from the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, which is set in a mutated, ambiguously hostile landscape called Area X, and from Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky… which is also set in a contaminated, potentially hostile landscape called The Zone. Hostile landscapes appeal to me!

The game also drew on my experiences wandering around the hills in Canberra. It is not uncommon to come across places that have been fenced off because they are heavily contaminated, or because they are still owned and used by some government agency.

I made Eidolon in a mad, stressful rush. It is more eerie than scary. Its parts do not cohere together particularly well. But there is something promising in there too. I would like to return to it… after a break.

References

• Tarkovsky, Andrei, 1979, Stalker, Goskino
• VanderMeer, Jeff, 2014, Southern Reach Series, Farar, Straus and Giroux

Endmatter

Tags: @completed @my-games @twine @virtual-spaces

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