Devlog · Design ·
People kept getting lost, so we gave them a flare gun
It isn’t a weapon. It’s how a lost friend finds the way back to the cabin before the dark takes them.
The forest in Tainted Ground is big, it’s foggy, and at night it’s very dark. That’s on purpose: the dark is what kills you. But it also meant that people kept getting separated from their friends and losing the cabin completely.
We didn’t want to fix that with a map marker or an arrow on the screen. Being lost should feel bad. What we wanted was for the other players to be able to do something about it.
A light in the sky
So we added a flare gun. If someone is lost out there, another player fires a flare from wherever they are, the red light climbs above the trees, and the lost player walks towards it. It’s a tool for talking without the walkie, and it only works if someone in the group thinks of it.
It isn’t a weapon
On screen, a flare gun looks like a weapon, and we know people will expect to shoot something with it. You can’t. There’s nothing in Tainted Ground you can shoot. The only things that help you are light, the cabin and the people you came with.
What we like most is that we didn’t script any of this. Nobody is "the one with the flare". It’s simply there, and the game gets better when someone decides to use it at the right moment.
