Upriver

is this what drowning feels like?

Upriver is a short horror platformer for Month of Horror #2: “Withering Away.” You carry a failing lamp up a black river, from an outer station to the inner one. The light is shrinking, and the things in the dark only move when you aren’t looking.

A first run takes about 10–15 minutes, longer if the dark gets you. It plays in your browser. Headphones help.

What waits upriver

• A lamp that won’t last. Oil burns down as you walk, and pools of darkness drink it faster. Embers buy you a little more time.
• Light-only bridges. Some planks over the river exist only inside your lamplight.
• Rot. Boardwalks give way beneath you, and clots of fungus drop from above.
• Old machinery. Pull levers, race closing gates and drawbridges, and push crates.
• Rivets. The steamer won’t run without them.
• Things that follow. Pale shapes creep up when your back is turned. Turn and face them.

Made from old things

Every picture and sound comes from public-domain and openly licensed sources:

• Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 motion photographs
• Ernst Haeckel’s fungi and pitcher-plant prints
• Engravings of the 1880s Congo River
• Field recordings of steam engines and rivers, slowed and darkened

The words are Joseph Conrad’s, from Heart of Darkness (1899), plus three short lines by the developer.

The game covers all three bonus challenges:

• Entropic Decay: the world rots as you go.
• Parasitic Plant: the one living, colored thing grows fatter as everything else withers.
• The Approaching Winter: autumn leaves give way to frost and cold.

Controls

• ← → or A/D: walk
• Shift: run
• ↑, W or Space: jump
• ↓ or S: pull a lever
• Walk into a crate to push it.
• Esc or P: pause
• M: sound on/off
• F: reduced flicker (calms the film grain, flashes and lamp flicker)

Press 1, 2 or 3 on the title screen to replay a chapter you’ve reached, or C for credits. Keyboard required.

Content notes

• Flashing and flickering images (press F for a reduced-flicker mode)
• Darkness, dread and mild jump moments
• Brief non-sexual partial nudity in the 1887 photographs used for the player figure

How it was made

The code was written with AI assistance, and that includes the plain on-screen labels (keys, menus, “Shift run”) and the light, shadow and simple shapes it draws. No AI-generated art, sound or writing is used. Every picture and sound is human-made and credited in the game and in CREDITS.txt.

Credits

Words: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899), public domain.

Figure: Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion (1887), public domain.

Pictures (all public domain):

• Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur (1904)
• H. H. Johnston, The River Congo (1884)
• J. M. Rugendas (1835)
• Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen (1897)
• Stern-wheeler drawings (c. 1886, 1926)

Fog sprites: Kenney (CC0).

Sounds (Wikimedia Commons):

• Public domain or CC0: aradlaw, Zeroping, Alex Alex Lep, Dirtslayer, DavidDelon, WrS.tm.pl, stephan, hugh, NASA/JPL-Caltech
• Heartbeat by HerbertBoland (CC BY 3.0)
• Weald and Downland water mill (CC BY 2.0)
• Barn Owl (CC BY 4.0)

Type: IM Fell English by Igino Marini (SIL OFL).