Cashiers After Dark

You paid a guide to take you up the ridge above Cashiers, North Carolina, to find a monster. The monster found him first. Now it is close to midnight, the fire is burning low, and something is circling the camp.

Cashiers After Dark is a first-person survival horror game about getting off a mountain alive. Follow the trails through the dark woods, search the places the locals stopped visiting, and learn what hunts out there before it learns you. Play it with headphones, in the dark.

How to play

Your goal is simple: get off this mountain. Pick Enter the Woods and start at the campfire, or skip ahead to the ridge if you have been there before.

• Follow the trail. Orange reflectors shine back in your beam, and the amber mark on the compass shows where to head next.
• Pick your light level with 1 to 5. More light lets you see more, and lets more see you.
• Watch the battery. Brighter burns faster, a dying battery flickers, and the red light slowly recharges it.
• Walk or crouch when you can. Sprinting is loud.
• Press E to search and pick things up. Whatever you find shows up in the pause menu.
• If you die, you go back to the last checkpoint. The field guide remembers what killed you.

The flashlight

Five settings, from a dim red light that barely reaches your boots to a beam brighter than the sun that floods the whole woods and overheats in seconds. Choosing how much to see, and how much to be seen, is the game.

What lives in these woods

Something walks the ridge after dark, and it is not alone. Each thing out there hunts in its own way. The field guide starts blank and fills in as you meet them, and the page on how to survive one is only written after it has caught you once. We are not going to spoil the rest.

Chapters

The story runs from a prologue at the campfire through six acts across the mountain. Every new place you reach unlocks on the title screen, so you can start from it next time.

Controls

Keyboard and mouse

WASD move, mouse look, Shift sprint (loud), Ctrl or C crouch (quiet), E interact, F or right mouse use item, Q switch item, 1-5 or mouse wheel light level, R swap battery, Esc or P pause

Gamepad

Left stick move, right stick look, L3 or LT sprint, B crouch, A interact, X or RT use item, Y switch item, LB and RB light level, R3 swap battery, Start pause

Touch

Left stick to move, drag on the right side to look, on-screen buttons for run, crouch, interact, use, swap, light up and down, battery and pause

Features

• First-person survival horror set at night in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Cashiers, North Carolina
• A five-level flashlight: red, dim, normal, tactical and brighter than the sun
• Battery, flicker and overheating to manage while you explore
• Creatures that each hunt in their own way, learned by watching or by dying
• A field guide that fills in as you meet what lives in the woods
• A prologue and six acts, with chapter select for every place you have reached
• Checkpoints, so a death costs you minutes, not the night
• Voiced guide and radio lines with subtitles
• Plays with keyboard and mouse, gamepad or touch
• Settings for look sensitivity, inverted look and volume