Freebie Friday: SCP Containment Breach
In this first edition of Freebie Friday, I present to you a free downloadable PC title that, while still in the alpha stages of development, is as horrifying as it is fun to play. I’m talking of course, about “SCP: Containment Breach”. The game is an homage to the collaborative horror fiction website, The SCP Foundation by independent game developers Regali. SCP stands for “Secure, Contain, Protect”. The canon of the website is fluid, but the basic premise is that it’s a repository for data concerning anomalous objects and people. The Foundation locates these objects, captures them, and holds them in a specialized site away from the public eye where they can’t be a danger to themselves or humanity in general. The website currently boasts over one thousand articles on objects or persons they have cataloged.
SCP: Containment Breach puts the player in the quaking shoes of an unlucky “Class-D” member of their staff, those who are tasked with testing the objects while researchers record results to determine its anomalous properties. You are told to enter the containment chamber of SCP-173, a humanoid(ish) figure with stubby little arms and a painted face. A door jam and a power failure later, you find yourself wandering the dimly lit facility looking for a means of escape while simultaneously trying to avoid all of the objects or persons who have broken out of their containment during the power failure.
The game’s primary feature is a clever “blink” meter on your HUD that tells you how long until you are forced to blink. This is important, as SCP-173 can only harm you if you are not looking at it. All it takes is an errant blink and you’ll find yourself staring at a game over screen wondering what happened while apologizing to your roommate after emitting a girly shriek at 75 decibels in the middle of the night and knocking soda all over your keyboard.
Throughout your journey in the facility, you’ll run across several SCP objects. Not all of them are immediately hostile, and one of them even has the ability to help you by improving some of the items you collect around the area. Currently, there’s no way to win or escape from the facility, but the ending is in development, and the lack of an ending does not take away from the quality of the gameplay.
The game’s graphics are subpar and amateur, and the sound could use some serious work as well. However, the enemies you encounter throughout the game will have you focusing less on the quality of textures and more on the room ahead; wondering if this is the room where SCP-106 will pay you a visit.
The world is randomly generated every time you start a new game so each play through is a new experience. With danger lurking through every door, SCP: Containment Breach is a fun, bite-sized horror experience that will leave you sleeping with the lights on. The verdict on this game will have to wait, as it’s still very much in development. The alpha version of the game displays that the concept and execution have a world of potential, and I will be anxiously awaiting a full release so I can deliver a full review. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy a new keyboard.
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