Damien (game)

Damien is Lixian's fan-made game based on Mark's motion comic animation of the same name and was given to Fischbach as a belated birthday gift.

Overview
The title serves as a light game adaptation of "DAMIEN," one of Mark's animated shorts that is also partially intercut within the game's cutscenes, and follows the titular character from a first-person perspective trying to survive the harsh winter.

Plot
While collecting firewood, Damien briefly sees a shadowy figure in the distance, before it disappears into the woods. Returning to his log cabin, Celine—his sister—assured him that there is no one in the forest, as she exits the hut. Later that night, Damien dreams of the same figure stalking him within a dark and empty void. Waking up, Damien checks his image against a mirror, only to be met with the aforementioned creature, now clearly visible within daylight, as it pulls him into its mirror world. As the monster gives chase, Damien sprints through the wilderness and across the frozen lake, before being submerged beneath it by the creature. Finding himself back at the black abyss from his dream, Damien walks through the poorly lit area where he meets another visually obscured figure, who exclaims "Damien, you are a hard man to find," as the scene cuts to the title card, before coming to an end.

Episode

 * LIXIAN made an entire game just for ME

Development
According to his greeting card, Lixian started working on the project around June 3, 2019. He decided to make the game in 3D due to it being much more simple to design around survival-horror themes than 2D and its limiting first-person perspective allowed for greater immersion. The game was build in Unity using High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), which featured a number of modified assets from Unity's store due to time constraints. As most of the animated episode features heavy dialogue scenes, Lixian had decided to carry over only the first half into the game in order to fit its gameplay. The need to stay within the light during Damien's dream segments was inspired by the same mechanic from Alan Wake. The game was also supposed to feature several mannequins to play up on Mark's fear of automatonophobia, but were cut for time.