The story begins..
My actions had attracted a Specter.
Nuign Specter is a short story in game form, created by Jake Clover in October 2012 using the Game Maker engine. It takes place across fewer than a dozen screens and uses the nameless protagonist to tell a supposedly symbolic story which leaves much to the player’s interpretation. It is notable for the complete absence of text, with the exception of one line at the beginning and another at the end.
It can be found here
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Has examples of the following tropes:
- Bears Are Bad News: You get attacked by a bear halfway through the game while walking towards the supermarket.
- Bloodless Carnage: There is a body on the floor in the very beginning with no blood on it. Similarly, no other corpses will actually bleed when shot. An exception can happen in one of the endings, where if you manage to shoot the Specter first, its body will collapse to the floor with quite a few drops of blood-like black substance.
- Bottomless Magazines: The protagonist will never run out of shells for his shotgun.
- Everything Fades: Averted: all the bodies stay where they were shot. Not only that, but using the shotgun in any of the rooms will leave permanent marks on the wall from shotgun pellets.
- Furry Confusion: All the primary characters are the upright-walking, clothed wolf/dog creatures. By the middle of the game, you encounter a completely wild, agressive bear that wouldn't look out of place in real life.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Just what exactly does that bear encountered halfway through the game have to do with the central story of greed again?
- Law of Inverse Recoil: Averted with the protagonist, who will be forced to step back after each shotgun blast due to the recoil. The same doesn’t apply to the shotgun-wielding enemies, though.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Like in many such works, it's questionable whether the the Specter is an actual metaphysical being, or merely a product of the protagonist's subconscious, used to justify his actions.
- Multiple Endings: Subverted. It is possible to avoid killing others and robbing the store to feed the Specter, by shooting the Hunger Spectre yourself, though this requires split-second reaction. However, both actions lead to the exact same ending slide. The Spectre is no more, leaving others to speculate on the meaning of this.
- Muzzle Flashlight: The protagonist’s shotgun has a very pronounced, bright white flash, which will light up the entire screen. However, it isn't actually needed gameplay-wise.
- This doesn’t apply to the shotguns used by your enemies, though, with the exception of the Specter itself.
- One Hitpoint Wonder: Since it’s a stylised interactive story with no superfluous elements like HUD, everyone dies in one hit.
- Short-Range Shotgun: Averted. The shotgun works all the way across the screen.
- Stylistic Suck: While the game is not necessarily ugly, the animations used are very rough. However, it fits the general idea well, and adds to the tension and unease in the game.
- Trigger-Happy: The bystander with a shotgun on the outside of the shop will shoot at you as you walk out regardless of what happens. Reasonable if you do as the plot commands, but if you walk out unarmed and with no shopping trolley to prove that you were the criminal?
- The game effectively forces you to become this in order to survive, up until you get to the Specter himself.
- Villain Protagonist: One potential interpretation of the player character.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Just who exactly is the body on the floor at the beginning of the game?
