Face the past — it’s the only way forward

Stuck in the Present (SitP) is a 3D side-scrolling, psychological-horror title that dives into the uncanny depths of twisting subway stations in a large, unfamiliar city. Faye, and her close friend Rich, descend into their daily routine plagued by a quiet complacency in their lives. But after an eerie vision derails their schedule, and resurfaces painful memories, the two childhood friends become entrapped and must decipher distorted tunnels while unearthing horrors from an unresolved past forgotten in the Philippines.

History

Born in the year 2015, Stuck in the Present was made specifically to challenge the saying and beliefs around trying to just live in the moment. Dusk Wave Arts consider it a “what if” challenge to the well-known expression and advice of being “here in the present”, the reminder that people shouldn’t spend all their time and energy contemplating about past actions or their future.

This game is designed to explore the dangers of being completely consumed by the present moment to the point of suffocation. This game aims to spark a conversation about anxiety, the immigrant identity, and the consequences of isolation to a person in need of help. The Studio believes this is an important conversation to have in today’s time, recognizing the importance of the Filipino immigrant voices and stories too. 

Features

• Reckon with Faye’s inability to rely on herself. If Rich and Faye are separated for too long, darkness will slowly consume Faye as blackened figures encroach on her. Unearth more of Faye’s past and break Faye’s unhealthy codependency with her close friend.
• Discover items meaningful to Faye’s lost memories and draw in Faye’s notebook, delving into difficult and hazy subjects more intently. Key elements discovered in the subway are tracked in the notebook with drawings and annotations revealing more of Faye’s past.
• Choose between newly discovered dialogue options for alternative conversations to take place between Rich and Faye. The selection of those options as conversation topics may affect level progression but also the outcome of the narrative and the two friends’ relationship.
• The line between distortion and reality becomes increasingly thin: witness the transformation of the train station setting as it manifests distorted memories of the two friends.
• The industrial tunneling of the subways may alter to reveal the vibrant flora of the Philippines.
• The tiled underbelly of station passageways may transfigure and become the haunting, forgotten tunnels of a mountainside.

• 64-bit processor and operating system
• the OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
• Processor: 4th generation Intel Core processor or later
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics
• Storage: 2 GB available space

• OS: Big Sur 11 or newer
• Processor: Apple Silicon, x64 architecture with SSE2
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Metal capable Intel and AMD GPUs
• Storage: 3 GB available space