Near Death is a Survival Horror game by Orthogonal Games. After your plane crash-lands in Antarctica, you find yourself stranded and alone at an abandoned research facility in the midst of a deadly blizzard. Plunged into utter darkness, temperatures 100 degrees below zero, and conditions far too harsh to allow for rescue, you must explore Sutro Station and and use the tools at your disposal in hopes of escaping and finding your way home.
Near Death provides examples of:
- Always Night: The game takes place in Antarctica during the winter, so the sun doesn't come up. The characters even note that it'll be weeks before sunrise.
- Closed Circle: Sutro Station is far from civilization and in conditions far too unfavorable to send help. The closest you get is communication through the teletypes with Jack at McMurdo, but the only assistance he can provide is giving you objectives you still have to carry out yourself. And even then, you can only communicate in specific areas.
- Deadpan Snarker: The player character has quite the sharp snarky wit when chatting on the teletype.This place is not conducive to, um... existing.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Every second is spent fighting for your life against the cold and wind, before finally you're able to gather what you need to modify a vehicle that can carry you to safety.
- Eerie Arctic Research Station: The setting of the game is Sutro station. It's eerie because, in addition to the weather conditions, it's been abandoned by the time you arrive, leaving barely enough supplies and power for you to survive, and some buildings are outright destroyed by the winter storms. With some patchwork and emergency maintenance, you can make parts of it a little less sinister and hostile, but only in small spots since supplies are so limited.
- Hope Spot: The early game gives a couple of these. First, there's the hope of a rescue team coming by, before Jack admits it'll be weeks before it's safe enough for them to get there. Then he suggests you check for food and water, only to find the station is out of both, meaning you can't hunker down and wait for rescue. The latter half of the game, where you gather what's necessary to get a vehicle working, also has these, as every collection is framed as potentially being the last before you're given something else to grab.
- Hostile Weather: Being exposed to the arctic winds or in an unpowered room will eventually cause you to freeze to death. Later in the game, harsh winds make closing doors difficult, and require you to button mash to fully close them. Topping it off, it's incredibly difficult to see more than a few feet in front of yourself even with the flashlight.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Downplayed. The game has the usual Easy, Normal, and Hard, but the Harder Than Hard level is called Condition 1
. - Item Crafting: A mechanic in the game. This is primarily used to make window patches to cover broken windows, wiring bypass kits to get the power back on, and light and rope poles to help with outdoor navigation. However, you can also make one-time upgrades to your gear.
- Minimalist Cast: There's the Pilot and Jack, and Jack is only communicated with through teletype, so he doesn't appear physically or even as a voice. The only voice you hear is your own.
- Nothing Is Scarier: There are no monsters hunting you down, no supernatural elements to watch out for, nothing. Just you, insanely cold weather, and limited resources.
- Sidequest: It's mandatory to repair two generators in the station, but the third one is optional.
It's by far the hardest to bring to working order, including hauling a big clunky replacement part halfway across the base, but it's worth it: it powers up the resting rooms on the way to the radio tower late in the game, making a very hard section much easier. - Ten-Second Flashlight: The Pilot's flashlight lasts only about two minutes per battery, and it dims constantly as power is spent. Justified by the the game's setting and conditions: it takes place in 1982, when flashlights were incandescentnote and batteries were alkalinenote .
